If nurse practitioner Laura Ahn had her way, she and her Obstetrics and Gynecology patients would meet in a café. A women’s health nurse practitioner at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Dublin Center, Ahn finds connecting with women and learning about their lives to be the most enjoyable part of her workday.
“Every woman who comes into my office has a story to tell,” says Ahn in her PAMF profile video.
She finds the most rewarding part of her job to be caring for patients as they move from teen years through menopause and beyond. In particular, she enjoys helping women move through their pregnancies and become mothers.
“They’re going through this metamorphosis,” Ahn says. “All my pregnant women are beautiful.”
Established in 2000, the Office of the Patient Advocate is an independent state office in conjunction with the Department of Managed Health Care. The OPA was created to represent the interests of health plan members to get the care they deserve and to promote transparency and quality health care by publishing an annual Quality of Care Report Card.
The Palo Alto Medical Foundation is one of only a few medical groups in California that rated four out of four stars in both categories.
“Our physicians and staff are committed to providing all of our patients with superb medical care and service. The four-star rankings are truly gratifying,” said Richard Slavin, M.D., chief executive officer of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. “Measurement of performance and outcomes is critical to continuous improvement in our organization. Our focus is our mission: To enhance the well-being of the residents of our communities through compassion, excellence and innovation in health care services, education and research.”
For this statewide assessment, 17 quality measures are evaluated across a range of important health conditions, including preventive care and wellness, for rating on national standards of care.
The second rating was for patient satisfaction, collected via the Patient Assessment Survey (PAS), which assesses the patients’ experiences of care, and their service with the doctor and medical group.
“It’s exciting, it’s challenging, and it’s something that makes me feel like I’m making a significant difference in people’s lives,” he says in this video, which is part of a series highlighting the diverse voices of PAMF physicians.
“The challenge is to get a sense of who a patient is and what makes them comfortable,” Dr. Butler says. “When I’m in the operating room and taking care of a patient, there’s nothing else that goes on in my life at that time. It’s the most focused I ever am.”
On Valentine’s Day, some people got chocolate, others received flowers. But the DPR Construction workers building PAMF’s new Sunnyvale Center got a heartwarming surprise when a group of students from St. Martin’s Elementary School (next door to the site) delivered a creative collection of handmade Valentines for the crew.
“It was totally unexpected and was just a beautiful moment,” said Joseph Yau, DPR project manager. “Our team did a little storytelling about the PAMF project, and every student went away with a lollipop.”
Living life more fully and deeply is possible for everyone, says Bruce Eisendorf, M.D., a family medicine doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Santa Cruz main clinic. “Whether you have one day or 50 years more to live, have a life-threatening condition or are in intractable pain, there’s always room for improving the quality of one’s life. What’s most important is feeling a connection, some sense of peace and equanimity.”
Dr. Eisendorf has found that a person’s beliefs, state of mind and emotions have a strong impact on health. “I try to connect with people in this sense, always believing that there is hope to love, live and connect more deeply,” he says in this video, which is part of a series highlighting the diverse voices of PAMF physicians.
There is a lot of discussion in the press about the safety of vaccines in children, says Kellen Glinder, M.D., a pediatrician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. And the question often comes up in his practice. “In the United States vaccines are very well studied and very safe,” the doctor advises in this video on the topic.
“One thing is very clear: When we don’t vaccinate our children, the diseases we are protecting against reappear,” he says.
The Mandarin-speaking doctor recently moved her practice from PAMF’s Fremont Center to the Palo Alto Center campus. She says that interacting with the Chinese population is one of the highlights she enjoys about her work. “Although I am American born, I do speak Mandarin fairly well,” she says.
At first glance, having your teen join a year-round competitive sports team may seem like the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone – he or she has no time to turn into a couch potato hooked on texting and Facebook, and also has the opportunity to excel in a sport he or she loves. But before your teen signs up, you should know that teenagers’ bodies are particularly vulnerable to injury as their bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints are going through their most rapid period of growth. The intensity and “no pain, no gain” philosophy of many competitive, year-round sports teams can result in your teen sustaining serious injuries, some with lasting effects.
I originally published this entry last year as a way to help folks keep their Super Bowl Sunday from turning into a calorie blow-out (and we 49er fans may need to have our collective guards up against emotional eating to soothe our disappointment …). Enjoy!
Any idea how far you’d need to walk to work off one, measly M&M (and we’re talking plain here, not the peanut, pretzel, double-stuffed/whatever variety)? Believe it or not, you’d have to walk the entire length of a football field for something that’s not even a full bite of food!
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