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Backus Patient Finds Creative Way to Give Back to ED Staff

April 22, 2022

Agnes, a 69-year-old woman from Taftville, feels like she knows the Backus Hospital Emergency Department inside and out.

She came in frequently when her mother was ill, brought her children for cuts and bruises and took her friends when they needed a ride. Last fall, when her asthma caused coughing spasms, she was a patient herself.

Agnes describes herself as an observer. Not that she’s nosy, but she likes to watch and keep track of what’s going on around her.

And what she’s observed impressed her.

She’s noticed the efficiency and attention to detail of a woman re-stocking carts in the hall. She listened as a doctor tried to a calm a car-accident survivor and another who did everything he could to find a translator for a patient who spoke only Spanish. When she was a patient and ended up wandering in the hall looking for an open bathroom, a kind member of the housekeeping team showed her the way.

On one of her visits, she noticed that the office in the Backus E.D. was a little dark and dreary – and that gave her an idea.

She went home and started crocheting. She found a pattern for corkscrew-shaped yarn spinners that hang from the ceiling and spin in the breeze, and last week, she delivered 42 spinners to the E.D. staff, each individually wrapped to be COVID-safe.

“All my life, I wanted to give back,’’ said Agnes. “This was something I could make myself.”

The nurses were delighted.

“She said ‘What you do, what your team does – really matters. It matters to me. You have always taken really good care of me and I just wanted you to know how thankful I am,’ ” said Meghan Hilliard MSN, RN Director of Emergency Services in the East Region. “My conversation with Agnes most certainly is the highlight of my week. We will be sharing this broadly with our team. “