Emergency room nurse's first patients were bees

By STEVE KADEL
H&N Staff Writer

Dee Burnett began her nursing career by reviving water-logged bumblebees. She went on to save human lives during 42 years in the emergency room.

Burnett officially retired Aug. 6 from Merle West Medical Center, although she's still on call in a pinch. It's difficult to step away after more than four decades on the job.

“I've always liked to be with people,” she said, “ and I loved the ER.”

Burnett was born in Great Bend, Kan., but her parents moved to Klamath Falls when she was just a few weeks old. By age 13, Burnett was already considering a career.

She wanted to be a veterinarian, but says women weren't accepted in that profession in the 1940s. The thought of being a doctor was too daunting, so Burnett chose nursing.

Bumblebees revived

Her earliest patients were bees she caught in a glass jar half-filled with water. She'd shake the jar, then put the stunned bees on their backs and rub them with a Popsicle stick. Many woke up and flew away.
“I thought I was giving them artificial respiration,” Burnett said, laughing at the memory. “I figured if you could save a bee, you could save people.”

She got her nurse's training at Kansas City General Hospital and Medical Center in Missouri. The 17-year-old girl, a Klamath Union High School graduate, got an education in life, too. “I didn't realize people were so desperate and poor and diseased. I learned people grew up differently from the way I had.”

Burnett dealt with tuberculosis and meningitis cases as a student. She delivered her first baby before being fully trained - taking responsibility when a scheduling mistake had the hospital's two obstetrics doctors away at the same time.  “I remember scrubbing my hands and praying,” Burnett said. “The lady asked if I had delivered many babies and I said, ‘Lots of ‘em, honey. Don't you worry.' “

Burnett worked with Peace Ambulance in Klamath Falls for a time. The ambulance had no IVs or radio contact with the hospital.

After working briefly at Marin General Hospital in California, Burnett returned to Klamath Falls in October 1965 to work in the Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital emergency room. She helped transport patients for several days when the hospital moved to its present site.

Of course, there are major differences in the ERs of her early career and those in operation today. There were no heart monitors decades ago, nor were board-certified ER doctors on the scene.  ER doctors were on call, and Burnett said they weren't always happy to be taken away from private patients to handle emergencies.

Burnett had to judge a patient's condition by his or her appearance in the early days of her career, rather than by readings on monitors. 

“I didn't wear gloves for years,” she said of the pre-AIDS era. “You got blood on you, that was just part of the job.”

Klamath Falls was a wilder place 30 or 35 years ago, judging from Burnett's experiences. She said more knifing and shooting victims came into the ER then than is common now. 

One of her most memorable cases involved a 27-year-old logger who was hit in the chest by a log.  “He was just crushed,” Burnett recalled. “We got two IVs in him ... he had a very low pulse.”  The ambulance raced him toward Medford's Rogue Valley Medical Center as police escorted a doctor from Ashland who met the ambulance with two units of blood.  The logger had a collapsed lung, among other injuries, and Burnett had to do a procedure she'd never done before to stabilize the lung. She prayed, then talked via radio to a doctor who walked her through the steps.