Danny Parada received a call to report to the labor and delivery department immediately. As the hospital chaplain hurried down the hallway, he saw a patient gurney headed toward the elevator.
“We have to get her into surgery,” said the doctor who, with a team of nurses, pushed the gurney into the elevator at Adventist Health’s Tillamook County General Hospital, a 25-bed hospital situated in a rural town on the Oregon coast. “You and your baby are going to be alright,” he said to the patient. “You are in good hands.”
The fear on the patient’s face was evident as her baby’s life lay in the hands of the doctor and nurses in blue. However, she felt better knowing that she was in the care of what Parada calls the “Blue Angels.”
Witnessing this very serious situation inside the elevator, the chaplain focused on his surroundings. “I wasn’t in the elevator for five minutes, but I saw angels in action for that brief time,” says Parada. “As mother-to-be closed her eyes, I asked if I could pray for her and she said, ‘Please.’”
Parada pondered this encounter in the following days, and he reflected on the fact that these doctors and nurses in blue are very much like angels. As he watched them working together, he witnessed a quiet resolve to do whatever it took to give this patient the healing she needed.
“The Blue Angels are like a gentle army where each member of the team is working together, yet they all know their individual roles,” says Parada. “This gives their patients a feeling of safety and confidence that TCGH is the right hospital for them.”
Several days later, Parada visited the patient in the ICU where she and her baby were both doing fine. She was holding her husband’s hand as she expressed her gratitude for the care she and her newborn received. It was clear to Parada that she'd been touched by angels.
The woman isn’t the only patient who has been treated by the Blue Angels. Based on TCGH’s mission to share God’s love by providing physical, mental and spiritual healing, every patient is treated with compassion and gentleness.
“Our doctors and nurses are very caring and committed to mission,” says Parada. “They know that caring for people is all about compassion. The patients agree and feel proud to have a hospital that values compassionate care.”
Even if the doctors, nurses and other employees aren’t wearing blue, you can be sure they have been an angel to someone in the past.
“I have never seen an angel,” says Parada. “But I have seen people with compassionate hearts trying to help other people and taking care of other people. That, to me, is an angel.”
This team of Blue Angels gives exceptional care patients can trust, day in and day out.
Chaplain Danny Parada's badge asks patients if they need prayer.
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