As a child, Delayne Peterson was a guardian angel to her developmentally delayed younger brother.
As an adult, she helped her older brother battle Huntington’s disease, until it took his life in 1998.
Now, as a physician assistant coordinator, she helps patients and their families in the Adult Intensive Care Unit at University and Clarkson Hospital.
In her continuous effort to help others, Peterson has become one of few individuals to be licensed as a nurse practitioner and physician assistant. For the past 12 years, she has coordinated the care of critically ill patients, helping daily with ICU rounds, assigning residents and students to ICU patients and bridging the care when the team changes each month. For her compassionate care and dedication to UNMC and the families she serves, Peterson earned the Chancellor’s Gold ‘U’ Award for September.
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Helping others
“Patients win a place in your heart,” Peterson said. “You do everything you possibly can, but you never know if that patient and their family will be there the next day. I wouldn’t feel satisfied if I didn’t put in 110 percent each day.”
Sometimes that extra effort is in quiet details. Peterson recalls how a patient died before family members could arrive so she warmed the hands of the deceased patient to spare the family the “horrible memory of touching a cold hand.”
Said one nominator: “Delayne works with the patient’s families — spending time explaining what is happening to the patient, possible outcomes and what to expect. She is compassionate in her care and dedicated, spending countless hours ensuring every detail is taken care of. Her dedication and extra efforts are too often overlooked, but there would be a tremendous void in the AICU without Delayne.”
Fulfilling a dream
As a third-grader in Malmo, Neb., Peterson dreamed of becoming a nurse. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, then Bryan School of Nursing in Lincoln. She later decided, to better understand her patients, she needed more physiology than she had gotten in nursing school.
“I was frustrated by not being able to help people as much as I thought I could,” Peterson said. “I knew I could do more if I helped direct a patient’s medical care.”
So she enrolled in the University of North Dakota physician assistant/nurse practitioner program, one of the few programs in the United States specifically geared to clinically practicing registered nurses. Physician assistants practice medicine under the supervision of a licensed physician.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” she said of her unique job. “I’ve truly enjoyed helping people and making a difference and I like the intensity of the AICU — with critically ill patients you can have more of an impact on their care.”
Peterson understands what families in the AICU are going through. She, too, has sat at a loved one’s bedside and watched as her brother Clark battled Huntington’s disease, which doesn’t skip a generation. In this instance, however, her brother was the only family member to have the disease. As a result, upon his death, she donated his brain to Harvard University — a planning process that began long before he died Dec. 18, 1998.
Away from the hospital
Outside the hospital, Peterson enjoys crafts, digital photography and spending time with her niece and nephew. She recently bought her grandmother’s house in Wahoo and spends weekends fixing it up. For the past 28 years, she also has taught CPR — skills she regularly uses in the AICU. On a lighter note, she also is a professional clown.
On the AICU floor
Peterson keeps her nursing skills sharp by volunteering to start a patient’s IV or change his or her dressings. She’s also been known to appear on the AICU floor in the middle of the night to help a patient, or contribute to a clinical study on preventing catheter-related infections.
“There’s a tremendous sense of responsibility that if it’s part of your job you rise to the occasion to do whatever is necessary to do it,” she said.
Peterson also assists in procedures and facilitates admissions, transfers and nursing home placements. Updating referring physicians is among her priorities. She serves as a nurse liaison and amplifies nurses’ concerns on rounds. She also schedules the lecture series for residents and medical students while they are on the critical care rotation.
Mentoring students
During her tenure at UNMC, Peterson estimates she has interacted with more than 400 medical residents — she coordinates schedules for three to four new residents each month — and a similar number of medical students.
“It’s nice to see how much insight and knowledge they gain in one month,” she said. “At the end of the month, we can talk the same language, then you start all over again.”