Hawkeye Reporter

University Of Iowa Hospital & Clinics recently issued the following announcement.

For many in health care, a sign of success is a patient recovering, a new surgical technique at use, or a research project given the greenlight to proceed. But for Trisha Gardner and Health Care Information Services (HCIS), a successful project often means end users don’t even know about it.

“We work a lot behind the scenes,” says Gardner, lead application developer in HCIS. “A good sign a project went well is when our end users and patients don’t know about it. That means everything’s functioning well and going smoothly.”

Although the pandemic has increased the quantity and urgency of their work, Garnder says it has shown her team how much they’re capable of.

“We know we can react quickly and be efficient,” she says. “The pandemic’s shown us what we can accomplish when we pull together and really pour our heart and soul into our work.”

Changing pace

Whether it’s the MyChart symptom tracker, vaccine scheduling, or pre-procedural COVID-19 testing, our quickly changing environment requires support from HCIS.

“For us, and probably for most teams, COVID has changed the urgency on our projects,” says Gardner. “The last two years have been such a whirlwind.”

Gardner says that collaboration among the HCIS team has been crucial in getting the job done.

“Everyone has come together to help one another,” she says. “We’ve stayed late; we’ve pitched in when needed. Sometimes we’ll learn about a major change on a Friday afternoon and we push through the weekend to make sure everything’s implemented by Monday morning before patients are able to log on.”

In those situations, Gardner notes that it is the collaboration and trust among her team—and countless others in HCIS—that keep things running smoothly.

“In this environment, you have to be able to lean on each other,” she says. It’s what Gardner enjoys most about her job.

“The people make my role so enjoyable; they’re what makes it worth it,” she says. “When you can look back and say, ‘We made an end user happy,’ and realize that you had a little part to play in that, it really makes you feel good.”

Original source can be found here.