Three registered nurses from Valley Regional Hospital in Kentville, N.S., are receiving praise for swooping in and helping a sick passenger while on a flight to Toronto. Abbie Loughran, Abbey Dauphinee and Karlee McGuigan were travelling during the Victoria Day long weekend to celebrate McGuigan’s bachelorette. “It was a normal afternoon flight, got on the flight, maybe like 10 minutes into the takeoff they sent a request for any nurses or doctors overhead,” says Loughran. The trio say they assessed and monitored the female patient as best they could with limited supplies. “When we used the blood pressure cuff that was available to us, we noticed that it was low. When we looked into the medical care equipment, we noticed there was an IV,” Dauphinee says. “So we were like, ‘well, there’s no harm in inserting an IV and giving her some fluids if she has no medical history.’ Where there was no tourniquet, Abbie actually made a handmade tourniquet and just put her hands around the patients’ arms and I was able to get an IV in.” The nurses suspected the woman was having a vasovagal episode, which can cause people to feel dizzy faint. “Probably an hour and a half into the flight we managed to get a hold of a doctor. I would say they were having some issues, technically, getting a hold of a doctor, and then we were able to do a couple procedures,” Loughran says. The nurses kept monitoring the patient and asking her questions to keep her awake until they could land safely. McGuigan says the experience made the nurses realize they could be on-call at any time. “And it takes a special person to do that, and I think that’s why it felt normal to us because it just did feel like a day at work and it felt like something that was very natural to us to step up to help her,” she says. The patient, identified by Nova Scotia Health as Malvina Major of Alliston, Ont., was taken to hospital after the flight where she got additional treatment and recovered. “I cannot thank you enough,” Major wrote in a letter to the nurses. With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jim Kvammen For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
