February 2014
Julie Ann
Koehlinger
,
RN
Home Care Services - Infusion Therapy
Seattle Children's
Seattle
,
WA
United States
Julie Ann has been a member of Home Care Services for two and one half years now and previously worked on the Surgical Unit. Julie Ann's astute clinical assessment skills along with her exceptional critical thinking abilities enable her to drill down to root cause and offer excellent probing questions in our Team's improvement work. With a consistent presence as the Saturday Teach RN, she has not only developed strong independent troubleshooting skills but an exceptional collaborative working relationship with her Home Care Services pharmacist partner - all contributing to positive patient outcomes. Julie Ann's focus on "what is best for the patient" is at the heart of her
nursing practice.
One particular very busy, intense Friday night and Saturday of teaching and off hours on call comes to mind. On Friday night, she worked beautifully on the phone with a very anxious mom, via Spanish interpreter, regarding her son's loosening Central Line dressing (inpatient history as very sweaty and frequent changes)and offering reassurance how to manage and offer to reassess the line on Monday before clinic or via the ED before then.
Then on Saturday, Julie Ann's flexibility and connectedness strengths guided her to navigate 4 lengthy and education intensive teaches mixed with several delayed start
times. Continued reassurance and gentle support was needed with one of the four teaches (4 teaches total eventually required for this family's competency)to instill the caregiver's confidence that she could manage TPN therapy at home on her own. This was the final teach before discharge and mom's competency was finalized.
On Saturday evening and through out the night, three additional on calls came in. The first a very anxious dad who had wasted 2 antibiotic doses and some supplies and wasn't remembering how often to change the IV tubing even though he had received teaching the day before. At the late hour, Julie Ann calmly reviewed again on the tubing change frequency and how he could order sufficient quantity to always keep ahead of home inventory.
Shortly after this call, Julie Ann very professionally handled another call from a very frustrated dad on how to walk through how to assess the micro-bubbles in the IV tubing that kept coming up and how to manage the pump alarms. With minimal sleep, she continued to remain very professional, supportive and helpful to the remaining families calling in that evening.
Julie Ann's approach in her practice is very smooth, orderly, detailed and practical - consistently offering her families the reassurance that they "can be" successful with home IV therapy and can always be supported just a phone call away.
Julie Ann consistently supports continuity of care and willingly stays late to complete a teach. As a strong team player, she fairly often takes on call 3 days in a row over weekends. She goes out of her way to support our staffing needs to incorporate long distance home visits while also providing hospital discharge teaching. e.g. drove to Olympia for a home visit and was willing to return to the hospital for a late Saturday teach visit to support a Sunday antibiotic discharge.
As a very seasoned SCH nurse from Surgical Floor, she has gone above and beyond to bring those skills to Home Care. e.g. taught a newly identified foster mom on NG tube placement for a recently discharged nutrition patient - again supporting positive patient outcomes and continuity of care.
Julie Ann is also admirable at maintaining professional boundaries but at the same time creating therapeutic and compassionate relationships with patient's/families.
nursing practice.
One particular very busy, intense Friday night and Saturday of teaching and off hours on call comes to mind. On Friday night, she worked beautifully on the phone with a very anxious mom, via Spanish interpreter, regarding her son's loosening Central Line dressing (inpatient history as very sweaty and frequent changes)and offering reassurance how to manage and offer to reassess the line on Monday before clinic or via the ED before then.
Then on Saturday, Julie Ann's flexibility and connectedness strengths guided her to navigate 4 lengthy and education intensive teaches mixed with several delayed start
times. Continued reassurance and gentle support was needed with one of the four teaches (4 teaches total eventually required for this family's competency)to instill the caregiver's confidence that she could manage TPN therapy at home on her own. This was the final teach before discharge and mom's competency was finalized.
On Saturday evening and through out the night, three additional on calls came in. The first a very anxious dad who had wasted 2 antibiotic doses and some supplies and wasn't remembering how often to change the IV tubing even though he had received teaching the day before. At the late hour, Julie Ann calmly reviewed again on the tubing change frequency and how he could order sufficient quantity to always keep ahead of home inventory.
Shortly after this call, Julie Ann very professionally handled another call from a very frustrated dad on how to walk through how to assess the micro-bubbles in the IV tubing that kept coming up and how to manage the pump alarms. With minimal sleep, she continued to remain very professional, supportive and helpful to the remaining families calling in that evening.
Julie Ann's approach in her practice is very smooth, orderly, detailed and practical - consistently offering her families the reassurance that they "can be" successful with home IV therapy and can always be supported just a phone call away.
Julie Ann consistently supports continuity of care and willingly stays late to complete a teach. As a strong team player, she fairly often takes on call 3 days in a row over weekends. She goes out of her way to support our staffing needs to incorporate long distance home visits while also providing hospital discharge teaching. e.g. drove to Olympia for a home visit and was willing to return to the hospital for a late Saturday teach visit to support a Sunday antibiotic discharge.
As a very seasoned SCH nurse from Surgical Floor, she has gone above and beyond to bring those skills to Home Care. e.g. taught a newly identified foster mom on NG tube placement for a recently discharged nutrition patient - again supporting positive patient outcomes and continuity of care.
Julie Ann is also admirable at maintaining professional boundaries but at the same time creating therapeutic and compassionate relationships with patient's/families.