On March 25, 2nd year NSU Physician’s Assistant student Nicole Reynolds, about to begin her Internal Medicine rotation for NSU Fort Myers’ PA Program, had just arrived in Clewiston seeking the apartment where she would be staying during her clinical rotation. As she drove through an unfamiliar neighborhood, lost while trying to find her apartment, she came around a corner and encountered a situation that would forever change her life, and ultimately save another.
“There was a young girl in the road waving her arms and crying. I rolled down my window and asked what was wrong, and she pointed to the pool and yelled, “My brother, my brother!!’”
Nicole immediately pulled her car over and ran over to the gate of the local community swimming pool, where she found a crying mother speaking in Spanish and pointing at the pool. It quickly became obvious to Nicole that a child was at the bottom of that pool. Apparently her child had snuck away earlier and squeezed through the gate and fallen into the pool, unbeknownst to the mother. The mother did not know how to swim and apparently was also unable to squeeze through the gate or scale over it.
“I realized at that moment that I’m just going to go, I just reacted,” Nicole told NaplesNews.com in a recent interview. “You get that adrenaline rush, and you do what you think you should do.”
“It doesn’t surprise me she would do something like that,” Brenda Diaz, Reynolds’ professor and academic adviser, told NaplesNews.com. “We strive to prepare these individuals to not only do their job well, but to do it with compassion, humility, and a deep sense of caring. This is a perfect example of that.”
Nicole stated that the child, who she guesses is around the age of 5 or 6, is alive and well, and was discharged from Hendry Regional Medical Center sometime last week.
“It was a great feeling to be able to help someone outside of the medical setting, and I feel that PA programs do an excellent job of preparing us to do so,” Nicole said. “We are trained to get to know our patients, to listen to them, and to care about them. I know my classmates would have done the same thing in my position and that is why I feel like this is a victory for all of us and a testament as to what we can do. I have loved this profession since the day I set foot in the classroom and am so excited to get started on my career in August.“
Read the complete story at http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/apr/06/naples-woman-revives-boy-found-at-bottom-of-a/.