Message from the President

Her headache just wouldn’t go away. 

She had recently delivered her baby at the Birth Place in Niles and called the staff for a recommendation. Suspecting a continuation of her eclampsia symptoms they asked her to come in for an evaluation.

The suspicion was confirmed. Her blood pressure was too high and required treatment. She was admitted and the medications seemed to be working

But an attentive nurse, Nancy Redman, noticed something that didn’t look right. The new mother’s one-month old infant, not the patient during this hospitalization, was nursing more frequently than normal and looked too small. She examined the infant more closely and found it to be significantly malnourished. She called in Jeanette Conklin, RN, Senior Lactation consultant, to help evaluate the baby’s poor weight gain. 

As our team members listened to the mother she opened up that she and her family were struggling in other ways. The family was experiencing very tough times. They had very little money and little food and the nursing mother hadn’t been eating well. She was also long overdue for an oil change on her car and was worried she wasn’t going to be able to afford to have it worked on. 

While the patient was feeding her baby, the nurse went to the rest of her team and explained the patient’s situation and asked what they could do to help.  The team responded. 

With the help of Mary Zerrenner, Valerie Rohdy, Lindi Williams, Stephanie Miller, Amy Yarbrough, Chandra Stafford, and Dr. Meg Murphy they were able to collect $200 for groceries for the patient and her family. One team member bought her an oil change, another assisted the patient with getting donated breast milk, and another took them shopping and bought the patient and her family lunch. 

There are so many interesting lessons in this simple story.

Taking great care of a patient often includes taking care of their family as well. Financial, social and nutritional needs are just as important as medical needs. We are all in the business of healthcare because we want to take great care of the whole person, not just their immediate medical condition.  Situational awareness, really paying attention to all the details, often leads us to a discovery of unexpected needs and additional measures to ensure safety. 

The lesson I like the most in this story is that listening with heart always blesses others. In this case it not only helped to protect a baby’s fragile health, it helped to meet a whole family’s needs. It also does something else. As we learned together in Lakeland Live this Spring, feeling heard is so close to feeling loved that most people can’t tell the difference. I’m confident our patient and her family felt loved.