Susan Vaughn, senior student, recently completed her mid-term evaluation for her clinical rotation at the Family Practice Center at Mount Carmel Saint Ann’s. Here is what she had to say about her experience:
“The first four weeks this term have been such a blessing to me and reinforced the path that I intend to take in my practice after licensing. I am serving the patient population I have a heart for and that I am called to serve, and I feel that I am more effective and really contribute to the practice. I also feel compelled to somehow address the issue of language barriers in the practice, even if in a small way, by implementing native language patient care forms to our patients for BP and Blood Glucose logs as well as a medication list form. I have already begun this process by engaging with my preceptor and systems/technology administrator to develop the forms and will then need to engage interpretive services for translation into the predominant languages spoken by our patients. I requested and received a list of the number of patients served by the practice and their native languages. It is my goal to get these forms developed and introduced to the Nurse Manager, Director of Physician Education and other key staff before I finish my clinical rotation in December. Additionally, I would like to attempt to get buy-in and subsequent implementation in the practice, based on evidence obtained for my evidenced-based practice term paper.”
Susan also recently received a compliment via the Mount Carmel Patient Hotline. A patient at the Family Practice Center had arranged transportation for her appointment and following her appointment, she found out that her transportation was not available. When Susan left to go home, she found the patient with her 7 month old grandson upset in the building lobby. The hotline reported, "Caller states that Susan had seen that she was upset and stopped to help. Susan sat with her for about 15 minutes and talked. Susan helped care for her grandson. Susan calmed her down. When most people see someone upset and with a baby they turn and walk the other way and Susan helped her tremendously. She wants Susan recognized for taking the time to help when she could have just went straight home."
