How would you describe your team?
“I’m very lucky because my team is very cooperative. Our patient care technicians respect you for your experience and the things you do, and they really listen. We have good teamwork—our people don’t just concentrate on their section, they look out for others who are in need.”
How does FMCNA support your career development?
“FMCNA is very good at identifying people who have capabilities or the potential to advance. When I was just one year in, they trained me to be a relief manager. FMCNA doesn’t consider seniority as the basis for assignments—they look at your potential and capabilities. They offer you educational opportunities, too. If a clinic needs clinical managers, the supervisors go around and talk to people whom they think would fit the role and give them the opportunity to apply.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“I feel like I am a big part of my patients’ well-being. Our patients can be with us as long as 10 years, so you get to know their family, their conflicts and if they’re struggling. Then, when a patient is having a bad day, you know about their life. You have a better understanding of what they’re going through, compared to other dialysis environments where you wouldn’t get the chance to know them that well. Over time, we become the patient’s second family.”
What is special about your workplace?
“Because it’s a chronic care setting, there’s a lot of opportunity to follow up. You never know in a hospital if you’re making a difference. In this setting, you can see if your recommendations translate to a behavior change. For example, I met a family who needed information about diet. I gave recommendations on the amounts and settings so they could eat a wider variety of foods and not feel so restricted. You don’t want to take the joy out of their lives. I helped them with questions and provided endless resources so the patient and their family could get on with their development.”
How does FMCNA support your career development?
“FMCNA provides financial reimbursement for attending continuing education conferences. And they have different seminars for our quarterly meetings so we can continually develop our practice. When we train somebody new, several mentors will be available. There’s so much support to learn and grow.”
How would you describe your team?
“We train and mentor each other and help each other when there are needs, such as covering for PTO. The teams are very close knit. Because it’s a chronic care situation, everybody sees each other on a regular basis. A patient might come in eight times a month. When you’re in a place that often, you become part of it—it’s like a family.”
What made you decide to come to FMCNA?
“I had worked at a free-standing, privately owned clinic for over twenty years. Then I was attracted to FMCNA because it was a bigger company with more opportunity and more flexibility. If you want to work part time or full time, there are plenty opportunities.
“There’s also a lot of support. Your managers are always available. You’ve always got backup. If you don’t know what to do, there’s somebody you can call who’s been through it before who can help you. Sometimes you just need someone to listen. That’s so important to me.”
What opportunities are available to you?
“Home dialysis nurses can expand—they can go into education, they can move up to be a clinical manager, they can do in-home training or peritoneal dialysis. We also have acute care programs that are focused on hospital-based dialysis. It can be more challenging to dialyze somebody who is critically ill, but it provides a chance to educate other nurses outside the setting of the dialysis clinic. It’s a real growth opportunity.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“Just knowing that I’ve done the best job that I can do for that patient today. This is something they have to do day in and day out. It’s not going to change. They have to come here, so we try to make it pleasant. We try to make them happy. We want them to look forward to it and not dread it. We try to educate the patients so they can be in the best health they can be. That’s really rewarding.”
How does FMCNA support your career development and advancement?
“FMCNA offers generous tuition reimbursement. They cover 80 percent of your undergraduate studies, and for the nursing program, they will pay 100 percent with a two-year commitment. A lot of Fortune 500 companies don’t offer that. There are abundant growth opportunities here.”
What opportunities are available to you?
“At FMCNA, the growth potential is up to you and what you want to put into it. From my clinical manager to my area manager to the vice president of the company, they really emphasize education and want you to take your career as far as you can.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“The greatest reward of my work is knowing that every day I come in, I make a difference in someone’s life. In the first five to ten minutes it takes to set the machines up and get patients started, I am reminded that I am providing life support for someone and helping to extend their life.”
What has been your career path at FMCNA?
“I came to work here for a short time for someone who was on maternity leave, then moved to part time. Now, I’m moving into a full-time role. Jobs continue to open up as new clinics open their doors. It’s a good feeling to know I’m working for a growing company, and even better to know it offers the potential to find job opportunities throughout the United States as the company continues expanding.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“The greatest reward is seeing a patient who is extremely happy because he made a change and got real results. It’s even better to see patients go home and share the changes in their eating habits with their family; then they’re all following certain guidelines. You help the family and that helps the patient to take better care of himself too. Then you’re not only affecting the health of the patient, but their children and even their grandchildren. It has a multiplying effect. That’s an amazing feeling.”
What made you decide to come to FMCNA?
“I had a director role with a food service company and had not been in a clinical role for a few years. I used to have over 100 employees. It wasn’t as satisfying. My colleagues inspired me to try working here. They said, ‘You’re going to love it. Give it a try.’ They were right. It has been incredibly rewarding to be at the clinical level with the patients. And the flexibility is amazing.”
What made you decide to come to FMCNA?
“There was an opening here at this unit and I grew up in this town. I love the town and I love the patients. I really felt I could offer something to the patients and be a voice for them, so I gave it a shot. I see the people I care for when I go grocery shopping. I see them at church. I know their children. I went to school with a lot of their families. It’s all at a very personal level in this small town, and I love that.”
What opportunities are available to you?
“Since I became a part of FMCNA, I’ve grown my career to become a clinical manager. You always see growth all around you. There are patient care technicians who went to nursing school who are now registered nurses. It’s inspiring and wonderful to be in an environment in which you see people achieve their goals.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“Getting to share in somebody’s life. Getting to be a part of something so much bigger. FMCNA provides a wonderful environment for our patients and our team. FMCNA cares. Our doctors care. We want patients to feel like this is a place they can come to and be treated fairly, regardless of what’s going on in their lives. I love being their home away from home.”
How would you describe your team?
“We have 33 attorneys in the department, with four to five attorneys to an administrator. I get to see so much of the impact of the work that Legal does. So I can see what my personal impact would be if I became a lawyer, and that’s helping me decide what type of law I would like to practice.”
What opportunities are available to you?
“The department has been growing, so there are other positions available. If I wanted to grow into another position, becoming a paralegal would be the next step for me. My supervisor is very attentive to my goal of becoming an attorney. I would love for that to happen here.”
How would you describe the relationships formed with patients and families and the impact of your work?
“On a daily basis, I receive calls from patients who just need to speak to an attorney. For them to know that they have someone to confer with if they have an issue offers real comfort, knowing that they have a legal team on their side. I actually had a family member who went through dialysis with FMCNA, so I know both sides of the equation—the patient side and the employer side—so I know we do a good job.”
How does FMCNA support your career development?
“They take the time to listen to you. For example, I talked to the team and the clients about starting a dialysis support group once a month, and everyone was supportive, from the Doctors and clinical managers to the director of operations. We got it started and it’s really making an impact. Our staff can talk all we want about their experience as a patient, but when they hear it from peers who are also suffering with the same illness, they listen and are able to make changes in their lives.”
What is the greatest reward of working at FMCNA?
“Seeing people who weren’t coming to treatment, who weren’t meeting with the nurses, all of a sudden start showing up for appointments and coming to our support group to participate. To see someone go from no hope to ‘Hey, I can do something with my life!’ is really rewarding.”
What are you most proud of in your work?
“I’m really proud of helping people overcome the diagnosis and limitations of being disabled. I think that label can be very damaging. When patients hear ‘disabled,’ they think they can’t do anything. One of my goals is to let them know that they can still do anything they want to do. If you want to work, you can work, go to school, get married. I’m really proud of that moment when they put the word ‘disabled’ on the back burner and go on living their lives.”
How would you describe your workplace?
“I may have an average of eight stops each day, stopping at Fresenius Medical Care North America clinics and sometimes people’s homes. But my real workplace is on wheels, so I can say our fleet of trucks is completely up to date. We get new vehicles every five years. FMCNA gives us everything we need to get the job done.”
What made you decide to come to FMCNA?
“When I first got the job 24 years ago, I was an open-road driver and wanted something with a little more stability. I started looking for something in the medical field, knowing it would be secure. But in terms of renal disease, I had no idea just how many clinics and facilities FMCNA would need to match the growth of the business. It was a real eye-opener in terms of how big the need really is for renal disease.”
What are you most proud of in your time at FMCNA?
“My driving record. My pride is one thing. But driving is my job. I take a lot of pride in my driving. I am the longest accident-free driver in the company. I’ve been accident-free for 24 years. I am close to 2.5 million miles at this point. Knowing my 25th anniversary is coming up, FMCNA ordered this truck I’m in now with a few extra goodies and dressed it up a bit. And when you go into the clinics and you see the patients, it makes you think about what we do. I find it rewarding to know that our daily deliveries and supplies are life sustaining. People are still able to have a good life because of what we do.”
What is the focus of your work?
“We are responsible for the safety of our instruments. We have 29 licenses to maintain that include various state licenses, as well as our business licenses. For measuring hemoglobin in the blood, there is a standard of care that is required. They want us to hit a patient target of hemoglobin that’s as accurate as possible. In our laboratories, we use instruments to detect what that level is. If an instrument is running higher, a patient may not be hitting the target, but you get a false sense that they are. Or if the person is ‘at target’ and the instrument is running lower, you may be over-treating the patient. So it’s very important for the labs on both the East and West Coast to make every effort to ensure that our instruments are top performing, so that we can detect even a minor shift.
“I have one team member tracking close to 700 assays right now. These tests may be measured two to three times per year. When we get them back, we look at the values to see if we are within what CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement ACT of 1988) has established as the allowable limits, as well as how we rate compared to other peer groups.”
What has been your greatest success at FMCNA?
“In the last two years, Spectra has been growing rapidly in terms of the number of tests we conduct, while bringing on new tests with additional regulatory requirements. I brought on a methods validation tool with a template that managers can really use. It supports testing accuracy and shows what to look for on assays. Applying the new approach has made a huge difference and improved the two programs we have for proficiency testing.”
What’s unique about Spectra Laboratories?
“I’ve been in the field for 28 years and in management for over 20 years in a number of organizations. What defines Spectra is that they really do invest in their employees. I’ve never been to a place that has so much investment in training, on both personal and professional levels. Simultaneously, they focus intensely on patient care—they really strive to do the highest-quality work. I’ve been here for two-and-a-half years. It’s just been wonderful. I love what I’m doing.”