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North Mountain
Earns Third Magnet Designation John C. Lincoln North Mountain is Arizona’s first hospital to earn Magnet status a third time from the American Nurses Association – the nation’s foremost authority on patient care quality. Magnet is based on documented exemplary practice and patient care outcomes. It is considered the nation’s gold standard for nursing quality. Only 6 percent of America’s 6,000-plus hospitals have ever earned Magnet. Less than 3 percent have been redesignated, and less than 1 percent has been named Magnet more than twice. “Earning Magnet is more difficult every time,” said Maggi Griffin, RN, MS, North Mountain’s CEO and chief nursing officer, “and it should be! This prestigious honor is based on measurable outcomes that demonstrate quality patient care, excellent leadership, nurse satisfaction, patient satisfaction and professional research.” The hospital was further honored with two Exemplar Awards, recognition that it outperformed the benchmark for all other Magnet hospitals in “Nurse Satisfaction” and in “Service to the Community.” For more information, please visit JCL.com/ thirdmagnet.
March/April 2014
Headache starts slide toward blindness; shunt restores eyesight
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magine you’re a young, healthy high school teacher with great students, and working on a master’s degree in a field you’ve always dreamed of making your career. Life is great. Then one day you develop a weird headache, and it doesn’t go away. A few weeks later, your vision is fading, and you don’t know what’s causing it. Scary stuff? Oh, yes. Jessica Brubaker, 31, can tell you all about it. The childhood development instructor at Boulder Creek High in Anthem, and graduate student at Grand Canyon University, was with her students when, out of nowhere, the headache hit. “At first it was like a sinus headache, but in the back of my head,” she said. “I’m not the kind to call in sick, so I scheduled a massage. That didn’t help, so I went to my doctor. He gave me a muscle relaxer.”
In just a week, Jessica Brubaker went from noticing a slight vision problem to barely being able to see her fingers in front of her face. Neurosurgeon Mohamed Abdulhamid, MD, installed a shunt to drain excess cerebrospinal fluid.
When the headache didn’t subside, the doctor prescribed two different antibiotics. The first made her sick, the second didn’t work, and after that, “everything went downhill in a hurry,” Jessica said. She went to her nearby hospital emergency department (ED). They gave her a “headache cocktail” and sent her back to her doctor. He told her to keep taking the antibiotic. continued on Page 2
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