Saint Mary’s Hospital Same Day Surgery and PACU Find Success

The familiar adage, “preparation is the key to success,” certainly rang true for Saint Mary’s Hospital’s PACU and Same Day Surgery departments during TogetherCare go-live. Led by Dawn Lavoie, BSN, RN, Perioperative Coordinator, colleagues practiced for weeks utilizing an environment called MSUP to familiarize themselves with the new Epic system. Once that platform was discontinued, colleagues worked for another two weeks with a program called the Playground.

“I encouraged the staff to play with the programs as much as they could. Every day I would ask the staff if they ‘played’ today. I would also do pop-up sessions if I was training on how to do a particular task,” said Lavoie. In addition, she said the support from the TogetherCare team has been very responsive and helpful.

“My team members are rockstars,” said Lavoie. For any departments or colleagues facing bumps in the road during the transition, her advice is to stick with it. “There are always challenges with anything new. It’ll all work out.”