Nurse finds endless career-building opportunities
In the nursing profession at Kaiser Permanente
Meet Valerie Fong, RN, MSN |
When Valerie Fong, RN, MSN, was in nursing school at California State University Fresno in the early 1990s, she took a messenger job at Kaiser Permanente’s medical center in Fresno to help pay the bills.
“I was driving this huge truck with a lift gate on back, delivering supplies, stocking storerooms, and transporting medical records and lab specimens to different buildings,” she recalls. “I remember feeling an urgency to deliver the patients’ medical records in time for their appointments. I thought, how could the doctors know what’s going on with their patients if they didn’t have their records?”
Her next job was working in Outpatient Medical Records, where she filed literally thousands of pieces of paper on each shift.
“Every day when I arrived at work,” she says, “there were mounds and mounds of papers to handle. I spent the whole shift pulling out files and sticking the papers in. I was always so concerned about making sure each piece of medical information went into the right place in the right medical record.”
Electronic medical record
Since then, Fong, who will be celebrating 15 years of employment with Kaiser Permanente in October, has worked as a staff nurse on the Medical/Surgical unit, a charge nurse in outpatient Adult Medicine and Urgent Care, assistant department manager and manager on the same Medical/Surgical unit where she started her nursing career, and as Outreach Manager for Nursing Pathways.
Today, she has a new position that brings her back around to the place where it all began – making sure medical records get to the right place at the right time. Only now, the medical records are electronic. And instead of delivering them with a hand truck, Fong’s job is to help ensure that all patient data is readily available, minute-by-minute, at every clinician’s fingertips.
“KP HealthConnect is the new electronic medical record system being implemented at all Kaiser Permanente facilities across the country,” she says. “As Patient Care Services Practice Leader for KP HealthConnect, my job is to ensure that the functionality and technology supports the patient care delivery workflows that occur in the normal day-to-day life of the nursing staff. Our eventual goal is to have a completely paperless medical record for our members that reflects the care and services provided and received from any of our KP settings.”
In the past, says Fong, inpatient nurses have carried their “nursing brains” around with them – slips of paper listing all their patients and planned events for the day. These might include treatment plans, medications, code status, diagnosis, age, and other bits of clinical information they would need throughout the day.
“With KP HealthConnect,” she adds, “every member of the nursing staff will have access to all that information – and much, much more – in an electronic version of the ‘nursing brain,’ which is constantly updated to provide the best and latest information about the patient. They’ll have immediate access to new orders, lab and procedure results, and assessment data the moment the information is entered by other members of the patient care team. Electronic documentation at the bedside will be quick and easy, and they won’t have to carry around scraps of paper in their pockets. ”
Always interested in science
As a little girl growing up in Southern California, Fong was always interested in science. After finishing her undergraduate work in biology, she considered becoming a veterinarian.
“My mom always told me I ought to be nurse,” she says, “but I thought, no, nurses just give shots and empty bed pans. I don’t want to do that.”
Then she started volunteering with a hospice program, and everything changed. “The nurse I worked with opened up a wealth of information about nursing and the opportunities the profession provided,” she says. “I saw nurses providing comfort care to their patients and compassionate support for families, and I liked that aspect of nursing. I learned that the nursing profession offered flexible hours, an opportunity to work whenever I wanted in whatever setting I chose, and a chance to switch specialties if I got bored with one or wanted to expand my knowledge.”
Meanwhile, Fong remembered something her pediatrician had told her when she was receiving care at Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center as a child.
“He said something about there being a lot of opportunities at Kaiser Permanente,” she recalls. “I’ve never forgotten that.”
And so, when Fong ended up in nursing school at Cal State Fresno, she chose Kaiser Permanente as her employer – even if it meant delivering and filing medical records until she got her nursing degree – to get behind the doors of an organization she’d heard so much about.
“My pediatrician was right,” she says. “During my nursing career, I’ve had an opportunity to be an inpatient nurse, an outpatient nurse, a charge nurse, and a department manager. I’ve had wonderful experiences in patient care while being given many opportunities to develop myself as a leader.”
Everything led up to this
Fong has taken every opportunity to participate in the design and build of the electronic medical record system. She knew that KP HealthConnect was coming, and she wanted to be involved in the cutting edge of system development.
“Every position I’ve had at Kaiser Permanente has built upon the previous positions, and each has led up to what I’m doing now,” she says. “I know what it’s like to be a front line nurse. I know what it’s like to be a nursing manager. I have inside knowledge of how the organization works, and I understand where the gaps exist between practice and the paper medical record system.”
Fong also knows that KP HealthConnect will make it easier for nurses to document all the good work they do at bedside.
“I want to help make the system as seamless and useful as possible,” she says, “so that nurses will have more time to talk and interact with their patients. That’s the dream of every nurse at every facility, and I’m in a position to help make that happen.”
What’s next for Valerie Fong?
“I always leave the door open,” she says. “I love the wealth of opportunity that the nursing profession offers, and that Kaiser Permanente offers. If you just hold onto your vision and believe in your dreams, things happen. And they definitely happen here.”
(Posted August 12, 2005)