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WINNER: Non-Physician
Jaimee Haan, PT, CWS
Program Manager, Physical Therapy Wound Management, Indiana University Health
It sounds odd at first, hearing Jaimee Haan talk about her devotion to wound care.
Recalling the eight months she worked in a nursing home early in her career, she talks about the first wound she ever treated.
(IBJ photo/Eric Learned)“It was kind of love at first site,” she said, explaining that’s when she knew what she wanted to do.
Pressed to elaborate, Haan pours out what it means to her to be able to help someone recover from a wound.
“Some of these people have had wounds for years and are embarrassed.” One of her patients has been barred by her family from seeing her first grandchild until her wound is healed. “It has such an impact on their life.”
Back in the nursing home, Haan’s first wound patient had a painful heel ulcer that wouldn’t heal. Haan would walk by the elderly woman’s room and hear her moaning. Haan’s care caused the wound to close and the pain to subside. And the moaning stopped.
“Even though she was bed-bound and had Alzheimer’s disease, to know that in the last years of her life she didn’t have that pain was a ‘wow’ moment. I thought, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’”
Haan, 37, has been devoting her time to wound care ever since, not just healing the wounds themselves but advocating for better, more effective ways to deliver wound care at Indiana University Health. For her efforts, she is the winner of the Health Care Heroes award in the Non-Physician category.
When Haan joined the IU Health Methodist Hospital wound team in 2001, she was one of two physical therapists tending to wounds. There was another wound team, composed of nurses, but the efforts of the two teams weren’t integrated and there was little communication between them.
Several years later, Haan suggested the teams pool their efforts. Knowing that both teams were understaffed and that patients often ended up being referred to the wrong team initially, she suggested they do triage together to take advantage of their complementary strengths. Haan even volunteered to be on call in the middle of the night to make sure patients were referred to the right clinician.
Now they are essentially one team, with 25 physical therapists and six nurses. Haan, who in 2012 was promoted from team leader to program manager for the physical therapy wound management team, is now responsible for maintaining IU Health’s unique multidisciplinary approach to wound care.
“Nurses and physical therapists don’t usually play in the same sandbox,” said Haan, who carefully integrates new employees into the system and works closely with the nursing team leader to make sure the collaboration is going smoothly.
Along the way, Haan has implemented some notable improvements, like making sure all patients who arrive with a lower-extremity wound get a vascular screening at the wound clinic right away rather than being referred to a vascular surgeon or a separate lab. In one case, the screening identified a coronary blockage in a patient that led to emergency surgery that likely saved the patient’s life.
“It required enormous persistence to acquire the equipment, establish best practice protocol, and train the staff” to perform testing, said Pauline Flesch, executive director of rehabilitation and fitness services at IU Health, in nominating Haan for the Health Care Heroes award.
More recently, Haan was instrumental in developing a proposal that in April will result in a wound management outpatient clinic that is twice the size of the current facility.
The larger facility will provide the physical space to better accommodate the clinic’s larger role. It has become the first point of contact with many wound patients. Rather than send the worst cases to the ER or refer them to a specialist outside the building, a variety of specialists rotates through the clinic.
“We’re creating a one-stop shop,” Haan said. “Patients shouldn’t have to go to five appointments to get one problem addressed.”
Haan said one reason she takes wound care so seriously is because there isn’t a physician specialty that focuses on it. “There aren’t that many people who know how to provide the right environment for the body to heal itself. Doing that and teaching [patients] how to do it is so rewarding.”
Flesch said whether Haan is researching how to set up the most effective clinic or sharing her clinical expertise, which has been the subject of several published articles, “Jaimee’s focus is always ‘patients first.’”
Said coworker Laura Guntz, a lymphatic physical therapist: “Hands down, Jaimee is the most dedicated person I have worked with. She encourages us to be lifelong learners and to be on top of current practice. She is a great resource and mentor; I feel truly lucky to work with her.”•
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