Communication between health care professionals and institutions can be vital to ensure the best treatment possible.
BY Kim Johnson
PUBLISHED May 28, 2018
Kim is a nursing student who is hoping to find her place amongst the phenomenal oncology nurses and doctors who cared for her sister. She loves reading, volunteering and enjoying the outdoors of Colorado.
When I think back to when my sister had cancer, I now know just how lucky we were that she was only treated at two hospitals and two clinics. And we were even luckier that they were within the same hospital system. It was sometimes difficult to get her teams to converse and for everybody to be on the same page, but I can only imagine how much more difficult that would be had she been bouncing within multiple clinical agencies.
When originally told that a transplant was needed, we were sent to consider a hospital outside of her main system. Thinking about the complexities of data sharing wasn't even on my mind when we had our first consultation with them. The thought of how a new team was going to read her care notes and suddenly understand the complex patient that was before them was secondary to the vast amount of information that I was trying to gather to prepare for all that ahead of us.
When she was finally approved to transplant, we ended up staying within the hospital system that she had been cared for since diagnosis. Looking back, it was hard enough for a new team to come in to transplant having had her at a singular hospital for all her inpatient treatment. I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been to transfer care notes and for a new team to learn the nuances that came with caring for my sister.
When originally told that a transplant was needed, we were sent to consider a hospital outside of her main system. Thinking about the complexities of data sharing wasn't even on my mind when we had our first consultation with them. The thought of how a new team was going to read her care notes and suddenly understand the complex patient that was before them was secondary to the vast amount of information that I was trying to gather to prepare for all that ahead of us.
When she was finally approved to transplant, we ended up staying within the hospital system that she had been cared for since diagnosis. Looking back, it was hard enough for a new team to come in to transplant having had her at a singular hospital for all her inpatient treatment. I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been to transfer care notes and for a new team to learn the nuances that came with caring for my sister.
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