When she’s not meeting with nursing home patients, Vicki Adolf is traveling to another long-term care facility in her red Jeep Liberty.
As a nurse coordinator in UNMC’s Department of Psychiatry, Adolf logs nearly 6,000 miles a year traveling between 11 Omaha-area nursing homes and her office on the Richard Young Center campus.
For her extraordinary service with geriatric nursing home patients, Adolf has received the December Chancellor’s Gold ‘U’ Award.
“I truly enjoy working with older patients,” Adolf said. “They’re a very vulnerable population and have a huge need for care, both physically and emotionally.”
For the past six years, Adolf has done the initial assessments on nursing home patients who are referred to UNMC’s geriatric psychiatry division. That translates into learning all she can about each patient by compiling patient histories, reviewing medical charts, doing mood and cognitive screening and interviewing all who can shed light on a patient’s condition.
Her assessment precedes a visit by UNMC’s Thomas Magnuson, M.D., William Roccaforte, M.D., or Steven Wengel, M.D., who each spend one half-day per week seeing patients in those nursing homes in Omaha, Papillion, Elkhorn and Bellevue. Adolf’s assessments make it possible for each physician, who she accompanies on patient visits, to see about 18 patients in a half-day. In all, the quartet sees 45 to 55 patients per week.
|
|
Said another nominator: “Vicki is a tireless advocate for excellence in care for geriatric psychiatry patients in her role with the nursing home consultation service.”
Although, Adolf has seen mental health illness, dementia and depression on the faces of many patients, she is passionate about helping them make each day count. “We’ve had patients over the age of 100,” she said. “We’re not going to make them think like 20-year-olds, but people still have symptoms worth treating — no matter how old they are.
“I’m so impressed with our doctors who are dealing with illnesses that don’t have a cure,” Adolf said. “They offer them a lot of hope and families really grab onto those words.”
A graduate of the UNMC College of Nursing, Adolf has been at UNMC nearly 21 years. Initially, she served as an inpatient psychiatric staff nurse at the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute. Later, she became a charge nurse and then manager of the geriatric rehab unit inpatient psychiatry and the geriatric medical clinic.
Adolf grew up at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a cattle ranch in St. Ignasius, Mont., and moved to Omaha at age 12. She pursued occupational therapy at the University of Kansas for three years before getting married and returning to Omaha, where she pursued her dream of becoming a nurse at UNMC. Following graduation, she also obtained a healthcare management degree at Bellevue University.
The complexities of nursing homes have changed over the years, Adolf said. “We’re now seeing more individuals there in their 20s and 30s with chronic mental illness or chronic medical problems.”
Her biggest challenge, she said, is getting good patient information. “Nursing homes are a bit like hospitals. The staff is used to charting a patient’s vital signs and physical changes, but they don’t chart behavioral information,” she said.
To fill those gaps, it’s not unusual for Adolf to seek out nursing staff, social workers, dietitians, therapists, family members, even housekeeping staff – “anyone I can find to get a picture of what’s going on,” she said.
Adolf and her husband, Jeff, are kept busy with five children ranging in age from 25 to seven. Adolf also coaches her daughter’s YMCA volleyball team, and serves as guardian for her older brother, Joe, who sustained a brain injury when Adolf was a teenager. She recently moved him into one of the Omaha-area nursing home she regularly visits.