It's so calm and peaceful here

Patient Story:

Including Families at Every Step

With his daughter Aisha, Larry Stein receives an update on his wife's surgery directly from the operating room with the help of Patient Liaison Megan Schnarr.

It's 6:30 a.m. and already Megan Schnarr is hard at work. As one of two dedicated patient liaisons in the Heart and Surgical Pavilion at St. Anthony's Medical Center, Schnarr's job is to make sure that families of patients admitted for surgery receive regular updates from the medical team.

This morning, she searches for a family from Manchester. Locating them in the cafeteria eating a quick breakfast, she hands Larry Stein a dedicated wireless phone to talk directly with the operating room staff handling his wife’s surgery.

"It’s great,” says Stein afterwards. “It’s so different from when we were in Texas several years ago when my wife had another surgery. For nine hours, we didn’t know anything. Here, we’ve been updated at least three times before 10 o’clock.”

Around the clock, seven days a week, patient liaisons relieve the stress and anxiety families often feel while waiting for a loved one to come out of a surgical procedure. In the new pavilion, patient liaisons work in Same Day Surgery as well as near the operating rooms that handle general and cardiac surgery. On any given shift, a patient liaison looks like an air traffic controller, constantly checking color-coded computer screens to see where physicians and patients are located throughout the day and talking with operating room staff.

“I speak with 60 or more patient families a day,” says Schnarr. “I can tell at a glance where a particular physician is located, whether a patient has checked in, and when a procedure is finished and the patient has been moved either to recovery or back to his or her private room.”

She then updates patient families about the time line and lets them know when the surgeon can speak with them about the procedure.

“The key is the one-to-one relationship that a liaison has with a patient’s family,” says Karen Creager, St. Anthony’s team leader for Customer Communications and a night patient liaison. “We have wireless phones on a dedicated frequency that are capable of working anywhere in the Pavilion, even in places where cell phones can’t maintain a signal.”

“Just keeping us informed means a lot,” says Stein as he waited with his daughter. “She (Schnarr) really is keeping an eye on us and making sure we know what’s going on so we don’t wonder or worry. I appreciate everything she does.

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