Mari McGarry and her husband David recently helped an unconscious man with in-flight nurse training on a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to West Palm Beach.

After boarding a plane from a recent nurses conference in Baltimore, Delray Medical Center emergency room nurse Mari Hoover McGarry was already in life-saving mode as she was sitting in her seat on a Delta Airlines flight recently from Atlanta to West Palm Beach. When she heard a call from the flight cabin asking for any doctors or nurses to come to the forward portion of the plane, without hesitation McGarry and her husband David McGarry, a registered nurse at the V.A. Hospital in West Palm Beach, unbuckled their seat belts and headed forward. There they met up with a doctor and flight personnel who took them to a man suffering from syncope, a brief loss of consciousness and posture caused by a temporary decrease in blood flow to the brain.

“He was unconscious so we got him into a wheelchair and into the galley of the airplane where we administered oxygen and started an IV. He had been vomiting and had low pulse and blood pressure,” Mari McGarry said.

Ironically, the McGarry’s had in-air medical training to work from.

“In 2002 we attended a conference, the Southeast Seaboard Emergency Symposium for in-flight emergencies,” David McGarry said.

The training paid off when after a case of vomiting the man came to and regained consciousness.

“That day was a true testament as to why I’m proud to be an emergency nurse. It was incredibly rewarding to receive thanks from the flight crew and pilot, and especially from this man’s wife. I’m so thankful that my training has prepared me for this kind of situation,” Mari McGarry said.