We are so proud of two members of our team who were featured prominently recently in the news in Kansas City. In case you missed it, here’s what has the Swope Health family beaming:
In the Kansas City Business Journal, Dr. Naiomi Jamal was listed as one of the “20 to Know: These healthcare professionals keep KC hale and hearty.”
In the Ingram’s Magazine, Rachel Melson, DNP, was listed as one of the “2022 Heroes in Healthcare.”
Here’s what they said:
Excerpted from the Business Journal:
Dr. Naiomi Jamal
Chief quality officer, Swope Health
Practicing as a primary care physician these days is challenge enough. But that’s just the start of Jamal’s job. As chief quality officer, she leads Swope Health’s quality and improvement efforts, as well as the organization’s work in population health that looks
both at the patient and resource-allocation sides of the equation.
Jamal received a medical degree in Pakistan, then did residencies in family medicine and general preventive medicine and public health at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She also has a master’s in health from UTMB.
Excerpted from Ingram’s:
Rachel Melson, Swope Health
Call it the Melson Mission Statement: “In nursing, you learn to treat others with compassion and as an equal. And you approach every interaction with a patient in your care with your whole heart, every time.” So says nurse practitioner Rachel Melson of Swope Health.
She’s a native of Raytown who flirted with the idea of a law degree—right up to her first day at Rockhurst University. “I started wondering about a career that would allow me to help others in a more hands-on way,” she says. “The day of registration, I surprised my parents with a change to nursing. It was the best decision I have ever made.”
She worked for years in the ICU ward at Research Medical Center, but when her final clinical rotation for nurse practitioner took her to Swope Health, “I finally saw where Iwas called to be,” she says. “My critical-thinking skills that I developed from years in the ICU armed me with the tools to help an underserved community in ways I didn’t know were possible.”
Medicine, Melson says, can be very algorithmic: You have X disease, you get X workup, and then you get X medicine /treatment/ education. “But there is not a perfect algorithm for a person who is living in a tent, has several significant medical conditions, no access to clean water, and no way to store their medicine,” she says. “You have to think outside the box, know your community and its resources, and want to go the extra mile for your patients.”
The real appeal of nursing, she says, wasn’t apparent until she was already in nursing school. “Being a nurse is about truly wanting to care for others without any bias for their circumstance and a desire to help from a position of a peer, rather than the perceived superordinate position of other professions,” she says.
A self-described lifelong learner, she pursued the highest degree possible to achieve the most significant impact: “Every day I am given the opportunity to make meaningful changes to the health of others in the exam room, in the community, and even in the classroom.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash
