Lisa Denike, MD, is the Chief of Pediatrics here at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, and in that role she sometimes fills in for other physicians on her team. That’s what happened one day last December when she took care of a young man with an earache.
Turns out that 14-year-old Alex had seen Dr. Denike on another occasion when she was filling in for his regular doctor. When he was just 2 weeks old, she’d helped to diagnose him with a respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. As a result, he spent 5 days in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Alex eventually recovered and, despite having asthma, grew up a relatively healthy kid. But as you might imagine, the experience left a huge impression on his mother, Amber.
“When I saw [Dr. Denike], I had tears streaming down my face,” she said. “I couldn’t contain myself, I was so happy to see her.”
As a pediatric patient, Alex is taken care of as part of our innovative Thriving Families initiative, a comprehensive pediatric program designed to provide cohesive care for kids from birth through the teenage years.
“We’ve developed standardized care and information, and facilitate collaboration between pediatrics, ob-gyn, and family medicine to try to make the patient experience consistent across those departments and to have robust communication between those departments,” says Dr. Denike.
Read more about Alex, Amber, and Dr. Denike — and Thriving Families — in Portland Monthly.
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