Nurse Has Cardiac Arrest While Training for the Emergency

A 23-year-old nurse in New Hampshire was learning how to treat someone in cardiac arrest when she experienced the medical emergency firsthand.

Andy Hoang — a first-year nurse specializing in cardiac care — was at a November training session on how to respond to cardiac arrest at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon when she became dizzy and overcome with nausea, the Associated Press reported.

The last thing Hoang remembered was sitting down, she told the AP. She had gone into cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest — or sudden cardiac arrest — occurs when a problem with the heart's electrical system causes an abrupt loss of heart function, disrupting the heart's pumping action and ceasing blood flow through the body, per the Mayo Clinic. Without immediate treatment, it can lead to death.

Thankfully, Hoang’s colleagues launched into action. 

Abandoning the medical manikin they were using to practice CPR, the nurses began doing chest compressions on Hoang, who “did not have a pulse,” instructor Lisa Davenport told the AP.

The nurses also called for a medical emergency (“code blue”) team.

The situation was especially “stressful” because though the center employees “train for them all the time,” Dartmouth-Hitchcock had “never had a real code blue” before, Davenport told AP.

Before the emergency team could arrive, however, the medical center’s critical care team, which was attending a separate practice session close by, came to Hoang’s assistance.

A group of nurses rushed into the training room and set her up with an IV line, oxygen and a defibrillator for monitoring, per the AP.

By the time the emergency team had arrived, Hoang was beginning to stir. “I woke up to a room full of doctors and nurses,” she told the AP.

About 15 minutes passed from the time Hoang went into cardiac arrest and when the staff put her on a stretcher headed to the center’s emergency department, Davenport estimated.

“It worked out, but it was pretty frightening for all of us. You just don’t expect that to happen with someone as young as Andy,” the instructor told the AP.

Hoang told the AP her family does not have any history of heart problems.

The recent nursing graduate also told the outlet she maintains a pretty “healthy” lifestyle — she runs, eats well and hits the gym four times a week.

“I would say I’m your pretty average healthy 23-year-old,” she said. “I’m on my feet 12, 13 hours a day at work, so I want to make sure that I’m in shape for that.”

Prior to her cardiac arrest in November, she had only ever passed out twice — once because her blood sugar was low and once after experiencing a sharp abdominal pain — “so nothing like this, nothing to this extent,” she told the AP.

During her recovery, she was given a patch that recorded data about her heart’s electrical activity, which doctors hope to learn from.

Hoang, who has since returned to work, told the outlet she is thankful that the “life-or-death experience” strengthened her relationship with her coworkers. She feels like part of a family at the medical center, and considers the other nurses to be some of her best friends.

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“It really changed my perspective on how I view life,” she said of the experience. “Hug your family a little longer [and] tell them that you love them, because it might be the last time you get to say it to them.”

“And just cherish life for what you’ve been given,” she added. “It’s precious, and I didn’t realize how precious it was until I nearly lost it.”

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