The Patient Experience Team received over 50 nominations and hundreds of phenomenal examples of Texas Children’s team members living compassionately and amplifying unity for the 2022 Caught You Caring of the Year Award. Winners were notified during Patient Experience Week April 24-30.
This award is part of Texas Children’s ongoing Caught You Caring (CYC) recognition program offered to patients, families and staff, to highlight team members who have gone above and beyond their role to provide compassion to another person.
Here are some of the reasons why colleagues recognized 15 of their team members for consistently demonstrating an outstanding commitment to compassionate care and teamwork. Thank you to this year’s winners and everyone for your dedication to creating positive patient experiences!
Luis Espinoza, Patient Care Assistant, Main Campus Acute Care
“When Luis learned my son (15-month-old admitted to the emergency room via ambulance after having his first febrile seizure) liked the movie Moana, he started singing to him one of the songs from the movie and Bronx was so happy to have found a new friend. Luis really went above and beyond to interact with Bronx and try to make him smile and I appreciated it so much.”
Sygnore Valdeavilla, Registered Nurse, West Campus Emergency Center
“She is an outstanding leader, ensuring the patient (pregnant mother who arrived in labor), husband and impending baby’s needs were addressed. She made a chaotic situation calm, ensuring all roles were assigned, talked to each team about tasks, addressed a frantic father in meeting his needs while simultaneously meeting the needs of the providers. Additionally, she made sure that hand off reporting and a safe transfer occurred. She made a vital impact on not one patient but two, and the family. She tirelessly leads day in and day out with people as the priority!”
Katherine (Kate) Cole, Pediatric Rheumatology Nurse, Austin Specialty Care
“Kate completes many prior authorizations and appeals for the majority of our patients. She worked tirelessly for a couple months to obtain a very costly medication that was not covered by a patient’s prescription insurance. She found an alternative option to get the medication covered by insurance, contacted multiple offices and infusion centers and worked with the pharmaceutical company’s liaisons directly. The patient and mother expressed such gratitude toward Kate, and the patient is now able to participate in things she loves doing like line dancing because she was able to start this medication.”
Dylan Marshall, Ambulatory Services Representative, Austin Specialty Care
“Dylan through the years has remembered our patients who come in often and will acknowledge them by name. He will remember certain facts and details to make their visit memorable. This type of attention to detail has been acknowledged by many patients and families who often thank him for his kindness and always a smooth check in and check out process.”
Paul Lopez, Registered Nurse, The Woodlands Vascular Access Team
“I can think of so many instances when Paul has had great interactions with families and patients. Paul will enter a room and immediately introduce himself, softly explain why he is there and offer education as to what all is involved with starting an IV or accessing the patient’s port. Each time I have had the opportunity to assist Paul with this process, the patient and family both appear to be happy and appreciate his ability to comfort them in what could be a very scary situation.”
Veronica Lucatero, Ambulatory Services Representative, Main Campus Virtual Visit Support Center
“Veronica called a family member who had an upcoming telemedicine appointment (seeing that their MyChart was not active). The mom was in Mark Wallace Tower thinking the appointment was an in-person. Hearing the mom’s frustration and anxiety, Veronica left her cubicle and went to find the mom, helped set up her account and got her connected for a telemedicine visit. Mom was very grateful for the help.”
Aaron Weitz, Care Coordinator, Main Campus Cancer Center
“Aaron really goes above and beyond. I 100% go to him for complex care management needs (even for PICU or outpatient) because I know he will be straight with me on the likelihood of success for whatever I want to achieve, he will keep me updated every step of the way, will let me know when he runs into roadblocks, and as a result, he is an outstanding partner in getting things done efficiently for our kids with cancer. On top of all that, he is also kind, passionate and fun to work with.”
Paloma Salazar, Registered Nurse, Main Campus Acute Care
“She is a great resource on the unit and helps everyone from patient care assistants to nurses. She constantly helps with admissions, discharges and vitals even when she is not in charge nurse role. When we were short charge nurses and preceptors, she stepped up to those roles to help the unit.”
Maricela Yanes, Behavioral Health Medical Assistant, Texas Children’s Health Plan
“While assisting a parent with activating MyChart, Maricela noticed the family needed resources beyond therapy. She provided the family with community resources, assisted with the referral process and scheduling for internal services, and provided tangible items including diapers and formula.”
DeAntoinette (De) Riggins, Ambulatory Services Representative, The Woodlands Lab
“De consistently delivers exceptional customer service, interacting with patients to ensure they have a good experience while waiting. She consistently goes above and beyond the requirements expected. Another example of De’s hard work and commitment to our patients is that in addition to all of her “regular” duties, she has been helping the pathology reference department with managing, tracking and uploading reference result reports to patient charts. Her efforts are directly related to faster turnaround times of result reports for send out testing.”
Lillian Dickerson, Ambulatory Services Representative, Pavilion for Women
“When a patient arrived to her appointment an hour late, Maternal-Fetal Medicine had a very full schedule and there was no way to work this patient back in, but the patient explained she took the day off to attend this appointment and could not afford to take another day off. Lillian called other community sites to see if the patient could be accommodated and was able to get the patient scheduled at Pavilion for Women later that day. Our patient extended a call to communicate her pleasure with Lillian’s efforts.”
Almea (Mea) Montillo, Patient Care Manager, West Campus Acute Care
“I consistently receive praise from patients and families about Mea. She makes intentional connections with families during leader rounding and families know her by name. Leader Rounding is one of Mea’s favorite times of the day as she is passionate about patient experience. One family wrote, ‘I’ve been coming to this hospital since my kid was 10 months old. My son has sickle cell disease. I’ve had a few bad experiences here but since I met Mea our experience has been amazing. She is such an incredible supervisor making sure her staff are doing a great job. I honestly don’t have any words to explain how amazing she is.’”
Dianne Woodard, Guest Services Representative (GSR), Main Campus Guest Services
“When a COVID-19-positive patient and mother were confined to their room due to the restrictions in place during the time, the mother needed to wash her clothes but could not leave the unit. She reached out to laundry services around the Medical Center and unfortunately couldn’t find a facility willing to provide service due to COVID-19. The unit leader reached out to Guest Services to inquire if we would wash the laundry. Dianne volunteered to get the laundry and wash it without any hesitation. The mother was grateful to be able to have clean clothes to wear while staying in the hospital.”
Theresa Lazarte, Nurse Practitioner, Main Campus Cancer Center
“Since our first meeting Theresa has been both informative and incredibly caring. She made what was the scariest journey of our lives much easier to process by giving us ‘bite size’ pieces of information that we could take in and manage rather than overwhelming us. She walked us through every appointment and procedure (and there were a lot!) and made us feel at ease. We can tell that she genuinely cares for our daughter as we know she does for all of her patients. Words honestly cannot express how thankful we are that our daughter has been in her care.”
Wendy Humphreys, Sonographer, Pavilion for Women
“Patients have described Wendy as compassionate, amazing, extremely patient, very friendly and helpful. One patient wrote, ‘Wendy calmed our nerves and tried to keep it positive and light-hearted. Wendy was the absolute best! She took her time and made sure to make me comfortable. She really made my experience far greater than I would have ever imagined and I would love to have her again! I really appreciate her and all her hard work!’”
