Senior Clinical Consultant
Clinical and support staff are the backbone of the healthcare industry. Often asked to work with few resources to deliver care at the most important times in a patient’s care journey, clinicians deserve recognition and appreciation for all they do.
Faced with a workforce crisis like never before, health systems and hospitals need someone who understands these challenges — and at Get Well, we do understand. And we certainly appreciate those on our staff who have spent time as clinicians. That’s why we’re launching the Get Well Clinician Spotlight series — an opportunity to give the clinicians who work for Get Well the recognition they deserve and the space to share their stories and thoughts about the biggest challenges facing today’s clinician workforce.
Senior Clinical Consultant
Please share a little about your clinical background and what brought you to Get Well.
I have been in healthcare now for over 26 years. I have worked in many areas of healthcare such as cardiology, physical therapy/chiropractic, radiology, and most recently, prior to coming to Get Well in 2013, I worked at the bedside as a trauma surgical nurse. I came to Get Well because I was so drawn to the mission and message of the company and I used Get Well at the bedside with my patients and families and saw the many benefits that Get Well has to offer.
How have you used Get Well solutions in the field?
I used GetWell Inpatient directly at the bedside with my very critical care patients and their families in a variety of aspects. The ability to send a variety of educational videos to my patients (in multiple languages) allowed me to provide the best care that I could to provide and to allow them to become educated, as well as their caregivers become educated on how to care for them post discharge so they could take their family member home and to prevent readmission.
The education videos being available in segments specifically saved me time when I was educating English and Spanish speaking patients/families. For example: I was taking care of a young patient who was injured in a horrific diving accident. He was now vent dependent for life and was here on vacation from outside of the country. The ultimate goal for the family was to be able to take their child home, back to Mexico. The mother spoke Spanish and the Father spoke English primarily. I needed to educate both of them on how to take care of their child. I had arranged for the translation team, respiratory care, the mannequin from the SIM Lab, and spent approximately 2 hours with the mother on educating her on everything that she had to know to care for her child at home.
No sooner did we finish the education with the mother and the father arrived. I did not have the same amount of time to spend educating the father (2 hours) because I worked in a very busy trauma unit and I could not tie up the resources I had in the room to assist me with the education. What then happens is that dad kind of gets the abbreviated version of the education and training, which is NOT ideal by any means. If I had GetWell education videos available to me at the time and on this topic, I could have ordered the set of education videos, available in both English and Spanish and the family could have watched those videos as many times as they needed to and I would have simply needed to reassess their education and understanding. The videos would have provided consistent and thorough education without posing the risk of some topics being skipped or not completely addressed.
I used the music feature to soothe my confused and combative patients, by allowing them to listen to something that they were familiar with.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
I enjoy working with our clients and my colleagues here at Get Well and sharing my experience at the bedside while focusing on the “WHY” of Get Well. I really enjoy when I can get the care team to relate to my experiences, and showing them that I fully understand their daily struggles as well as suggesting opportunities to help them improve care delivery. I love showing them what is in it for them and their patients. I often do a timed exercise when I work with clients where I show them exactly how I utilized Get Well to provide medication education and complete one education video during my initial med pass of the day (this is a published script on the Learning center page). It takes no more than 2 minutes and I get the most buy in when I stress to them that following the education process that I actually utilized with my patients, gets the patients and families engaged, and allows me to complete my medication pass safely to provide errors.
I utilized the education video to allow myself 3-4 minutes of uninterrupted time to safely prepare and dispense their medications. I advised the patient that I would answer questions about the education they completed after all the medications are delivered safely. All caregivers appreciate ways to do things safely so as to not put their license on the line…. should an error occur because they experienced constant interruptions and questions during medication delivery.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing today’s clinician workforce?
- TIME is the biggest challenge that clinicians face today. They have so many tasks to do in such a little amount of time that quite often they stress over the things that they cannot accomplish.
- We have gaps in the education available through our vendors, so at times education videos are not available to assist them with providing that education.
What is the best way to address those challenges?
- Streamline workflows and demonstrate this through a mock walk through during staff training. SHOW THEM THE PROCESS and how easy it is and what is in it for them.
- Expand our education video content available to ensure that we begin to actively reduce the gaps in education available for patients and families.
- Integration — if the system is integrated with the EMR, it is easier to show the staff the “what is in it for them” aspect of utilizing our solutions. Direct documentation of education and discharge preparation is huge!
