This week we celebrate National Nurses Week. Shady Grove Fertility has a team of over 125 nurses devoted to patient care – ranging from your primary nurse, nurses in our surgical centers, and resource nurses who help improve nursing processes throughout our practice. Infertility nurses come from a variety of training backgrounds, but the vast majority have previous experience in Women’s Health Care. Each nurse plays an indispensable role in making treatment go smoothly and improving the patient experience.
Patients often develop a deep connection to their primary fertility nurse. These nurses are often on the phone with patients giving status updates and helping explain the next steps in a patient’s treatment plan developed by you and your physician.
What Patients of Shady Grove Fertility Can Expect from their Primary Fertility Nurse
Following the New Patient appointment, where patients often meet with their primary nurse in person, your nurse will contact you to answer any additional questions. Your nurse will aid you in scheduling initial testing appointments and to ensure that these test results return promptly. Unique to this medical specialty, fertility testing and treatment involves specific timing around the menstrual cycle that for some may be unpredictable requiring efficient and effective attention. To be an infertility nurse requires exquisite organization to detail and timing to care for these special patients.
Your nurse will also call following each appointment to keep active communication with their patients. Our nurses truly do their best to make sure this expectation is met. While many times patients will speak with their nurses directly when they call, at other times nurses will need to verify information with the physician; in those cases, the call backs will be a bit later. They work very hard to make sure they can attend to everyone as soon as possible. A primary nurse’s day is broken up into answering phone calls, meeting with new patients and follow-up patients, timing out patient’s upcoming protocol dates, ordering medication, and teaching injection classes, to name just a few activities. Given that, if you are having difficulty reaching your nurse and need assistance, please refer to the following schedules to reach a contact:
- Answering Service for Emergency Questions – 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. is answered daily by one nurse with a physician on-call for questions. Patients should call (800) 239-5613.
- Weekend and Holiday Service — 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. is answered by a nurse for non-emergency calls at (301) 340-1188. Patients may be prompted to leave a message and the call will be returned within 30 minutes.
- Weekend Front Desk Line to Make/Change/Cancel Appointments – 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Patients should call (301) 340-1188. There may be a prompt to leave a message and calls will be returned as soon as possible.
What the Shady Grove Fertility Nurses are Saying
“Being a fertility nurse is a wonderful calling. Fertility nurses get to use their scientific minds, as well as compassionate hearts and caring skills, to help patients on one of the most difficult and emotional journeys of their lives. Nurses give, but also receive. We give our knowledge, understanding, and advice to our patients. But we receive our patient’s joys, tears and fears, failures and successes. It is simultaneously an overwhelming, encompassing, and the most gratifying relationship to share with a patient.”
– Kathy Bugge, RN
“After 35 years as a Nurse and several years as an infertility patient before “resolving” to remain childless, my work as a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner at Shady Grove Fertility has proven rewarding from a variety of perspectives. Most of our patients don’t realize how many staff members at Shady Grove Fertility have struggled with infertility and may or may not have ended up as parents. During my first few years on the Donor Team, I worked as a Primary Nurse coordinating the stimulation cycles of donors with recipients of donor egg. More than once, I heard, “but you don’t understand” when discussing infertility, negative pregnancy tests, feelings regarding “everyone else who is pregnant”, etc. Most infertility patients feel that there are not many other women who have had the same experiences they have had, when in fact there are many, including many of the staff members, who are cheering them along.”
– Margaret Ann Connors, CRNP
This week, Shady Grove Fertility honors our dedicated team of nurses – thank you for all the hard work over the past 22 years!
If you are having trouble conceiving, it may be time to speak with a fertility specialist, please call Shady Grove Fertility to schedule a consultation at 1-877-971-7755 or click here.
