“It’s really a family-type atmosphere,” Butler said.
The facility off US 183 celebrates its 25th anniversary in September. Despite its growth, Butler said she aims to ensure the hospital keeps its small-town service mentality.
“We are very much dedicated to serving this community, and we will continue to carry on the mission,” Butler said.
Joey Dennis is an intensive care unit nurse who has worked at Seton Northwest for 19 years. Dennis said when he started, the hospital was still relatively isolated, and he would often spot foxes and families of skunks walking through a wooded area between the parking lot and the front doors of the hospital.
Dennis said one of his most vivid memories of the facility was working in the ICU during the H1N1 flu strain pandemic in 2009-10.
“Several of our patients were there for months,” he said. “And it happened two years in a row.”
He said the first H1N1 patient was a 20-year-old University of Texas student who was admitted in June and could not leave the hospital until August.
“She had seven chest tubes at one point,” Dennis said.
In the end, the staff at Seton Northwest got through the pandemic with no fatalities, he said.
“Not one of our patients died,” he said. “We were so proud of that.”
Dennis said RotoProne beds, which can flip over flu patients and allow them to lie face down to relieve the pressure on their chests, saved many of their lives.
Terry Banks has been a labor and delivery room nurse at Seton Northwest for 18 years. She said one of her most vivid memories of the hospital involved a new mother who suffered a pulmonary embolism—a condition in which a blood clot cuts off blood supply to the lungs.
“You can die from it, and most people do die from it,” Banks said.
But the staff delivered three straight days of constant care to the woman and saved her life, she said.
“It was a team effort,” Banks said. “She lived to take care of her babies.”
Butler said technological advances in the past 25 years have changed the way operations are performed and cut down the amount of time patients must remain in the hospital for many procedures.
Twenty-five years ago, most surgeries involved cutting the patient open, but 3-D laparoscopy now allows surgeons to operate using only small incisions in the abdomen or pelvis with the aid of a small camera, she said.
Likewise, medical imaging devices now use ultrasound technology to diagnose heart conditions and allow physicians to see what is happening inside a patient’s body, she said.
Seton Northwest also has an active telemedicine program, which digitally puts a pharmacy technician in the room with a patient and allows the technician to enter the patient’s medications in an electronic medical record. The program ensures doctors have better oversight on what medications the patient is taking and prevent harmful drug interactions, Butler said.
Seton Northwest will soon accept residents from The University of Texas Dell Medical School to train and learn in a community hospital environment, Butler said.
“We’ve never had academic involvement at Seton Northwest, and now we’re starting that,” she said.
Seton Northwest Hospital
11113 Research Blvd., Austin
512-324-6000
www.seton.net/locations/northwest
Open 24 hours
View a map of local health care providers
