Recently we took a short trip to a hotel with an indoor water park. Rylan was very excited for this trip as we had told her last summer about the indoor water park with a pirate ship. However, things did not work out for us to take her until recently. So there was much anticipation and excitement around the water slides. After a Target run to get a new life jacket since I forgot to pack one, we were ready for the slides! Or so we thought…
When we got to the pool area and headed to the slides all of a sudden Rylan did not want to go down the slides. We watched the other kids go down, and even got to the top of a few of the slides, but then she turned around and went down the steps. Rylan said they were scary. After a little while of not being able to talk her into trying to go down, I finally decided to go down one myself and have her just watch. It certainly has been awhile since I have been down a water slide - even one of the little ones. However, I knew if she would try one she would enjoy it. So, I decided to show her instead of tell her. After watching me go down, she was able to get enough courage up to ride on my lap down the small water slides. By the end of the couple days she was going down the big water slides and loving it! She asked to go 15 times before we came home. Certainly a change from when they were too scary.
Our water slide experience can be related to many projects here at Iowa Specialty Hospital. Specifically, I can think of our new Direct Scheduling via My Chart. I know that some of us were very excited to be able to offer this to our patients and could see the long-term benefit. While others had a few hesitations on how it would work and affect the flow of patients. Therefore, the team leading the project started with a small go-live so we could really see how it was going to work and answer those questions for everyone. I can say the outcome so far has been very positive (similar to the water slide final outcome). Sometimes it just takes one person to have the vision and show everyone what is possible. Patients have had great feedback about how easy it is to make their appointments, and they truly appreciate it. I scheduled an appointment last week via My Chart in a just a few minutes. So if you haven’t tried it and need to see one of our providers I highly recommend you give it a try!
