Michelle Whitaker works with me in the PATT office. We interview patients on the phone who are coming in for surgery - obtaining their medical history and medications, give them their pre-op instructions, track down their pre-op testing and any cardiac testing, and alert anesthesia to any red flags that pop up. Michelle is absolutely wonderful to work with. She is always so friendly, laughing with a great sense of humor, hard-working, and a team player who exceeds BayCare's expectations in every way.
She was interviewing a patient on the phone who had emergency surgery 4-5 days earlier with and was coming back in again for more surgery. At the end of the interview, Michelle asked if there was anything else she could do for him. He said, "Yes, the pain pill I have really doesn't help. I'm still in a lot of pain." Michelle looked at his med list she had obtained and didn't see anything that was for pain. She asked the patient which med he thought was his pain medicine and he said oxybutynin. She told him that wasn't a pain med and explained what all of his medicines were that he was on. She looked into his discharge instructions and oxycodone was ordered along with an antibiotic that the patient also didn't have. She told the patient how sorry she was that he was hurting and didn't receive all of his medication for at home and that she would contact the doctor's office, find out what happened and call him back.
She then saw that the patient has been discharged from Street 2 after his surgery. Michelle called the Charge Nurse there, and she didn't see any scripts at the desk or in any empty charts. She then called the doctor's office and he was in surgery here at the hospital. She called into the OR and spoke to the circulating nurse, told her what happened and she told the doctor. He said he would write the scripts after his cases were done and to have the wife pick them up at the OR desk this afternoon. Michelle called the patient telling him of the plan and he was delighted. Later that afternoon, the patient's wife came to the ER looking for the scripts instead of the OR. She said the ER was very friendly and trying to be helpful but couldn't find any scripts, so she went back home.
Michelle called the patient the next morning to see how he was doing and found out that the still didn't have his medications and the ER couldn't find his scripts. When she heard that his wife went to the ER instead of the OR, she placed the patient on hold, called the OR to see if the scripts were there and they weren't. So the wife went to the wrong area of the hospital, but the scripts still weren't available even if she had gone to the correct area of the hospital. Again, she told the patient to let her investigate and she would call him back.
Michelle called the doctor's office again and once again he was in surgery. She called into the OR, spoke to the nurse who related the information to the doctor. Here he forgot to write the scripts anyhow. Michelle then met up with him in PACU in person and waited for him to write the scripts. She then asked permission from our manager to take them to the patient's pharmacy so she knew they were delivered and the manager said yes. She called the patient again apologizing for him being in pain and not receiving his medication, but he or his wife could pick it up that day at his pharmacy because she was driving it there. The patient was so grateful and thankful. Michelle is a true patient advocate and will not give up when something isn't right. She will get to the bottom of it and solve it as she did here.