One scenario that paints the picture of Mary's great work involves a 10 year old child. This child has Von-Willenbrand's disease and routinely had her care at the University. The patient was scheduled for a simple ENT out-patient procedure at St. Luke's.

When Mary was reading through the H&P for this patient she caught a specific note about 2 specialized medications that this patient needed to have infused just prior to surgery start time. This is not a typical finding for most patients, especially on a 10 year old simple ENT procedure. She conferred with the University physician to verify again what he was requesting and learned that this medication must be ordered at least 5 business days pre-operatively. She found this 6 days pre-operatively in the afternoon, and she went into her "Mary getting it done" mode.

Mary did an exemplary job of coordinating the details of this patient's care between the provider at the University, this patient's mother, our inpatient pharmacy at STL, and the Surgicare team that will care for the patient the day of surgery. Any type of miss in this case would have led to a cancellation in this child's case after a full night of NPO status, and scheduling family arrangements and time off work for the parents to join this child on his surgery date.

Mary has a talent for balancing the varying needs of her vast patient population, and assuring that her patients are ready to go on the day of surgery without any hiccups in scheduling or cancellation of surgery. This is the ideal for the patient, the family and virtually all people involved.