Annual Pub 2022 - Flipbook - Page 21
Student’s Quick Thinking Saves A Life
by Paul Joncich
It was a hot August afternoon when third year medical student Elizabeth Groesbeck, on her way to a Las Vegas Raiders game, spotted the aftermath of an auto-pedestrian crash
near Allegiant Stadium.
DR. LISA DURETTE | PHOTO: PAUL JONCICH
David Savarese, MD, director of the UNLV Health
Pediatric Clinic, says the program affords expertise that children would have to wait up to
three months for if they made an appointment
with one of the state’s few child mental health
professionals. He says after calling the PAL line
he’s been able to help several children, including
a 17-year-old girl dealing with depression. At
one point, she got to talk through telemedicine
with a psychiatrist. On another occasion, Dr. Savarese called the PAL line and was able to 昀椀nd
the right medication for a 10-year-old developmentally delayed child who frequently engaged
in behavior injurious to herself.
“We can’t expect pediatricians to handle mental
health problems without this kind of support,”
Dr. Savarese says.
A man was down on the street, and a frantic crowd was
gathering around him. That’s when Groesbeck, who was on a
昀椀rst date, told her rideshare driver to “stop the car and let me
out.” She leapt from the vehicle, leaving her date behind, and
moved through the crowd to 昀椀nd a man who’d been hit by a
car. He was bleeding profusely from an arm severed at the
elbow and suffering severe facial trauma. “Onlookers were
frantic and panicking,” Groesbeck said. “I told a bystander
to call 9-1-1 and assigned someone to comfort his wife and
get her somewhere so she didn’t have to see the gruesome
scene.”
Groesbeck kept her cool in the face of the increasingly boisterous crowd. “There was a signi昀椀cant amount of blood in
his mouth, but I didn’t want to move him at all, as there was
a high risk for spinal injuries. One bystander who wanted to
help, but had no medical training, kept yelling ‘roll him on his
side!’ but I told him ‘no’,” she said.
Groesbeck and another medical student who came upon the
scene worked to stabilize the man and calm the crowd. They
asked for and received a belt from onlookers to stem the
bleeding and a football jersey to clear the man’s mouth of
pooling blood. They stayed with the man until an ambulance
arrived.
Thankfully, the man survived and later went out of his way
to 昀椀nd Groesbeck and thank her, calling her “my guardian
angel...I thank God she was there for me that day.” The two
remain friends and were honored by the Las Vegas Raiders
during halftime of a game later in the season.
In March 2021, when the PAL program began,
there were seven requests from primary care
physicians for consultations. Now there are up
to six in a day. More than 170 clinicians from
throughout the state have opted into the program. A website has been created for the project, www.center4cs.org, which includes educational materials and videos
“If there’s a situation with a youth for whom the
direction, diagnosis or treatment options aren’t
clear, we’re able to offer televideo consultations
for the patient within a week, after which we
send treatment recommendations back to the
primary care team,” Dr. Durette says.
SUZANNA CAJA, MEDICAL STUDENT ELIZABETH GROESBECK, AND PATIENT
ANDRES CAJA | PHOTO: PAUL JONCICH
UNLV.EDU/MEDICINE
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