Quick thinking team member saves man with unscheduled trip to the ER

Emergency rooms tend to get very busy, very fast with patients arriving in a variety of different ways. The AdventHealth Celebration ER treats about 70,000 patients every year, more people than Orlando’s Camping World stadium holds for a college football bowl game.

Cardan Thurston, a patient transporter who doesn’t usually work in the ER, is credited with helping save a patient, after noticing blood under the man’s foot during a transport. “I instantly said to him ‘Oh, we have to go,’” Thurston said.

“At that moment, Cardan leaned the patient back into the wheelchair and rushed the patient over to the emergency room where the team stabilized [him],” said Hossein Shamskolahi, operations manager at AdventHealth Celebration.

“Patients come in through the front door, they come in through ambulances. We don't normally get transporters who bring patients here to our emergency department,” said Vedesh Kussial, an emergency department nurse manager.

AdventHealth transporters move patients around hospitals in non-emergency situations. “In patient transport we move patients from one point to the next as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible,” Shamskolahi said. They facilitate about 700 transports every day at Celebration.

The patient was discharged the following day and Thurston is credited with helping save his life. “I love that everyone that's part of our organization, clinical or non-clinical, is looking out for the wellbeing of the patient,” Kussial said.

Thurston is quick to deflect being called a hero for his quick thinking. “We all are brothers and sisters, and we can treat even strangers as our own.”

Click the video above to watch more about this story.