Every day, people arrive at JPS for the first time and need a little help finding their way.
Their first stop – the information desk on the first floor of the main campus.
There, they are likely to meet Carla Hunter-Tomlinson, one of the Patient Care Ambassadors who help make sure that their visits start out right. Carla greets JPS guests and gives them directions. This patient stops by to locate radiology. Another patient has an appointment in the lab. Another visitor is here to see a newborn nephew.
“I smile and try to give them a little reassurance,” Carla says. “I have the most awesome job! It’s very fun.”
It can sometimes take a little detective work to determine where each guest needs to be. Sometimes, she says, it turns out they need to head to a different JPS building. That’s what happened with a recent patient, a Fort Worth woman arrived at the main hospital only to find out that she needed to get to the JPS Professional Office Complex down the street. The woman has trouble walking even short distances and Carla offered to accompany her to the clinic to make sure she arrived safe. After the patient’s appointment, she was surprised when Carla appeared with a wheelchair to take the patient back to the parking garage.
“I sincerely appreciated Carla’s friendliness, humor and attentiveness,” the patient wrote in a letter to Carla’s supervisor. Carla was happy to help. “If my grandmother was here, I would want the same thing for her,” she says.
In the mornings, Carla meets with patients who are about to be discharged from units in the Patient Tower. She visits with them about their hospital stay, gathering feedback and finding out if there are problems that can be resolved before the patient leaves JPS.
“Sometimes they don’t understand their plans for care and home and any follow up appointments, so we connect them with their doctor or nurse so that everything is clear,” she says. “We try to knock out any problems before they are discharged. We want them to have a good feeling about JPS when they leave our care.”