Saint Joseph, St. Mary’s RNs team up to save one of our own

By Katie Cain, Peaks Region Communications

When they all worked together at Saint Joseph Hospital, Robyn Morgan often teased her friends/coworkers Ariana Stemple and Cori Holloway about the fact that they had never performed CPR on a real person – despite working as cardiac nurses. Little did Robyn know that she would become the first human being her friends would use their CPR skills on…and they would save her life.

Robyn works as a manager in the medical imaging department at Saint Joseph, Ariana manages the observation unit at Saint Joseph emergency department, and Cori is the director of critical care and respiratory at St. Mary’s Medical Center. They met and became fast friends about five years ago, when all three worked at Saint Joseph.

In September 2023, the trio were shopping together in Grand Junction for an upcoming trip to Nashville when Robyn collapsed – fracturing her skull in the fall – and stopped breathing.

Cori and Ariana rushed into action. They assessed their friend, found no pulse, and immediately began following the steps they had practiced countless times in CPR trainings. Cori asked someone to call 9-1-1 while Ariana started CPR.

“It really was exactly like we’ve been trained – textbook – and muscle memory just kicked in,” Cori said.

The pair successfully revived Robyn, and EMS quickly arrived on the scene to take over care and transport Morgan to St. Mary’s.

For her part, Robyn has performed CPR many times – first as a firefighter and EMT before she joined Saint Joseph, and later in her hospital role responding when a cardiac arrest occurred in her department. She also performed CPR as a bystander when someone collapsed in public.

In contrast, Cori and Ariana had performed CPR many times, but only on a manikin during training. “The strange thing is that we were both cardiac nurses but had never had to use CPR before that moment because we take such good care of our patients in the hospital,” Cori said.

“It’s interesting, I’ve been giving them a hard time about that for so long, and the first time they do CPR is on me!” Robyn said. “If they weren’t there, [the doctors] said I probably wouldn’t have made it.”

Even though Ariana and Cori have trained extensively, the incident was still scary. “I’ve never been so thankful for that training and that muscle memory,” Cori said. “That practice helped get me through.”

Each year, 436,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest and more than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside the hospital each year. Yet, 70 percent of Americans have no CPR training, have forgotten how to use it, or are afraid of hurting the victim.

Research has shown a dramatic decline in effectiveness the longer you go between practicing these skills. In fact, healthcare institutions that have moved to more frequent, quarterly resuscitation training have seen a 20-percent or greater increase in survival rates from cardiac arrest. 

This year, the Peaks Region will move to a CPR and life support training model that is proven to result in higher cardiac arrest survival rates. 

During 2024, all clinicians who are required to maintain BLS, ACLS and/or PALS certification will shift to a quarterly Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) program. Instead of completing multi-hour training courses to recertify every two years, clinicians will complete annual online learning modules and quick, 10-minute skills drills on a quarterly basis. 

One expected outcome of the shift is that all caregivers will have fresher ‘muscle memory’ for the times when they might need to use their CPR skills – whether at work, as a bystander, or to save the life of a friend or loved one.