Last month, we featured the beautiful art sculpture that one of our ICU Charge Nurses, Nora King, created for San Francisco General Hospital Foundation’s Hearts in SF auction. Her art piece and story got a lot of love – especially from her MICU family. So much so that they secretly brought it home to ZSFG to surprise Nora after winning the bid as a team.

Here’s what they had to say:

A number of staff in the MICU had been following Nora’s progress on the heart from the beginning.  When she completed the heart, we had been following her on social media and fell in love with it immediately.  One day close to the end of bidding, MICU Charge Nurses Tracy Cassin and Karyn Sanchez suggested the idea to rally people to bid on the heart so the team could keep it close to home and display it on the unit. It went absolutely viral within 24 hours as everyone was enthusiastic about contributing to the bid.

Over 60 people have contributed so far and the contributions keep coming in!  Contributors include MICU and SICU RNs, Attending Providers from multiple services and Respiratory Therapy. It was a group effort for sure and the generosity was amazing.

The heart is symbolic for so much of what we do here in the ICU at ZSFG.  We put our hearts into the care we provide to our patients/community and into caring for each other.  Nora’s heart is also a symbol of being open and inclusive and what it means for all of us to be a team.  Having gone through a pandemic together was a bonding experience and the timing of this heart coming home to the ICU feels like something we can all look at every time we come to work and be proud of what we do and remind us how well we work together.

One of her roommates also works in the MICU and I know it was especially hard for her to keep it a secret.  I honestly cannot believe we pulled it off.  Have you ever seen a baseball game when a pitcher is close to throwing a no hitter and everyone on the team stops talking to him out of superstition to not blow it?  It was like that on the unit for a bit.

Nora was convinced that it was her own mother that put the final bid on the heart! We are all still floating on that adrenaline rush.  Seeing her genuine surprise and pure joy was worth all of it!

Shared by Diane Scarlet, RN – Nurse Manager, Medical-Cardiac ICU