June 2025
Megan Yonker, a nurse at UM Health-Sparrow Okemos Emergency Center, loves the fast pace of her job, and that’s good because she was the ideal person to help respond when a frantic woman ran into the clinic to say her husband was unconscious in their vehicle. Team members, including Megan, ran to help him and found him without a pulse.
That’s when she did something a little unconventional: with precious seconds ticking away, Megan realized it would take too long to wheel him into the clinic to apply an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) so she ran to grab the AED from the lobby and applied it to the man while he was laying on the parking lot pavement. Soon, he began waking up and by the time he was wheeled into a room at the emergency center, he was joking around. The man had had a heart attack but lived through it, thanks to Megan and fellow team members.
“I like that at the drop of a dime, anything can change, and you have to be prepared to encounter anything that walks through the door,” Megan said.
Megan is among those who goes the extra mile to save lives and ensure every family receives the compassionate care they deserve. That’s one of the reasons she’s this month’s Sparrow Spotlight.