Becky White, a former neonatal nurse and now patient care coordinator at Texas Children’s, recently won the Patients’ View Institute (PVI) Partners in Healing Award during a national ceremony in Washington, D.C. co-sponsored by The Leap Frog Group. Chief Quality Officer Dr. Angelo Giardino also accepted this award on behalf of Texas Children’s.
Each year, this award honors a patient’s story that demonstrates how a partnership between a patient or their loved ones, and their hospital care team, achieved a healing health care event or experience.
When White was pregnant with her son, Wade, doctors told her that her child may not survive due to medical complications. Miraculously, Wade pulled through but his road to recovery would be a difficult one. Born with complex health issues, Wade would undergo more than 50 surgeries before he turned 5.
As the mother of a son with special needs, White struggled trying to communicate effectively with her son’s medical team, at times feeling like she wasn’t being heard. So, she decided to go back to school to become a pediatric nurse, hoping that her medical background could help overcome this communication barrier.
“My experience as a NICU nurse helped me to communicate more effectively with my son’s doctors,” said White, a patient care coordinator at Texas Children’s. “It also gave me the opportunity to connect with hospital executives to help them relate data and patient outcomes to the actual patient experience.”
These opportunities emerged after White read a blog post from Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark A. Wallace about customer service and what every employee can do to ensure patients and their families have an exceptional experience at Texas Children’s. Touched by this blog, White emailed Wallace to share her thoughts and experiences as a parent of a Texas Children’s patient and as a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse.
“I was very appreciative that our CEO took the time to respond to my email,” White said. “After our initial meeting, Mr. Wallace invited me to shadow him for one day so I could experience firsthand what our administrative leadership team does behind the scenes to support our frontline staff and employees.”
Wallace also shadowed White in the NICU where he met with patient families and Texas Children’s NICU leadership and nurses who shared the remarkable improvements their teams have made to improve patient safety and enhance the overall NICU experience for patients and their families.
“My experience with Becky was just another reminder that whether we work at the bedside or behind the scenes, everyone matters and everyone’s perspective has value,” Wallace said. “Everyone’s work is essential at Texas Children’s, and when we all share this same intense passion for the mission, we drive it forward.”
So far, more than 40 hospital executives have accompanied Becky in the NICU, which prompted leaders to create an organization-wide Executive Rounding Program to be implemented in other areas of the hospital. The program has helped improve communication and empathy with patients and their families.
By advocating for her son, becoming a nurse, and helping health care administrators to better understand patient and family issues, Becky’s story represents an important patient perspective – one that others on both sides of the bedrail can learn from.
Click here to read White’s Voice of Nursing blog about her experience shadowing Mr. Wallace. Click here to read Mr. Wallace’s perspective of his experience rounding with White in the NICU.