Like many other clinics in the hospital, our clinic is incredibly busy. On a heavy day, we may have as many as 160 patients scheduled. And no matter what challenge is thrown at us, our team works together to ensure all our patients are provided top tier care. 

Each of our providers and their care coordinators are experts in their urology specialty. If a patient is being seen by one provider but needs the care of another specialist in our department, our team goes out of their way to make it happen. Often, our physicians coordinate with each other's teams so that the patient can be seen by two providers on the same day or be moved from one clinic to another to best address their urological concerns. Nurses frequently move fluidly throughout different clinics to help with catheter exchanges, pessaries, or even bedside procedures, lending their expertise wherever needed. Because of this, our patients know that when they come to clinic, they are getting the best possible care. 

Our teamwork also extends itself to patient messages and phone calls. Nurses who are not in clinic or who are assigned to procedures, often jump in to answer phone calls and messages without a second thought. 

One strength of our team is that if someone asks for help, there is without hesitation multiple people who are willing to help jump in and help ease the burden. Knowing your team has your back makes coming to work easy, even on the busiest days.

The team has been able to achieve NO ERROR labeling on all our lab specimens for 800+ days and counting. As a team we work together daily. We take the time to double, and triple check our specimens prior to sending them to our laboratory departments. We communicate and orchestrate proper labeling of our specimens and will continue to do our very best for patients and their families. 

I believe our 800+ day no specimen labeling error streak exemplifies our team’s consistency in clinical expertise, teamwork, and extraordinary service. We have not let up from our process as we know it works. We have had many new hires who continue to strive for this excellence and keep the streak going because at the end of the day, we aren't even thinking about the streak. We are thinking of the process we developed that puts our patients first. It takes a team to put their experiences and knowledge together to not only implement a process, but a process that will also be successful. We are setting a standard that other departments within the Health System are working towards to improve patient safety Health System wide.  

Our team identifies areas of improvement on patient satisfaction surveys and implements ideas that we've thought through together to address these concerns to provide a better experience for our patients. For example, we revised our check in process to create less repetition for our patients as this was frequently noted on our patient satisfaction scores.

Our physicians are always thinking of the patient first. If a patient lives far away, our physicians will communicate with nursing staff to see if we can coordinate a patient’s procedure same day even if it is not scheduled. 100% of the time this takes place as out nursing staff work extra hard to make things easier for our patients.

Our team also makes it a point to be involved in the community of Kansas City. We have annual holiday food and toy drives to provide for local shelters. And recently we were fortunate enough to work with I.H.A.N. (I Have A Name), a local group that provides food and goods to people who are struggling with shelter and food insecurity. A team of nurses and physicians worked together to make sack lunches, which were hand-delivered to camps around Kansas City along with cold drinks, clothing, and shoes. Our team got to speak with members of each camp, hear their stories, and start building relationships with the community. It also served to strengthen our team both inside and outside of work.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to focus on is ensuring that each and every one of our patients are provided with safe, effective, and patient-centered care. We’re proud to work alongside our coworkers who help provide this standard of care to our patients every day!