Story By: Pete Dulin
Photography By: Brad Austin

Saint Luke’s North Hospital provides health care based on a simple but powerful premise – people taking care of other people. The hospital’s team of highly trained physicians, nurses, and medical professionals are devoted members of the community they serve. As fellow Northlanders, this team puts their heart and soul and Saint Luke’s extensive resources into the care of their community.

In this first of a five-part series, we examine Saint Luke’s approach to people-centered health care. Dr. Michelle Dew, a cardiologist, and Dr. Gina Lawson, a hospitalist, are two of many examples of Saint Luke’s staff who go above and beyond the call of duty in treating patients.

“I put my feet in the shoes of the patient,” says Dr. Michelle Dew, who has 20 years of training and experience. She communicates medical terms and procedures to patients in fundamental terms. “What we do is complicated. I take time with people to explain things in terms they understand. I enjoy talking to patients and working with them.”

As a general cardiologist, she addresses all matters heart-related. She diagnoses symptoms and coordinates treatment with medical staff.
Her female patients’ cardiac health is a matter of great concern because of the impact on the family. “There’s a saying that goes, ‘If you save a woman, then you save the family,’” she states. Dr. Dew, a Parkville resident, wife, and mother of two sons, understands this family dynamic well. “Women are essential to the family unit.”
The work has many rewards. “I love telling and showing people how to make themselves feel better. Quality of life matters,” says Dr. Dew. Interpersonal communication matters as well. She enjoys talking to a variety of people. “I love it when my patients come back and tell me their life has improved because of our care.”

In addition to her work in the Northland, Dr. Dew travels on medical missions to Jamaica sponsored by the North Kansas City Rotary Club. She has visited twice with her husband. “We go to farm and mountain towns and provide services, medications, and vitamins,” she says. “It’s an opportunity for me to donate my time and expertise to people in need. There are safety nets here in America that Third World countries just don’t have. It’s rewarding to provide these services.”

Back in the Midwest, Dr. Dew is based at Saint Luke’s North Hospital and also works at Saint Luke’s Hospital near the Plaza. She values the staff camaraderie. “The congeniality is great, especially up north,” she says. “It’s easier to take care of patients when you know your team of doctors and nurses. It’s special in the Saint Luke’s system.”

Saint Luke’s is nationally known for its high standards for care across its system. For example, the Saint Luke’s North Hospital treatments for heart procedures follow the same protocols and standards of care practiced at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.

“It’s seamless. Whether it concerns pacemakers, defibrillators, or stents to treat heart or leg disease, you receive the same care and physicians whether you’re at the Plaza or up north,” says Dr. Dew.

That seamless approach to care is just one way Saint Luke’s is unique. Applying the power of faith also distinguishes Saint Luke’s approach to health care. Saint Luke’s physicians like Dr. Gina Lawson understand that faith plays a key role alongside medical science and technology in treating illness and injury.

“Saint Luke’s is a faith-based health care system,” says Dr. Lawson. “Physicians are able to take care of a patient’s spirituality as well as health. I feel strongly about this. I have never worked for any other health system that offered this.”

Spirituality takes many forms not limited to religion. “Physicians have to be open and understand spirituality,” says Dr. Lawson. “For some patients, it comes through music, nature, meditation, or prayer. Studies show that prayer and spirituality help patients deal with stress and decrease anxiety and heart rate.”

As a hospitalist, Dr. Lawson uses a team approach to care for hospitalized patients of »» primary care physicians and address every aspect of the patient’s needs. The team includes a hospitalist nurse, care coordinator, social worker, bedside nurse, chaplain, and other physician consultants.

Before she was a hospitalist, Dr. Lawson worked as a primary care physician for 12 years as well as working as a nurse and respiratory technician over the course of her career. Her busy professional life is balanced by family and an active role at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Smithville. Married for seventeen years, Dr. Lawson and her husband Casey are raising two teenagers.

“Without family and church as my two pillars to lean on, I don’t think I could get through one week. Casey is the one who brings balance and calm to our lives. He supports and encourages me,” she says. “As a physician, wife, mother, daughter, sister, member of the Spelman Foundation Board of Directors and Medical Director for Saint Luke’s Health System’s Transfer Team, I have to have others help me in all that I love to do. Medicine is my vocation. I don’t really see it as a ‘job.’ But without balance, even a vocation can be exhausting.”

This balance in life bolsters her energy and compassion toward caring for others. As a physician, she has treated patients in hospitals and nursing homes and made house calls for the chronically ill and dying.

“Patients need to know we’re there to serve all of the patient’s needs including physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional,” says Dr. Lawson. “It’s one of the great things about being a hospitalist. We’re there all day long. That’s a »»
huge benefit to patients. A hospitalist is able to spend as much time as needed with patients, 24/7, from a few minutes to hours, especially if they are in critical or palliative care.”

Hospitalists offer palliative care for those nearing the end of life. This attention and treatment take place in the hospital, often with a patient’s particular needs in mind.

For example, patient Patsy Waters faced a terminal illness while undergoing care at Saint Luke’s North Hospital. As her last hours approached, Patsy’s husband Gene told Dr. Lawson that his wife had always wanted to die in the old iron bed in which she was born 73 years earlier.

Dr. Lawson coordinated resources between nurses, maintenance and security staff, and Waters’ family. Family members were dispatched to disassemble the bed and bring it to the hospital. Three hospital maintenance personnel waited at the receiving dock. They assisted with transporting and reassembling the bed in a large fourth floor room that overlooked the skyline of Kansas City.

“There were puffy white cumulus clouds to the Northeast. What a beautiful setting,” Gene Waters wrote of the experience. “Mom [Patsy] talked with and hugged her grandchildren. Mom occasionally glanced out the window observing the lights of Kansas City and a full moon in the now darkening evening sky.”

“At her end, Patsy got to be in her bed,” says Dr. Lawson.

Such attention to patient needs seems extraordinary but it is commonplace at Saint Luke’s North Hospital.

“It’s a joy to serve patients. It keeps me going to work,” says Dr. Lawson. “I can’t tell you how many blessings I have received by caring for patients and families.”

Speed and efficiency of technology are hallmarks of a modern hospital system, but they also mean doctors and nurses can grow disconnected from the patient as a person. Saint Luke’s is mindful to preserve human interaction between caregivers and patients.

Saint Luke’s medical professionals bring a human face to the overwhelming environment and complex processes of a hospital. Physicians like Dr. Michelle Dew and Dr. Gina Lawson not only demonstrate that quality care depends on relationships as much as modern science, but they also serve as valuable members of the community.