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Hospital Week Department Spotlights

Published on Monday, May 11, 2015

Published on May 11, 2015

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Child Life Specialists

The diagnosis of a serious illness is terrifying enough for an adult, but for a child, the fear and uncertainty that accompany a serious illness in the developmental stages of life present obstacles that cannot be met in an adult hospital setting.

Much like other children's hospitals, Batson Children's Hospital puts the focus on the child, not the illness.

Aside from medical care, Batson has a Child Life Team that provides for the psychosocial and emotional needs of children and their families throughout the child's hospitalization.

Child Life offers education, medical play, special events, procedural support, distraction, therapeutic play, legacy building, bereavement support and school re-entry.

Our team of five child life specialists, a child life assistant and two recreational therapists is responsible for letting children be children and sharing laughs and smiles during what is possibly the scariest times in the children's lives.

The Face and Skin Center of University Physicians

The Face and Skin Center of University Physicians offers a wide variety of the most up-to-date and innovative advances in skin care, facial cosmetic surgery, facial rejuvenation, medical dermatology and MMS/Mohs surgery.

Whether patients need just a bit of refreshing, a complete makeover or someone to address their medical dermatology needs, our board-certified physicians and our staff of health-care professionals will be there every step of the way.

Located just off I-55 North in the Township at Colony Park in Ridgeland, the Face and Skin Center is convenient to Ridgeland, Madison, Jackson and the surrounding metropolitan areas. Our goal is to provide personal, courteous service in a comfortable and caring environment.

Our services and products are available at an exceptional value, and our staff strives to exceed expectations with their expertise and personalized attention.

To schedule an appointment or consultation at the Face and Skin Center, call 5-3374 or (888) 815-2005 or e-mail thefaceandskincenter@umc.edu

 

Food and Nutrition Services

Food and Nutrition Services is a multifaceted department consisting of 140 team members that touch the lives of nearly every employee, patient and visitor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center each day.

We operate four cafeterias and two coffee shops on campus, with annual sales in excess of $6 million. In addition, we provide catering services throughout our campus, ranging from continental breakfast to high-end receptions for 1,000.

Of course, patient services is our focus, and we provide meals and nutritional counseling for more than 500 patients each meal. Our team of registered dietitians is dedicated to providing the best nutritional therapy available, seven days a week.

As a department, we prepare between 6,000-7,000 meals each day. As a facility, we cook approximately 40,000 pounds of bacon each year. Every Friday, we cook more than 1,000 orders of catfish. And on weekdays, we sell approximately 2,500 20-ounce bottled drinks.

We recently replaced the fountain dispensers with newer machines and doubled the variety of drinks we now offer. We have also expanded our selections at breakfast and opened additional serving lines to help expedite our service.

The grill is now open throughout the afternoon instead of being closed from 2-5 p.m.  

 

Grant's Ferry

The Grants Ferry UMMC Clinic in Flowood is a 50,000-square-foot multidisciplinary clinic housing more than 30 specialists and offering ancillary support, including labs, X-rays, CT, screening mammograms, physical therapy and pre-anesthesia visits.

From primary care (including family medicine, internal medicine, geriatrics, med-peds and pediatrics) to specialty care in both adult and pediatrics, the providers available at Grants Ferry include almost the entire spectrum of care.

Since opening in early June 2010, Grants Ferry has more than tripled its visit volume. With eight main hallways, two floors and an optical shop, 73 UMMC employees staff the site with duties ranging from lab tech to L.P.N. to R.N. to M.O.A. at registration.

As UMMC grows and space becomes more and more scarce, Grants Ferry is getting busier and busier. Some things to look forward to are increased specialties being relocated to Grant's Ferry and a pharmacy on the first floor.

Good things are happening at Grants Ferry and the staff are always pleased to be part of such a great and growing location.

 

Monitor Technicians

Monitor technicians, also known as telemetry, consists of 14 employees that are all heart. Located on 3 South, they provide 24/7 monitoring to patients in need of cardiac monitoring.

Monitor Technicians play an integral part of patient care at UMMC. They are always watching patients' rhythms and are prepared to notify the appropriate personnel when the patient's heart is in need.

Caregivers who need to know their patient's heart rate or rhythm may simply pick up the phone and dial 5-2825 to reach our friendly monitor technicians, who are ready to serve. 

 

 

Nursing Service Office

The Nursing Service Office is staffed with one administrative assistant II, four staffing specialists and a unit educator. The office is open seven days a week.

Office staff are responsible for taking all calls throughout University Hospital, the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Children, Batson Children's Hospital and the Wallace Conerly Hospital for Critical Care, as well as ancillary departments.

It is the responsibility of the NSO to notify the units and managers of the call-ins and help find replacements for the vacant shift. The office fields numerous calls throughout the day and assists unit managers in helping to find coverage for vacant shifts.

Not only does the NSO help with staffing, it also houses the hospital valuables. The office is responsible for taking all reservations for the nursing sleeping quarters (Nightingale Inn). The NSO staff also are responsible for entering the schedules of approximately 160 float pool staff members.

NSO staff are always willing to adjust their schedules to help provide coverage during extended business hours, if needed. There have been times that the office has stayed open during ice storms and water outages. Many times, the staff have volunteered to stay over to help cover these calls.

At times, the number of calls or questions that are received in the office can be overwhelming. However, staff members always maintain their composure and offer great customer service.

Patient Placement Center

Some Patient Placement Center staff include, from left, Sonji Wilborn, Tammy Barnes, Hurene Smith, Tara Bell, Noah Godfrey, Lillie Carson, Amishau Harmon and Rosalind Jaynes.
Some Patient Placement Center staff include, from left, Sonji Wilborn, Tammy Barnes, Hurene Smith, Tara Bell, Noah Godfrey, Lillie Carson, Amishau Harmon and Rosalind Jaynes.

The Patient Placement Center is comprised of a dynamic team encompassing both clinical and non-clinical staff. Most of our patient placement coordinators have been at the organization for 20 years or more.

Our registered nurses have a melting pot of various clinical background experience in health care. Ultimately, we have a team that is quite knowledgeable about the importance of embracing change within our organization, especially when it comes to capacity, acuity and managing placement in Epic for our patient population at UMMC.

We consider ourselves the "heartbeat" of the hospital, with many vessels flowing through our department. Our team is responsible for bed placement for all of our hospitals and critical care units. We coordinate transfers into our facility from all over the state.

We provide the "one stop shop" with admissions for our clinics, NICU, PICU, ED, surgery and other areas, such as interventional radiology, GI lab and the new Heart Station.

The Patient Placement Center is keeping patients moving at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Our hours of operation are 24/7.

"We will leave the light on for you." To contact us, call 4-2140.

Pediatric Cath Lab

Batson Children's Hospital accommodates the Pediatric Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory in the basement of BCH. The laboratory provides services for invasive and immediate pre-procedure and post-procedure care.

The laboratory is unique in that one procedure room operates as a diagnostic/interventional and comprehensive electrophysiology laboratory.

The same staff is trained to function in all settings. These duties include monitoring of the patient and documentation of the procedure, scrub personnel, circulating staff and one conscious sedation provider when general anesthesia is not being used, as well as charge entry, data collection/entry and inventory management.

The staff is comprised of three R.N.s, one R.R.T. and four physicians, including two electrophysiologists and two Interventional cardiologists.

The hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 7:45 a.m.-4:30 p.m., but an "on-call" staff is available at all other times for urgent or emergent procedures.

Interventional procedures performed in pediatric cardiac catheterization lab include: valuloplasty of the aortic or pulmonary valves, angioplasty and/or stent of narrowed vessels, such as peripheral pulmonary arteries or the aorta, ASDs, VSDs, PDAs, transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement, balloon or blade septostomy, pulmonary hypertension assessment, and pre-transplant workups. Lab staff also perform myocardial biopsies, EP studies, radiofrequency and cryoablation, pacemaker/implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, loop recorder insertion, cardioversion, occasional central line insertions/retrieval, and pericardial or pleural taps.

Some of these of services are not offered anywhere else in the state and some are only offered in select centers around the country.