LUBBOCK, Texas — One Covenant Medical Center nurse is using her grandma’s memory to bring more awareness to sepsis.
Sepsis is when an infection someone already has triggers a chain reaction throughout the body.
It’s curable, but far too many come down with it and it’s undetected.
That’s what happened to Covenant Nurse Educator Winter Chambers’s grandma.
“We had no idea and so by the time we found the pressure ulcer it was too far along,” Chambers explained.
It’s been 10 years since her grandma, Delores Osby passed away from sepsis.
And not a day goes by where she doesn’t think of her.
“She was very full of life,” said Chambers. “In fact, she was a surgical tech at St. Mary’s so I stayed in the family and kind of followed her path. She was the greatest inspiration. She is the reason I became a nurse.”
As a nurse educator, she gets to help patients and nurses and because of her grandma, she puts extra emphasis on the importance of checking for sepsis.
“I do not want it to happen to another family,” Chambers said. “It’s so great that I am able to step into people’s lives at the most vulnerable part. That is part of the reason why I chose the population that I work with, more of the geriatric population. We have our due diligence for our patients to make sure that they are treated with the best care possible.”
And Chambers says she knows her grandma is proud of her.
“She was actually a woman a few words but she would say good job, and keep going,” Chambers said. “And I think that’s the biggest thing. We need to keep going because we are still having people die of sepsis and I refuse to allow that to impede my practice. We can actively treat sepsis, so keep going, keep pushing.”
September is Sepsis Awareness Month.
