The story below is from our January/February 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
New opportunities in medical careers offer diversity for a professional's passion.
Courtesy of Carilion Clinic
Sara Wohlford, Efficiency and Sustainability Program Manager at Carilion.
What began as a career in journalism and shifted to a career as a registered nurse in the emergency room has morphed into a position that is as unique as the person holding the title of Efficiency and Sustainability Program Manager at Carilion.
Sara Wohlford sees her position as a “mix of evangelical environmentalist, green sustainability officer, nurse and air traffic control for all environmental projects within the Carilion Health System.”
Her desire to reduce unopened or expired medical waste in the emergency room started as a passion project. Once she found that there was no one in charge of such programs, she convinced the administrators to let her take on the extra responsibilities. Her success with this project led to additional projects and programs.
Wohlford returned to graduate school at Virginia Tech where she designed her own independent study within the Masters in Public Health program. Today, Wohlford is successfully implementing cost savings programs that also ease the burden on our planet. She still uses her nursing training to implement programs and prepare for accreditation readiness, regulations, fire safety issues and infection control.
Quality patient care is still the main focus of her duties. Wohlford also spends a significant amount of time with community stakeholders with waste and recycling issues. Her journalism background is handy for the amount of public speaking she does. Creating a culture of reducing waste can involve big changes.
Having one job for an entire working life is increasingly rare, particularly in health care. Big changes are happening, such as small private practices consolidating into large, specialized groups. More patients are being treated in outpatient settings, and the lines are blurring between emergency and urgent care. Population health data is being used in innovative ways to provide value-based care with better patient outcomes. New careers are emerging quickly in this dynamic environment and allow for a diversity of passions to be expressed in very personalized ways.
Patient and Community Needs
Paraprofessionals is a new career path within a few different specialties at Carilion. These professionals do not actually treat patients, but provide non-clinical support in a medical setting overseen by a team of physicians, nurses and counselors for more successful clinical outcomes.
As the stigmas of mental health and addiction recede, more people are seeking treatment. An annual community health assessment was undertaken by Carilion and various community stakeholders. The opioid crisis rose to the top of the list to address the needs of those struggling with opioid addiction.
It may seem shocking that a health system would employ recovering addicts and persons with mental illness to support those seeking help, but public health data shows that patients struggling with mental illness and/or addiction who receive additional emotional support through their inpatient treatment are half as likely to relapse.
This new program is the first of its kind in Virginia and is accredited by the Department of behavioral health and Human Services. It is also now a recognized, reimbursable service by insurers.
Courtesy of Carilion Clinic
Erin Casey, peer recovery specialist at Carilion.
Erin Casey is a peer recovery specialist at Carilion. Her job is to be emotionally available to patients. Erin uses her personal experiences with bulimia and bipolar disorder to reduce the anxiety of an overwhelming life experience for patients. This year, Carilion will add to their current staff of three paid peer counselors and seven volunteer peer counselors.
“Patients find it comforting and inspirational to see that successful treatment can mean new opportunities for a better life,” Casey says.
Her career has evolved quickly to become a community health educator and she now supervises and trains peer counselors. To date, Casey has trained 42 people to become peer counselors.
Casey says she will “always be a patient, as well as someone who supports other people in recovery.”
Filling the Gaps
An aging population in need of health care is growing, while experienced nurses are retiring faster than they can be replaced. The demand to train and retain employees is a major focus for health systems. New career pathways are made by providing alternative staffing models, as well as alternative clinical outpatient service options. Patients are demanding more convenience and retail outpatient urgent care options are growing.
Melissa Chappel is a certified medical office assistant (MOA) at HCA Virginia Orthopedics. Chappel has seen many changes in her day-to-day responsibilities since beginning her career as a certified nursing assistant. Continually expanding her education, she has been able to grow in her career and abilities, as well as increase her income.
Her passion for patient care began as a teenager, when she would sit with elderly neighbors that needed additional help with personal care. In high school, she took classes to become a certified nursing assistant and began working in home health after graduation.
Courtesy of Erin Wolfe
Melissa Chappel
Her desire as a single mother to earn more and have reliable hours drove her to return to school to become a certified MOA. The local program she selected through National College provided her with a two-year associate’s degree. After a few years working within a clinic setting, she stepped up to an open position in administration.
Her ability to successfully float among various medical specialties earned her an opportunity for a new challenge: working within a specialized ENT/Neuro group doing reviews for insurance payments. She worked in an office setting on behalf of the patients to advocate for insurance authorizations. Chappel also began surgery scheduling and returned to orthopedics, interacting with thirty to forty patients a day, along with seeing urgent care walk-ins. Chappel is again working full-time and attending school on nights and weekends to earn her bachelor’s in health care administration, including specialized training in grant writing.
“I will be able to acquire more leadership skills within this clinic, which will give me the management skills I need to learn to operate my own home health agency,” says Chappel.
It is her passion for patient care, professionalism and a lot of Starbucks visits that have kept her focused on providing a better life for her and her daughter.
Environmental Change
Wohlford believes sustainability is a popular program with staff as many seek her out to field potential environmental savings. She reminds staff during training that “this is why we are doing this and reminds them about the bigger picture, which is saving our planet for future generations.”
Wohlford is excited to share her love for sustainable local foods within Carilion health system to improve patient and staff health and find additional cost savings.
“I work with current vendors to source local produce which can be found in patient meals and our local café,” she says. “We are also including fresh, local produce to be filled as prescriptions at outpatient clinics with our fresh food RX program.”
She has grown local produce and foods from 6.4 percent in 2017 to about 8.3 percent this year. She has also leveraged smaller contracts with vendors like Homestead Creamery, and larger vendors with group purchasing, to work with dining and nutrition services to increase local food purchases.
Another completed large-scale project replaced lighting with LEDs within Roanoke Memorial Hospital, a technical switch involving many different types of lighting and users, and will save up to $200,000 annually. Driving by Radford Community Hospital, one can see 4,000 solar panels and sheep grazing underneath them, another project that Wohlford found satisfying.
“Finding a champion for a change and implementing it requires excellent communication and a team approach,” Wohlford says.
The ability to change focus and adapt in key to a successful long-term career in health care. Embracing the ideal of lifelong learning is just part of the job. Finding a personal passion is what makes all the twists and turns manageable.
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