Each day, doctors and nurses directly help patients at hospitals and clinics throughout the communities Sanford Health serves. There are thousands of nonclinical employees though, who help patients indirectly as well. Every once in a while, the folks working behind the scenes take on a central role in patient care.
Switchboard emergency
In December, Michelle Harwood was going about her daily routine as a communications and guest services manager at the Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That’s when a security officer walked into her office.
“Security received an alert to their pagers saying that a 911 call was made from our switchboard,” Harwood said. “911 metro communications had called the security team back and said they had a caller who advised that they were having thoughts of suicide, had a plan and had intentions to follow through on that plan.”
The patient had called into the medical center and asked to be transferred to 911, masking their phone number. Emergency services only had the patient’s name, but they needed Harwood’s help trying to find more contact information to follow up with a wellness check.
“I actually worked for 911 here in town for five years,” Harwood said. “Unfortunately, callers do call into different businesses to mask their phone numbers. I also worked at the suicide helpline where callers did that quite often. Then it would send us kind of on a chase of finding where the person truly is.”
Harwood was now on the chase once again, this time looking to find a phone number and address for someone who had called into the Sanford switchboard just minutes earlier.
Tech support
Nick Dilley had just taken a seat at his desk in Sioux Falls when Harwood called his phone. Dilley is a unified communications technician, and he works on the phone systems at Sanford USD Medical Center as part of the IT team. Standard procedure would require Harwood to submit a ticket to IT for help, but this case was different.
“She did sound more urgent than normal,” said Dilley. “Then the fact that she told me she had somebody from security there clearly meant that something happened.”
Dilley went to work, accessing the team’s VeraSMART call accounting software. Within minutes he had narrowed down the list of possible callers to two numbers.
“We could match it with the time and duration of the call,” Harwood said. “Once we had the phone numbers, I was able to match the name of the patient with the phone numbers provided, and then quickly get an address to call 911 back to get a well-being check initiated.”
‘Someone intervened’
The story may have ended there for Harwood and Dilley. But a couple months after the incident, the two were recognized for their work thanks to an email sent by the patient in question.
“The patient shared their perspective of the entire story. They were struggling, called in for help, were waiting for some sort of sign. It didn’t come, so they proceeded with their plan. Then all they remembered was waking up with first responders there. Their door had been kicked in, and they were being rushed to the hospital,” Harwood said. “They were in a much better place but diligently trying to figure out how someone intervened.”
They eventually found out it was these two Sanford employees who helped save their life.
“It was just really neat hearing from their perspective what was happening, and just how those minutes and seconds were crucial in getting to them,” Harwood said. “It was really neat getting that closure as well.”
Helping patients in their own way
For the most part, Harwood and Dilley deflect praise for their actions that day, preferring to say they were just doing their jobs.
“I’m not here to save a life. I’m here to help our users save lives,” Dilley said.
Of course, that attitude shows just how integral support staff are for patient care. While doctors and nurses are rightly celebrated for their work, employees like Harwood and Dilley are also crucial to the hospital system as well.
“I hear from my team, ‘Oh, we’re just greeters’ or ‘we’re just checking people in,’ or ‘we just answer the phones,’ and that’s been one of my biggest pet peeves,” Harwood said. “You’re not just an operator. We are truly, I feel, the heart of the hospital.”
Thanks to some quick thinking and teamwork, Michelle Harwood and Nick Dilley helped a patient that day. Yes, it was a different circumstance than most days, but the result was the same: caring for patients at Sanford Health in the best way they know how.
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Posted In Behavioral Health, Nonclinical Support Services, People & Culture, Sioux Falls
