Bon Secours’ innovative cardiovascular ICU brings together multiple disciplines to save lives

Teamwork makes the dream work. And at Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center in Mechanicsville, Virginia, it also saves lives.

On July 14, Phyllis Brumfield’s routine back surgery quickly turned into a life-threatening event when she went into cardiac arrest.

“It was completely unexpected,” said Susan Rodgers, registered nurse and clinical care lead of the hospital’s cardiovascular intensive care unit. “She’d passed all of her pre-admission testing.”

Brumfield’s surgery was quickly halted to treat her cardiac arrest, a challenge considering she was positioned face-down on the operating table. As luck would have it, a cardiac surgery anesthesiologist and a cardiac operating room nurse were present in the room at the time. Cardiac surgeon Dr. Brody Wehman also happened to be on-site and was called in immediately to put Brumfield on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). ECMO is a life-saving intervention to restore blood flow and oxygen to the brain and body. In the setting of a cardiac arrest, it can be the only way to resuscitate a dying patient.

“It was fortunate that each of our team members were available and that we had done this procedure together many times before. The cannulation for ECMO went about as smoothly as possible, which kept the duration of her cardiac arrest to a minimum,” Dr. Wehman said.

“She was on IV medications, her blood pressure was low and the machine alarms kept going off,” Rodgers said. “They called Dr. Sajid Farooq, the intensive care doctor, to come back and stay with her that night.”

As a multidisciplinary team rallied around her, Brumfield started to make an amazing turnaround. Within days, she was removed from the ECMO machine and became Bon Secours’ first patient to be moved from critical care into the new 11-bed cardiovascular ICU.

“Dr. Wehman has done a lot of research into the universal bed model, where the patient is able to remain in the same ICU without having to move to a step-down unit,” Rodgers said. “It gives them a better chance to bond with the skilled nurses who are monitoring their care throughout their entire stay.”  

“Our new unit was designed to allow cardiac surgery patients to remain in their room throughout the entire post-operative course,” said Wehman. “Although the level of care may change from ICU to step down, the patient physically stays within an ICU-capable room rather than be transferred out to another part of the hospital. This can make a huge difference in the event of a post-operative complication, for example. For tenuous patients like Mrs. Brumfield, this continuity of care helps ensure the best possible outcome. As far as we know, MRMC is the first cardiac surgery ICU in Virginia to implement this care model.”

The Universal Bed CVICU is part of a $48.5 million expansion at Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center that included a 48,000-square-foot expansion to establish a West Pavilion featuring new inpatient units for orthopedics and neurosciences. In addition to the cardiovascular ICU, renovation of the existing hospital space also increased bed capacity for medical/surgical patients.

Brumfield continued to improve each day, and after two weeks, she was able to transfer to a rehab facility to continue her recovery. Three months later, she’s back home and doing fine.

“I don’t remember a lot of it,” she said. “What I do remember is that the doctors and nurses were wonderful, and everyone was really good to me. They never gave up on me and gave me the best of care. I’m so grateful for everything they did.”

“We all work together and want to see our patients do well, but there was something different about Phyllis,” Rodgers said. “The fact that all the people she needed were on-site at the time was a stroke of luck, and her family was there with her through her whole stay. She’s a special lady. Everyone got really attached to her.”

So attached that the hospital staff recently invited Brumfield to come back in and celebrate her miraculous recovery.

“We don’t get to do that very often,” Rodgers said. “Everyone was here, and it was so wonderful to see Phyllis in her pretty dress. She read a letter to us, letting us know how grateful she was to be given this second chance at life. It was truly touching, and it lets us know the efforts we make are all worthwhile.”

For more information, visit bonsecours.com.

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