In March, Paul Doll spent a three-day stay at the hospital in Hazen while receiving IV treatment for diverticulitis, receiving continual and personal care from Amanda Boyer, RN and other doctors and nurses he knew and trusted here in his hometown.
A personal touch for personal care
By: Daniel Arens, Hazen Star Editor
Sakakawea Medical Center is an impressive facility for such a rural area as Mercer County and the surrounding region, but it offers quality services and programs and even greater quality care.
For SMC staff and providers, the key is to blend professional and medical excellence with that personal touch that comes from caring for the friends and neighbors right in their own community.
“Ninety percent of the nurses here are from the community, and we have all had family in this hospital,” Amanda Boyer, RN with SMC, said. “I think that’s a big difference between the care at this hospital and many others. The community that raised me is now the community that I’m taking care of.”
A personal story about this kind of personalized care came when Hazen resident Paul Doll found himself needing to stay for an extended period in a hospital in March. “People don’t have a clue how fortunate we are here,” Paul said. “Especially when you need it, they are here, and they are just awesome.”
Paul’s story began early in March, when an unexpected scare led to a three-day stay in the hospital right in his hometown, where he knew he could count on the providers and the intentional and quality care he could receive. “I started getting sick on March 3 and 4, and it got worse on Wednesday (March 5),” Paul said. “I didn’t know what it was, I told Sherri (Doll, Paul’s wife), ‘I have a side ache.’”
When Paul’s sickness lingered and worsened at midnight of March 6/7, Sherri decided Paul needed to go to the clinic. “Britta was my provider,” Paul said, referring to Britta Julson, PA-C provider at Coal Country Community Health Center. “I got a CT scan and bloodwork.” The tests resulted in Paul being diagnosed with diverticulitis, a condition involving the inflammation of the large intestine.
“They just said that I should go somewhere, cause it was kind of serious,” Paul said. While he was put on IV antibiotics right away, the staff in Hazen said he should go to a hospital with a surgeon on hand in case his situation deteriorated, as the diverticulitis could be very dangerous.
However, when Sherri and the nurses called to Bismarck, they were told by a hospital that there was no space available for him there and that he should be sent home on antibiotics. “I was not okay with that, so I asked Britta if she could ask around,” Sherri said. During this time (on March 7), Dr. Schmit, SMC’s surgeon, was gone, so the Hazen hospital did not have a surgeon present, which is why they called to see if Paul could be hospitalized in a different hospital with a surgeon on hand.
When other hospitals did not have beds available for Paul (largely due to staffing shortages in hospitals in many locations, so that even if a physical bed is open there is not enough staff on hand to fill it), Sherri asked if Paul could stay at SMC instead. “I begged Dr. Klindworth (Dr. Jacinta Klindworth, MD) to keep him here, he needed to be in a hospital,” Sherri said. The staff at SMC agreed, and Paul was kept in the hospital from the afternoon of March 7 to the afternoon of March 10.
“We got to go to the red-carpet hospital, and that is what this is,” Paul said.
“I was so glad they would take him,” Sherri added. “We have amazing staff here.”
Paul talked about having doctors or nurses come and check up on him for 15 to 20 minutes all through his weekend stay at SMC, while Sherri noted how his pharmacist would individually check in with the doctors to discuss antibiotics. “Even on the Monday and Tuesday after I left the hospital, I had four different people, four of them, from here call me personally to check up on me and see how I was doing,” Paul said. “Seriously. That is care.”
“I know a familiar face in a scary situation is very comforting,” Amanda said.
Sherri said that, knowing Paul was receiving this personalized and dedicated care from his providers made it a lot easier for her as well to be at home and be able to relax.
Amanda said it was important that she and other providers lean into that community-based, personal care for people they know who are in need, while at the same time being professional in how they provide that care and working to the standards and expectations of their profession.
For Paul, it was not just the personal concern and care he received from each doctor individually, but the consistency of that care among different providers over the course of his stay that counted. “The continuance of care throughout that weekend from different providers was really big,” Kara Pulver, Director of Marketing at SMC, said.
“The ER was very busy, there were people coming in all the time, and the staff was always responding to that, but they also always had time for me, to come in and check on me,” Paul said.
Amanda said SMC nurses are all cross-trained in the emergency room, so that if a need arises they can provide response and care to emergency situations. In addition, she said if a call comes in right during a shift change, the previous shift workers will stay and provide the needed care while the new shift starts up. “We have more training than any one specific nurse in Bismarck, cause we see everything and have been trained in everything,” she said. “The capabilities of our hospital are remarkable, and I hope the community never takes that for granted.”
