Clinical Health Coach Profile
Stacy Gritten
Stacy Gritten
| Julie: | Tell us a little bit about yourself… where you work and what kinds of patients you work with? |
| Stacy: | I work at Siouxland Community Health Center in Sioux City, IA. We are a community health center so we deal with a lot of people with no insurance or people with minimal benefits, lower socio-economic and also mentally ill. I’m an RN and a Case Manager. |
| Julie: | Are you seeing these patients on an ongoing basis? |
| Stacy: | Yes, we have our own panel as case manager… they can come see us any day of the week. They don’t need appointments. We also see them when they come to see the physician. We try to see them once a week if we can. We may spend 1 1/2 hours with a patient or some just 10-15 minutes. As long as it takes, we stay with our patient. |
| Julie: | What has your experience been with health coaching? |
| Stacy: | This was all new to me. I was an RN on the floor and became a case manager a year ago. So I started with a blank slate as far as case management. Being able to coach patients and spend time with them is a whole new experience for me. |
| Julie: | What excites you most about health coaching? |
| Stacy: | As a nurse, I did not have time to spend with my patients. We did what orders the doctor gave us and then the patient was on his way. The role that I’m in now allows me to learn so much more about the patient, their life and what barriers they are up against. It changes the whole playing field, when you can learn so much more from them. |
| Julie: | Has having more time with patients changed or altered your approach with patients? |
| Stacy: | When we sit down with them and learn more about them, it may completely change the way we deal with them. I work with a lot of diabetics. I can go in and work with my patients and come up with a diet plan. Sitting down with them and listening, I may find out they don’t have any food to eat throughout the day. The doctor may not know that. So this has actually allowed me to develop a relationship with my patient. |
| Julie: | That brings me to my next question. How do you equip yourself to become a player in the world of population health? |
| Stacy: | Here at our clinic, we do a screening and it’s called social determinants. It’s a survey that our patients can take that asks questions like, “Do you have food? Are you fearful at home? Do you have clothing?” If they don’t have the necessities of life we, as case managers, make sure they get what they need. If you don’t start with the necessities, you are not going to be able to alter a diet or get them medications. |
| Julie: | What were the most valuable skills that you developed as a result of health coach training? |
| Stacy: | I have seen my patients just be thankful that someone is listening to them. A big thing they stressed in health coach training is listening to the patient. I have been physically sitting down and really listening to them and engaging them. We have a hundred things going on in our lives, but once you sit down and actually listen to a patient, they seem to open up and tell you everything. If you genuinely care, especially with my patients, because my patients feel like people don’t care. I’m just another person in the flock. If you go in there with a caring attitude, they develop a bond with you right from the beginning and I like that. I like to have my patients know that I care. |
| Julie: | Can you share a success you have had? |
| Stacy: | I had a patient come in and she was a new patient to our clinic and she had a heart attack right before Thanksgiving and she was in to get medicine. We also found out that she was pre-diabetic. So, I walked in and started talking with her and she opened up to me and told me she was anorexic and had been for 56 years and had never told anyone. I spent 2 1/2 hours with her and she cried and she was so sad, was hurting and told me she had never told anyone the things she was telling me. I said to her that I’m not looking down on her and I’m thankful that she came to me and let her know that I was there to help her. She disclosed things that had happened to her during her life and told me that no one had ever listened to her that way I did. |
| Julie: | Wow… That is so powerful. |
| Stacy: | I cannot stress enough, that if I had not sat down and truly listened to her and put it on both of us to get through, she may not have opened up to me. We made simple goals and I didn’t put any expectations on her. I told her I couldn’t wait to see her in a couple weeks. She cried and we hugged. She knew that I was truly plugged in to her and that made her feel like a million bucks. She is on my mind every day and I hope she knows we are a safe place that she came come and I will be there for her. |
| Julie: | How do you measure outcomes? |
| Stacy: | We have a separate entity called Eye 2 Eye. They monitor all of our numbers. It’s a very, very good system. We have a schedule like a doctor would have a schedule. They look at the overall numbers of patient success and satisfaction. |
| Julie: | What advice would you have for colleagues that may be considering health coach training? |
| Stacy: | Talk back question skills, listening, readiness ruler, how to ask open-ended questions and all the things they taught us in training may have been things we kind of new, but when they explained them more to us, it was so much better. It needs to be a priority for anyone in medical field. I can’t express enough how it allows you to get to know your patients better. The more we know about our patients, the easier it is to take care of them. After a couple of years, it would almost be good to take a refresher course to keep it top of mind. |