Despite undergoing a scary illness earlier this year, Kent Larson is now on the mend. He said this was largely due to the quality care provided by nursing staff at the hospital, as well as making use of the outpatient services available at the Sakakawea Medical Center Treatment Room that allowed Kent to spend much of his healing process at home. Kent is pictured here in that treatment room where he received his daily IV antibiotics. Beside him is Molly Nelson, RN, Nursing Care Coordinator, who helped care for him through his healing process.
A quick and comfortable option for patient care
By Daniel Arens, Hazen Star Editor
While having a large hospital facility and a team of quality healthcare providers and staff is comforting for patients in need of care, it is still ideal for these patients to be able to primarily recover at home, rather than stay for days or weeks at a time at the hospital.
In order to provide the necessary care while also allowing patients a simple in-and-out process for their appointments, Sakakawea Medical Center in Hazen is working to expand and promote their Treatment Room program, with a focus on outpatient service.
“The Treatment Room and outpatient services, it is something I have done since I started here, but it has really evolved to include new services,” Molly Nelson, RN Nursing Care Coordinator at Sakakawea Medical Center (SMC), said. “People used to have to stay at the hospital much longer, cause providing these services with outpatient care just wasn’t something we thought that we could do. Now there is more focus on keeping patients out of the hospital when possible and in their own homes.”
For one local couple, having access to this outpatient care greatly eased a long recovery process.
“It was so nice to be able to sleep in my own bed,” Kent Larson said. “I was just so glad I was home.” Kent is originally from Hazen; he and his wife Mary Jo live in Beulah, where they have been for 40 years.
Following a surgery at Mayo Clinic in January, Kent developed a urinary tract infection. The infection went into his bloodstream, resulting in Kent developing sepsis, a condition when the body's immune system overreacts to an infection or injury.
“He spent a day at the hospital here in Hazen,” Kent’s wife Mary Jo said. “They thought they could stabilize it, but it got rampant.”
Due to nursing staff shortages statewide for ICU beds, Kent was unable to find a bed in North Dakota and was flown to Billings, Mont. for a 9-day recovery period.
Ultimately, the emergency care was successful, but the process left Kent very weak and in need of continued doctoring. Mary Jo said, once he returned from ICU, he went straight back to swing bed at SMC, with continued IV antibiotics and rehab.
“We thought Kent was just fine,” she said. “Then, about a month and a half later, Kent was not fine.”
Kent continued to need IV antibiotics, but he also continued to see gradual improvement in his mobility and functions. This led his nurses at SMC to decide that it would be best to let Kent return home while continuing to receive care through the outpatient services at the SMC Treatment Room.
“Every morning at 7:30 for three weeks, I came to get my antibiotics,” Kent said. “Seven days a week, it did not matter.”
“Something worked there, Kent,” Nelson said in response. “You’ve been healthy.”
Having access to the Treatment Room allowed Kent and Mary Jo to live normal lives as much as possible, even as Kent continued to undergo treatment in the mornings. Larson said that, without the Treatment Room, Kent would have had to spend the entirety of those 28 days in the hospital. Instead, he was able to do a quick in-and-out at the start of each day and have the rest of his time at home.
“He came in for his medication, stayed for an hour, then went back home,” Nelson said. “That was great.”
The room in question allowed Kent to relax on a bed and watch TV (Kent said the nurses provided him with recommendations for shows) while IV fluids were administered through a PICC line. Nelson said the room can be used for many outpatient services, including blood and blood product transfusions, rehydration therapy, electrolyte replacement therapy, antibiotic therapy, iron infusions, specialty medications, rabies prophylaxis, CADD pump removal, PICC/port care and wound care.
“It is a really important service,” Kara Pulver, Director of Marketing at SMC, said. “Our community doesn’t always realize there are so many things we can do here without people having to go to Bismarck.”
Kent’s healing process continues. He does not like to stand up too fast, and he will continue to need O2 for oxygen due to damage to his lungs from the sepsis. But he is doing much better, both due to the care he received while in the hospital and to the treatments that were easily accessible to him through the Treatment Room after he left.
The Larsons praised the care Kent received from SMC staff while he stayed in the hospital earlier in the year.
“When we were in the hospital, they were very good at coordinating things, like when he needed to see a specialist,” Mary Jo said. “Everything was all coordinated by Molly. All I had to do was take him down there.”
“I think it’s unique to small town hospitals, where you have people making those calls and scheduling those things on your behalf,” Nelson said. “You can focus on healing; we worry about all the other details.”
“The big thing for me when I came here for the first time was that I had known Molly for a while,” Kent said. “When she said, ‘We’re going to take care of you,” that was such a relief, because I knew she would. And everyone was tremendous. From the cleaning ladies all the way to the top people here, they were all the nicest. All of them took time to visit with me.
“I just can’t say enough about all the nurses here. They were excellent,” he added.
“I think Kent liked it better here than he did at home sometimes,” Mary Jo joked. “But really, the Treatment Room was so nice. We were watching the basketball playoffs in this nice, comfy room. And the care was excellent.”
Kent added that he was impressed by the follow-up the staff did, calling him and making sure he was doing all right even after his actual treatment period was over. He said this was another benefit to small-town hospitals where you know everybody, and they know you as well.
Nelson said people can contact her at 701-748-7288 if they have questions about the Treatment Room. She said they are able to work with outside providers as well and can take patients from other hospitals (like Sanford and St. Alexius) who are looking for outpatient services.
