Nurse Anesthetist Finds Fulfillment In Helping Others

For Glenwood native Brian Lothrop, a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist at Mercy One Des Moines Medical Center, there’s nothing more gratifying than going home from work knowing he’s helped a patient make it through a successful surgery.

It’s the reason he went to anesthesia school after working for three years as an Intensive Care Unit nurse at Methodist Hospital in Omaha.

“I became a nurse anesthetist knowing that I could directly help people,” Lothrop said. “It’s more of a hands-on thing with patient interaction. It’s very satisfying when you see people get better and know at the end of a shift you can say, ‘I truly helped this person.’”

Lothrop said he was introduced to the field by his Aunt Kathy who was an anesthetist in Lincoln and Marvin Aldebute, who worked at a Council Bluffs hospital. He had an opportunity to shadow both of them.

The responsibilities for a nurse anesthetist begin before a patient is taken into the operating room, Lothrop said.

“I interview them prior to surgery, then I’m with them the entire time through surgery providing the anesthesia,” he said. “Then, as soon as they wake up, I determine and transfer them to care, whether it be the ICU or the recovery room. I stay with them the entire time.”

Lothrop’s work has given him the opportunity to be involved in a wide variety of surgeries, ranging from gallbladder and appendix removal to knee replacement and hand and foot surgeries.

Since Gov. Kim Reynolds COVID-19 public health disaster declaration temporarily suspended “non-essential elective surgeries,” Mercy One Des Moines and other hospitals across the state have experienced a decline in operating room activity. While the restrictions are being lifted this week, Lothrop said his hospital is holding off on doing elective procedures until patients can be tested for the coronavirus before having a procedure.  He said testing at the hospital is being ramped up this week.

“We’re treating everybody right now as positive unless they’ve tested, but starting Wednesday, we’re going to be testing people,” he said. “If they’ve been tested and it’s within 48 hours that they’ve been negative, we can go ahead and proceed with surgery without using all of the precautions we had in place.

“What that’s going to do for us is ensure we don’t run out of protective equipment for patients who could potentially have the virus. Obviously, if someone comes in and it’s an emergency surgery, we don’t have time to wait and we go ahead and wear all of the protective equipment we would need.”

The risk of exposure to the virus during the COVID-19 pandemic is a concern for most workers in the medical profession, including Lothrop. He and his wife Katie have a six-month-old daughter at home.

Three  hospital employees Lothrop works directly with have tested positive for the virus, he said.

The three employees were all instructed to self-isolate at home for 14 days and weren’t allowed to return to work until they were asymptomatic. Two of the three employees are back on the job. The wife of one of the employees tested positive also, Lothrop noted.

“They have three kids,” he said. “They were told, ‘We’re not even going to test your kids because they’ll test positive. You all must basically sit in your house for two weeks until you’re asymptomatic.’”

Lothrop said there have been discussions at the hospital about anesthetists being assigned to the COVID-19 units because of their expertise in managing ventilators – putting people on ventilators and removing breathing tubes if the patient is able to breath freely. Up to this point, fortunately, the hospital’s COVID unit has not reached its capacity.  
Despite the risks and the demanding work, Lothrop said he has found the perfect fit in being a nurse anesthetist and can’t imagine doing any other job. The work is rewarding.

“It’s more than I could have ever wanted,” he said. “It’s the best job I could have ever dreamed of having.”