Sometimes, the right person is in the right place at exactly the right moment. Kiley Nygren, DO might not have realized it when she saw the car drifting across the meridian, but she was that person—and that moment was seconds away.
“My fiancé and I were driving back to Philly from my stepbrother’s wedding,” Dr. Nygren recalls. “We were right about where Vermont meets New York. We were on one of those small roads that’s just one lane in either direction, but the speed limit is about 65 mph. It was a beautiful Sunday morning—it was June 23rd—and the car in front of us slowly started to veer over the midline.”
“It hit the first car in the other lane and sent it right into the guardrail,” she continues. “It hit the second car head-on, then spun around and landed on the opposite side of the road. The second car ended up halfway over the guardrail, down in a ravine. I was able to slam on my brakes in time, but I watched the whole thing happen.”
At this point, it’s important to know that Dr. Nygren is a second-year Emergency Medicine Resident at Temple University Hospital. She also spent 10 years as an EMT, starting when she was 16. In short, there are few people more qualified, or prepared, to respond to a multi-vehicle accident.
When she saw the accident unfold, Dr. Nygren’s training instantly kicked in. While her fiancé, who is also a physician, called 911, she rushed to the car that had hit the guardrail and began triaging the situation.
“Automatically, my mind just fully shifted into action,” Dr. Nygren says. “I remember thinking, ‘You’ve gotta work. You’ve gotta help these people.’”
'The Worst Car Accident I’ve Ever Seen'
Immediately, Dr. Nygren realized that she was dealing with a mass casualty event the likes of which she’d never encountered. “This was the worst car accident I’ve ever seen, even as an EMT,” she says. There were two fatalities, and a total of 14 passengers—including four children under the age of five.
But without Dr. Nygren’s expertise and quick thinking, the outcome could have been much worse. She was able to move many passengers out of their cars and into a secure location, and could also assess and identify the injuries—which included everything from orthopedic damage to head trauma—of those involved.
“Being able to let people on the scene know that I was an ER doctor did so much to keep everyone calm,” Dr. Nygren says. “It reassured the passengers, and then as the first responders were showing up, I could tell them, ‘I’m an ER doctor, I saw the accident, I’ve assessed these people, and these are the passengers who are in the worst condition and need to go to the hospital immediately.’”
Dr. Nygren also worked with EMTs to direct and administer on-the-scene care. “We were there for about an hour and a half, until everyone was taken to the hospital,” she says.
Temple Trained—and Prepared
Dr. Nygren credits both her Emergency Medicine and EMT training for preparing her to respond effectively to the accident. “At Temple, I’m frequently working with critically-injured patients and dealing with high-intensity situations,” she says. “As an EMT, I’d done a lot of mass casualty training, even though I’d never encountered an incident like that on the job before. So it all came together in that moment.”
It was her desire to receive the highest-quality Emergency Medicine training that brought Dr. Nygren to Temple University Hospital. “I wanted to be in Philly, and when it comes to Emergency Medicine, Temple is obviously the best,” she explains. “It was my #1 pick for Emergency Medicine, which was what I had wanted to do since high school, mostly because of my background as an EMT. It was Philly 100% for Emergency Medicine, and Temple 100%. No other option.”
And while her actions have made her a hero among her colleagues, Dr. Nygren remains humble. “You have your training, and the best thing you can do is just use what you know, and try to put it into action at the end of the day,” she says. “The reason I went into medicine in the first place was to help people: to be there on the worst day of their lives, and to be the smiling face who makes that horrible day just a tiny bit better. And it feels like, in this situation, I was able to do what I set out to do in medicine.”