Patty Walsh
May 2017
Patty
Walsh
,
BSN, RN, AE-C
Pediatric Pulmonary Clinic
Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
Milwaukee
,
WI
United States

 

 

 

It is a pleasure working with Patty Walsh, RN in our Division of Pediatric Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine. She takes great pride in her work and strives to exceed expectations. She is a valued member of the team and is a great resource for our families as well as the physicians and other nurses in our group.
Patty's nursing assessments inclinicare concise and accurate. We rely on our nurses to do much of the education for families. Patty often does this at the beginning of the visit as she is doing the initial assessment. For example, she may identify that the child's asthma symptoms are not under good control because he/she is not using the spacer or is only using the medication PRN. She works with the family up front rather than after the physician has seen the patients. The families seem to appreciate this because they can report to the physician "I know we weren't doing this right, but the nurse has already explained…" Most recently she achieved the status of Certified Asthma Educator and we are looking forward to what she will bring to our patients with this new role.
Our division has a relatively high volume of patient phone calls. Especially in these recent economictimes, our patients often try to reach out to us by phone rather than taking time off from work or missing school to attend a clinic visit. During phone triage, Patty obtains the appropriate information from families and quickly assimilates it. Most times when she calls the physician, she has identified the issue and has formulated a plan. Her call to the physician is simply to verify the plan.
Personally, I often find myself saving the more complex telephone interactions for Monday when I know Patty is managing the phones. Patty is quite adept at coordinating treatment plans,follow ups, and interactions with outside agencies. She is inquisitive and will track down information about a patient that we need to make their story complete. She perseveres in tracking down the necessary information. She interacts well with the other agencies (e.g., home care companies or other hospitals) and doesn't give up until she has obtained the information she is seeking. We affectionately refer to her a "Patty PI."
Finally, Patty often takes the lead on administrative nursing tasks within our division. This includes creating or updating policies, standardizing phone triage intakes and working with CHW on medication reconciliation issues.