Ana Gordon-Loebl
April 2023
Ana
Gordon-Loebl
,
BSN, RN, CPN
5T Pediatric Oncology
New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital
New York
,
NY
United States

 

 

 

Ana helped us feel like we were getting personalized, compassionate medical care from invested professional staff.
Our newborn baby was in the hospital twice, and Ana was our nurse toward the beginning of our first, and month-long stay. Due to a quirk in our labor and delivery experience, our child’s gender is listed as “gender non-conforming” in the EMR. We found that most of the medical staff we interacted with after delivery chose a set of binary pronouns to use, used they/them pronouns, or avoided pronouns altogether. Ana was the first and I think only of many medical professionals to confidently ask for our child’s pronouns upon first meeting us-especially as queer parents, we really appreciated this! She also learned and remembered our (the parents’) names and connected with us as people separate from the issues that had brought us to the hospital. Because we were such new parents, she also talked to us about parenting experiences and tips, including helping us give him his first bath since delivery. She even recognized our child’s name in the system when we returned to the hospital and commiserated with us that we had been admitted again, even though she was not assigned to our child’s care. Across all of these interactions, Ana helped us feel like we were getting personalized, compassionate medical care from invested professional staff, despite the many rotating providers caring for our child. Her care made a huge difference in our experience, bringing a bright spot to an otherwise dark, scary, and tedious time in our lives as a new family.