Vocera Celebrates Nurses This May and Always

The doctor explained that the baby was not going to make it, and we were going to have to pull support with their consent. It was difficult to translate those words into Spanish, but the dad pretty much knew what I was saying. He nodded his head a lot. When we went back to the baby’s bedside he said, “Thank you very much.” I could tell that he and his wife were touched that somebody had taken the time to translate the information for them, to let them make the right decision for their baby.

I always think back to that experience, because I felt like I had accomplished something. I felt touched to my heart that I was able to help, above and beyond what I normally would do. 

When the baby died, we got the chaplain to pray with the family in Spanish. We gave the couple an impression of the baby’s footprints, photo, and a card from the team so they would have a remembrance of their baby. I don’t remember if the baby had enough hair to give the parents a lock of it.

As a neonatal nurse, I was always asked, “When will my baby go home?” We always gave parents the ballpark of, “Depending on the baby’s progression, it can be 30 days plus or minus from your original due date.” This timeframe at least gave parents a sense of how much time they’d have to wait to take their baby home. I never wanted to have to tell parents, “I’m sorry, you were planning for your baby to be well in nine months, and here I’m telling you that I’m sorry she’s not going to make it.” 

It’s a scary situation when you see all these tubes, wires, and things coming out of a baby, and it’s a very hard situation to be in no matter how many times you do it.

By the time she delivered, her entire family had rushed to her bedside – her husband, three sisters and brother, her parents, and her two and a half-year-old daughter. She had the most incredibly close-knit family I’ve ever met.

Earlier that day, I’d observed that the family valued photography because one of the patient’s sisters brought in a professional camera. I wanted that sister to be able to support her family and not worry about capturing this part of their family’s history behind the lens of a camera. After all, the entire family was in shock and grieving and she was no exception.

I knew a photographer in the area who was sometimes available for moments like this. I called the photographer to ask if she was available. She said she had an early morning appointment scheduled the next day and could only come in if the baby was delivered that evening. Unfortunately, her assistant would not be available the next day either.

I offered the family the option to have the photographer capture images of their son with his family, and they were very thankful to be able to do it. When Andrew was born that evening, the photographer was able to capture the moment. She did an amazing job capturing the overwhelming amount of love and grief in the room. She put the images to beautiful music in a video for them. About a month later the patient sent a copy of it to me and told me she would be grateful to me forever for providing this gift to her and her family.

Andrew’s mother went on to have two more sons, and I have remained very close with the family.

The grandparents have invited me to their home. They have a wall where they display an 8x10 photo of each of their grandkids. Where Andrew’s picture should be, they have a picture of the sky with the balloons they released on the anniversary of his birth. Every year they do something in his remembrance. Andrew will always be loved and remembered by his family.

That was 10 years ago, and we still send each other messages to this day. I feel forever close to that family. It’s the greatest honor to be there and to take care of someone in their darkest moment. They need you to make the biggest difference for them.

Consider an MRI machine in a hospital. Can someone with a disability access that machine? My grandmother made sure that type of question was always asked and worked to make sure an accessible machine would be made available. As another example, women with disabilities have gone undiagnosed with breast cancer because they couldn’t access a mammography machine. My grandmother worked to be sure they could.

When I was 18 and planning to go to college, I found myself wavering from my goal of becoming a research scientist and considering nursing as a career. I talked about it with my grandmother. She said, “You don’t have to put the research aside. There are nursing researchers.”

I decided I would like nursing better. I liked the idea of engaging with people, advocating for them, and seeing them get better. I told myself that whether I was at the bedside or not, I wanted to be an advocate for the patient.

In my role today with Vocera, I engage frequently with hospital leaders, managers, providers, and nurses about how to make their communication more efficient and more effective. When we’re designing and building communication systems, I always make it a point to talk to them about what the patient experiences and how to make the patient’s engagement and the coordination of care even better with Vocera. I make sure we’re keeping the patient at the center.

An example that stands out for me happened while I was working with a hospital in Brooklyn.

I learned that a lot of the hospital’s patients were not coming back for their follow-up physician visit after discharge. An appointment would be scheduled for them, but they wouldn’t show up.

The hospital ran a patient survey and learned that patients felt that the appointments were being scheduled without including them in the conversation. No one was engaging with them to ask something as simple as, “What day and time work for you?” or, “Do you have transportation?”

We helped the hospital to change the patient follow up visit scheduling workflow. In the new workflow, a nurse wearing the Vocera Badge contacts central scheduling directly from a patient’s bedside. The nurse just presses a button on the Badge and says, “Call Central Scheduling.” The nurse can then include the patient in scheduling the appointment, and in coordinating transportation if needed.

The hospital’s analyst told me that patient attendance at physician follow-up visits increased by 40% after implementing this workflow.

Usually when we think of Vocera we think about throughput or emergent workflows like Code Blue or Code STEMI. We forget about the simple things that are meaningful for patients, like making sure they have a visit scheduled that works for them so they can come back and see their doctor.

This is an example of how watching my grandmother advocate for people with disabilities to make sure they had access to health care impacted me. I keep her lessons at the forefront of my mind as I advocate for patients in the way I think about communication.