A 24 year old Northeastern University nursing student was the first responder to the fall of her older neighbor.
On the evening of Friday February the 21st, Alexandra Fidalgo, a student from New Bedford, was the first responder to her older neighbor’s fall. A few minutes before, the nursing student’s younger brother had heard their neighbor yell for her young grandson to call an ambulance.
“As soon as my brother told me the neighbors were calling for help, I rushed out to them,” she said.
Fidalgo, a student in Northeastern University’s Accelerated Bachelors of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program, threw on her coat and ran to the neighbor’s house. The neighbor, a 62 year old woman, was facedown on the sidewalk beside her New Bedford home. She had just been taking out their dog when she tripped over his leash. The resulting fall had left her unable to move on her own, with pain in her left hip and multiple lacerations on her face.
Per her training, Fidalgo asked if she could help before questioning the woman to ascertain her level of injury. She helped the woman speak with the 9-1-1 operator, and knew not to move the woman in case something was broken. In the meantime, Fidalgo performed basic first aid and tended to the neighbor’s bleeding nose and face.
It took under five minutes for the fire department to arrive with their medics, who moved the injured woman onto a chair. It took ten minutes for a uniformed officer to arrive. The home, located in the north end of the city of New Bedford, is just down the street from a fire station and the north end satellite station of the New Bedford Police Department. The ambulance took almost 20 minutes to arrive.
“Where are they coming from, St. Luke’s?” the uniformed officer laughed. St. Luke’s, part of the South Coast Health group, is the closest hospital to the home’s location – six miles away, or a 13 minute drive. With temperatures dropping below 30°F and an older, hurt woman sitting painfully in a chair, all first responders on the scene were tense as they waited. It was not the first fall of an older person that the neighborhood had seen. In September of 2018, a neighbor from the house adjacent to the fall victim had also fallen. The man, a World War II Veteran in his nineties, had injured his hip.
Recently released statistics by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that one in four Americans aged 65 and up fall every year. The projected financial fees from falls in 2020 are expected to climb past $67 billion. Organizations like the National Council on Aging make it their mission to spread awareness about this issue, as well as start programs to prevent the falling of the elderly as a whole. Falls like these can happen anywhere, especially as populations age and the difficulties of ageing come with it. Inside, outside, with or without company – it’s all fair game. In New England, where the winters get rough, a fall outside in inclement weather by an older person with no one else around could be more than dangerous – it could be fatal. But in this particular neighborhood, being a good neighbor is not a foreign concept.
“Since I’ve started this program, it’s become ingrained in me to assist anyone in need, medical or otherwise, so I kind of just moved without thinking and began assessing my neighbor and the situation,” Fidalgo said.
The ambulance, when it arrived, packed the neighbor up and headed for St. Luke’s Hospital. The neighbor thanked Fidalgo profusely.
Fidalgo attends Northeastern University in their ABSN program. Being an accelerated program, the students are in it for a duration of 16 months with no proper breaks between semesters. Students with previous degrees are considered for programs such as these. Fidalgo holds a Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Science from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, as well as a Masters in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was also previously a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) throughout high school. This nursing program was the next logical step in her medical career.
The program itself has a heavy clinical portion where students are placed in different teaching hospitals throughout the state. Previously, Fidalgo was placed in the maternity unit Tufts in Boston. This semester, she is placed in the mental health unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a medical surgical unit at Beth Israel Hospital in Plymouth. It was in these clinical cycles that she learned the skills necessary to be a good first responder. It’s not just about what you do, Fidalgo claimed, it’s how you do it as well.
“In any situation, emergent ones especially, patients are nervous,” Fidalgo said. “As a healthcare provider you need to keep calm to be able to assess and perform proper care of the patient. It also helps the patient calm down as well.”
Fidalgo finishes her program this coming December and will graduate with her Bachelors of Science in Nursing. What will she do then?
“Take the NCLEX-RN, get licensed, and work as a nurse on a unit for at least a year before transfering to work as a traveling nurse,” she said. “That’s the plan.”
A good plan indeed. We wish her the best of luck!
Special thanks to Alexandra Fidalgo for interviewing and Taylor Wilke for editing input.
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