Mandy Kent is an amazing nurse. Every day she comes to work ready to face the day with a smile on her face and her "sleeves rolled up" ready to care for others. Mandy is passionate about patient- centered care. She has been an active part of a value stream map of the patient experience in Women's Health Center. After many hours of developing work flows in a linear fashion, Mandy thought outside of the box and developed a star representing Monroe Clinic service standards and placed the patient in the center. Each point of the star contains a workflow which demonstrates what happens when a patient reaches out to us and when we reach out to the patient.

Mandy's word is always true. If she tells a patient something will be done by noon, you can bet it will be done. For example, if a patient calls with a question, Mandy will give the patient a time when to expect a call back. She also relays this time to the provider, holding them accountable to this time frame. If Mandy has not received a response from the provider, she finds the provider to receive a verbal response and then calls the patient back within the expected time frame. Mandy also follows through on medications and prior authorizations. When Mandy starts the process, she also completes it providing continuity of care from start to finish.

Mandy is a nurse trained in urodynamics for Women's Health Center. The day before the patient's scheduled procedure she calls her to introduce herself, answer any questions, and ensures the patient is taking the medication prescribed as ordered. Through her Catalytic Coaching she developed a communication email list for the nurses who use the urodynamics equipment. This has been an efficient way of communicating when the equipment is out of order, and allows for patients to be rescheduled in a timely manner and avoids having a patient come to an appointment to only find the test cannot be performed. Also, a patient who was receiving care in Milwaukee requested to have her urodynamics study performed here at Monroe Clinic. Mandy worked collaboratively with the Milwaukee provider to ensure the test information would meet his expectation. The procedure was completed here and the patient was able to receive treatment in Milwaukee saving her an additional trip for testing.

Mandy has excellent clinical skills. One of her strongest skills is telephone triage. Her communication delivered clearly and concisely ensuring that all needs are met and questions are answered, again providing exceptional follow through. She identifies areas for improvement, and identifies a solution to fix them independently. For example, there was a lab test that Mandy struggled to educate patients on. Mandy researched the test and developed scripting to follow and shared it with her co-workers who also had difficultly explaining this lab test. Mandy is independent in her thinking anticipating needs of patients before the need arises. Mandy also provides exceptional skills when preforming urodynamics testing. She is organized to complete the test in an efficient manner and also is able to strike a conversation with the patient during the procedure to help the patient feel more at ease.

When interacting with patients Mandy maintains professionalism and has a calming approach. Mandy has identified a few couples who were not able to attend childbirth class and worked with the childbirth educator to make special accommodations for these couples to receive education at their prenatal visits, though these patients were not able to attend the class, they were still able to receive the information they otherwise would have not received without Mandy's help. Another patient needed to go to Madison for evaluation for possible early delivery of her baby. Mandy worked quickly in a very organized fashion, demonstrating her usual kindness and compassion toward the patient helping her to feel at ease. Though the patient worked in the Madison area, Mandy ensured that she had directions and a phone number to the location she was going to avoid any obstacles the patient may find. Mandy is genuine in her communication verbally and nonverbally.

Mandy is a role model in her department. She is an informal leader that is respected by all. A provider once came into my office and said "Whatever you have to do to keep Mandy happy, make sure you do it". He had just witnessed Mandy providing telephone triage and was thoroughly amazed at her skills. Mandy's coworkers know they can always ask her for help. Her approach is non- intimidating providing a safe environment to her coworkers to ask questions and receive her input. Mandy often leads daily huddles with ease and is always thinking of ways to improve the patient experience. She developed a binder for taking notes at each huddle, this way anyone who was not present at the huddle can be informed of any changes. She also identified that there were problems that could not quickly be solved at the Huddle. She suggested a practice of circling the problem and bringing those items to staff meetings for further discussion. Mandy has been very active in improving the patient experience and has been a large part of her department's success in raising their Press Ganey overall patient satisfaction from the 9th percentile to the 81st percentile in one year.

Mandy has been involved in the community by fund raising for good causes. She recently ran a 5K to support a local health care facility. She also raised money and bowled with her department in support for Big Brothers Big Sisters. Mandy is currently participating in the professional development program as part of the preceptor track. Mandy is an asset to the preceptor track, providing an exceptional orientation process that will then be passed on to the patient experience.

Mandy strives for excellence on a daily basis. She is a true reflection of the Monroe Clinic's 3E's (every encounter, every patient, every day). As a mother of two very small children, despite the sometimes sleepless nights, Mandy brings enthusiasm and perfection every day, to every encounter, for every patient. She has been a large advocate for Epic MyChart sign up in Women's Health Center. She was able to identify that there was inconsistent education provided to patients regarding MyChart. Mandy developed education for her team and presented the best way to educate patients to utilize MyChart, which included a patient "tour" of MyChart and instruction on how to use it. Mandy is accountable and holds her team members accountable as well. At a recent staff meeting, a discussion took place regarding patient satisfaction. Mandy identified to the team that the team was not doing well and stated "We need to figure out how we are going to fix this". This comment demonstrates ownership of her practice to improve care delivered to the patients.

Mandy was an active part of a recent Kaizen event and has been willing to trial new processes before rolling them out to the organization. One trial she implemented in Women's Health Center is the management of patient surgical histories. She implemented a process to update surgical histories the day following the procedure. This will provide a more complete chart especially if the patient needs to seek care prior to the post op visit. This worked well in Women's Health Center and will soon be rolled out in other departments.

To streamline what could be a very chaotic patient visit, Mandy along with another coworker, created roles for team members and assigned duties to the patient experience. These rolls include a primary nurse who: oversees the provider schedule, answers call lights, informs patients of delays and provides discharge instructions. And the secondary nurse who's primary responsibility is rooming patients. Mandy had a large part in implementing the process using Right Fax to scan surgical consents to SPC. She worked with a staff member in IS to develop an understanding to use the Right fax machine. The process was successful in Women's Health Center. Mandy was the spokesperson for this process and also went to another department to assist them in understanding and implementing the process. Mandy is the owner of a 5S zone which is kept neat and orderly. She takes the ownership of her zones seriously to ensure a neat and organized environment to patients and coworkers.

Mandy is a valuable nurse to the patients of Monroe Clinic. Though her position resides in Women's Health Center, she is touching patients all over the organization through her work in process improvement and service excellence.