Valley nurses come to aid of airline passenger

A relaxed bachelorette trip became high-altitude intensity for three Nova Scotia Health nurses from Kentville’s Valley Regional Hospital.

A mid-morning May 14 commercial flight to Toronto from Halifax took a turn within the first 15 minutes in the air as a passenger lost consciousness and needed medical assistance.

Registered nurses’ Abbie Loughran, Abigail (Abbey) Dauphinee and Karlee McGuigan were settled comfortably near the back of the aircraft. Several members of the travel party had just dozed off with headphones on when a call went out over the intercom system, with the flight crew urgently requesting assistance from any medical professionals on board.

A member of their travel group immediately raised a hand to signal that nurses were travelling together. Without hesitation, the three healthcare professionals sprang into action, navigating the crowded aisle to find the distressed passenger, Malvina Major, who was seated just rows away.

"I'm thinking, like, ‘that woman is grey’,” Loughran said.

Major had become completely unresponsive, fainting in a middle seat while exhibiting a dangerously low blood pressure and fading colour. Working in extremely tight quarters, the nurses realized they needed more hands and space.

Collaborating seamlessly, they managed to move Major out of her cramped seat and into the aisle, eventually settling her near the galley where there was just enough room to stand and monitor her condition. Drawing on their emergency and clinical expertise, the team started rapid assessments, performed sternal rubs to rouse her and recognized critical warning signs that mirrored potential cardiac distress as Major began experiencing severe nausea and fluctuating levels of consciousness.

"Every single time we would ask a question, she would have a very brief answer and then she would kind of fall back asleep," McGuigan said. "We were raising our voices at her the whole flight, telling her ‘We know you're tired but you can't sleep. We need you to stay awake for us’."

Operating in an uncontrolled environment presented unique and daunting challenges for the trio. Lacking standard medical supplies usually readily available in hospital settings, the nurses had to rely heavily on basic ingenuity. When attempting to start an intravenous line, they discovered the aircraft's medical kit lacked a tourniquet.  

“Abbie was making a tourniquet with her hands so that Abby could see a vein to insert an IV,” McGuigan added.

Securing equipment proved equally difficult. With no tape available in the airline's medical kit to keep the IV lines and fluids stable during the flight, the nurses had to improvise using duct tape to secure the equipment directly and manage the fluid bags as the aircraft navigated changing altitudes.

"We duct taped the IV into her arm and I was like, this is crazy," McGuigan said. "And then we had to duct tape the IV bag to the wall, so there was this thick duct tape over this small bag.”

Throughout the remainder of the flight, the nurses maintained constant vigilance. Communication with an on-call physician on the ground required a complex game of telephone relaying messages through the flight attendants and pilots, ultimately leading to the decision to continue the flight to Toronto Pearson International Airport.

As the flight prepared for descent, the nurses administered oxygen to help Major, from Alliston (about a 90 minute drive northwest of Toronto), cope with cabin pressure changes and ensured she was safely transferred to a seat with an ongoing IV drip secured for landing. Upon touching down, paramedics boarded the aircraft to take over Major's care, rushing her to a local hospital where she received further treatment and subsequently recovered.

Reflecting on the harrowing experience, Major expressed deep gratitude to the nurses for their swift, life-saving intervention.

"I cannot thank you enough," Major later wrote in a letter to Nova Scotia Health, praising the three.  

"She was such a lovely person,” Dauphinee said. “It was a really well-written note and you could tell she was so thankful for us.”

The experience for the nurses was a surreal blend of their everyday professional reality colliding with a vacation getaway – one they won’t soon forget. 

Photo of (L-R) Abbie Loughran, Abby Dauphinee, and Karlee McGuigan. The trio are registered nurses at Valley Regional Hospital in Kentville.