Prompt #3 - Exploring Communication

by: Tyler Frasher

For this prompt, I was able to interview my cousin, Cheryl Abernathy, to help explore communication in the nursing field.

Ms. Cheryl Abernathy works as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner in the neonatal intensive care unit at Sparrow Regional Medical Center. She has been doing this for a year and a half. Prior to her job at Sparrow, she worked at Hurley Medical Center and Genesys Regional Medical Center simultaneously as a nurse practitioner for five years. Before that, she also spent nine years at Hurley Medical Center working as an RN.

The daily life of Ms. Abernathy is quite busy and full of tasks that must get done. She begins her twelve hour shifts by checking to see what patients she has for the day as soon as she arrives to the unit. She can see anywhere from eight to fifteen patients a day depending on their census. She then looks up all their information including vitals, intake and output, and lab work and then she makes a plan for them for the rest of the day. These plans are then discussed as she makes her rounds with the physician, beginning at nine o'clock in the morning and going until two or three in the afternoon if they're busy. Additionally, Abernathy is require to attend any delivery where the baby is deemed high risk. This means that while she is trying to visit and work with her patients, she can be called to go attend a delivery at any moment. On top of that, she is called to evaluate the baby if something seems to be wrong and she is responsible for consulting with parents who have the potential of delivering a high risk baby.

When it comes to communicating in this field, most of it is computerized. However, Abernathy is responsible for writing a daily progress note for each patient as well as writing out their daily plan. This helps with billing and it helps inform the nurse of the daily plan if he/she was not present during rounds. It also helps the night person see what has been done for the day. Several different types of notes even have templates built into the program to make documenting easier including, prescriptions, which are printed off and given to the patient at discharge. However if anything out of the ordinary must be completed, she always handwrites the note that way there is a paper trail and she can make sure it was documented. 

A main misconception of the field that stands out to Ms. Abernathy is that people think a nurse practitioner and bedside nurse are the same thing solely based on the word "nurse" being in both of the titles. She feels as though physician's assistants are more respected just because of the word "physician" in their title even though they both do the same work that a physician does. She does her part by trying to inform her patients and their families when they ask to speak to the doctor instead. However, nurse practitioners are becoming more popular and Ms. Abernathy hopes that with changes in state guidelines and how they can practice that nurse practitioners will be more respected and accepted across the country.



Sources
Abernathy, Chery. Personal interview. 4 March 2017