"Early in my career, I was hired onto an imaging team as the only person trained and ready to do sonography on patients in the department. Our team was very short staffed when I started and I was thrown into the department with just two short days of orientation into the organization and the departments. It wasn't hard to hit the ground running with patients as the department had a backlog of patients awaiting ultrasounds and I distinctly remember my first week of seeing patients as extremely hectic and fun at the same time. During this time, I took an individual approach with each patients and maintained a focus on their care and imaging, even knowing in the back of my mind that more patients were awaiting my care. Being so green, I needed to take a little extra time with each patient and my boss was very forgiving of this fact. For new patients, he approached our schedulers to give me five more minutes with each patient to avoid long waits in our lobby area of the facility. Looking back, if I had rushed each patient and not taken an individualized approach, my patient numbers may have looked great on paper but I would have been shortchanging each one of their personalized care and I'm so glad I took the approach I did as a new tech."

"As a midwife, my patients are my top priority because I am working with them in one of the most life altering experiences that they will have in their lifetime. Last year, one of my expecting mothers was experiencing some complications when she hit her eighth month of pregnancy and there was a significant risk of her losing her baby if action wasn't taken. In seeking approval for her to be hospitalized over the final month of her pregnancy, I approached my director about finding coverage for my other patients in the meantime so I could focus the majority of my time on her care. I personally contacted my other patients and let them know that they'd be in great hands with my colleagues and all were very understanding and appreciative of the care I was focusing on my patient and several said they'd want the same if they were in her shoes. After coming to the inpatient unit and after close monitoring after a week, we induced labor and a health and happy baby boy was born. My swift action really helped make a potentially unfortunate and sad situation a happy outcome for all!"