UW research nurses Judy Powell and Lois Van Ottingham were attending a meeting in New York City on Sept. 11. The meeting was for researchers from a national project to train lay persons to use administer CPR and automatic external defibrillators on people who have suffered a sudden cardiac arrest away from a hospital. Judy and Lois and several other health professionals left the conference to help at an on-the-street emergency medical station set up four blocks from the World Trade Center.
Judy graduated from the UW School of Nursing in 1980. Since that time she has stayed in the UW system, first at the medical/telemetry unit at Harborview Medical Center. In 1987 she started working in cardiac research with survivors of sudden death at Harborview.
In 1992 Judy joined the UW Department of Biostatistics in their University District office as a research consultant with a data-coordinating center. The center receives data from sites conducting research. The center staff prepares the data forms, manual of operations, educate the sites, does quality assurance, analyzes the data and writes research papers.
The first trial Judy worked on involved survivors of serious ventricular arrhythmia who received either an Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator or antiarrhythmic medications. The trial she is currently working involves out of hospital cardiac arrest victims and training lay people to administer either CPR or CPR and placement of an automated external defibrillator. Her research group (involving investigators and coordinators from 24 cities across the U.S. and Canada) was meeting at the Brooklyn Marriott on the morning of the World Trade Center disaster.
