Danielle L., RN, BSN, IPI’s Quality Assurance Assistant
At Independence Plus, Inc., our Quality Assurance team is vital to our success, designing policies and procedures to promote the best possible patient outcomes. We are always looking for the best and brightest team members, but we really hit the jackpot when we found our QA Assistant, Danielle L. With a passion for nursing informatics, she is a key player as IPI continues development of Electronic Medical Records for Home Nursing. IPI’s Director of Corporate Compliance, Ana Sikula, MSW, said Danielle took initiative to streamline our School Timesheet process and integrate it with the Time Discrepancy Spreadsheet to monitor and record clock-in, clock-out discrepancies. “She is focused, detailed-oriented, and works well with co-workers on all levels,” she said. “IPI is also thrilled to be adding another nurse to our QA team.” We sat down with Danielle last week to find out why she was interested in working in home healthcare and what she is learning from working with our field nurses.
Q: Tell us a little about your background and what brought you to IPI.
A: I completed my Bachelors of Science in Nursing last May. Towards the end of nursing school I learned about health informatics. I was interested in how medical records continue to evolve with technology, and how they can be used to improve patient care and outcomes. The opportunity to learn more about this area of healthcare and be a part of the transition from paper records to electronic records is what brought me to IPI.
Q: What does your job entail and what do you think you will enjoy most about your new role?
A: I am responsible for ensuring we receive patient documentation, and providing an initial quality review. I also maintain patient files, and I enjoy helping co-workers find the files they need. So far I’ve learned a lot about quality assurance and improvement, and I’m looking forward to learning more, not just in relation to documentation, but in process improvement as well. It’s satisfying to make something work more efficiently, even if it’s more challenging at first.
IPI team members celebrating Danielle, who recently passed her NCLEX and is now an RN! Congrats!
Q: What made you want to be work in the home healthcare business?
A: I didn’t know much about home health before coming to IPI, but I learned that it was a company where everyone works really hard to improve the lives of our patients, and I wanted to be a part of that too. I think it’s pretty neat that we provide care for patients – for some patients for many years – and that we’re able to personalize it not just to their needs but to their family’s needs as well.
Q: Who inspires you?
A: My parents. They’re hard-working, and have always supported and been there for me and my siblings, so I try to live up to their level of work ethic.
Q: What are you most proud of?
A: I am most proud of completing my bachelor’s degree. I took a two-year break from school to work full-time before finishing my last two years, so it felt like it took awhile!
Q: What words do you live by?
A: I think there are always multiple perspectives to an issue and it’s important to view it through different lenses.
Q: What is the one thing about yourself that you think people would be surprised to know?
A: My family is Polish, and I speak Polish (my name doesn’t look or sound very Polish, though!)
Q: If you were given an opportunity to volunteer, what cause would you support?
A: Mental health is a cause that is very important to me. I volunteered at a crisis phone line my last year of school, and I learned how essential it was for the community, and how few mental health resources exist throughout the country. There’s definitely an increasing awareness of it, but still a lot of work to be done.
Q: What have you learned so far by working with our nurses?
A: I’ve learned that their input is vital to the QA department. For instance, we recently changed a school form that is used for some of our patients. Feedback from several of our nurses helped us create the most efficient end product.
Editor’s Note: Danielle also shared the good news with us that she recently passed her NCLEX and is now an RN! Congrats from all of us at IPI!