He walked back into the hospital just to say thank you: the nurse who spotted the blips on his heart monitor

George Mandley, from Bolivia, North Carolina, knows heart trouble — he has survived two heart attacks. Earlier this year, testing at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington showed he needed open-heart surgery. Two days after the operation, as nurse Hyla Smith was preparing to take him for a walk, she noticed a few 'blips' on his heart monitor. She called colleagues over, got him back into bed and onto an ECG machine, and confirmed atrial fibrillation — a dangerous, racing irregular heartbeat that can follow heart surgery. The team gave him medicine to calm his heart muscle down, while Smith worked just as hard at keeping him calm: 'You don't want to scare your patient,' she said. Mandley recovered, and on 14 September he came back to the hospital — not for treatment, but to thank Smith and the team in person. 'I couldn't have gone to a five-star hotel and been treated any better,' he said.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being