My current major is Health Sciences, and I really like it because it gives me flexibility within the health care field by preparing me for graduate school, or jobs within the non-clinical side of health care. I’ve known since high school that I wanted to have a career that works with people, and after helping my mother take care of my grandmother, I knew with certainty I wanted to be in the health field. I’ve gotten glimpses of the clinical side of things; I worked as a floating patient care technician on four different floors of a hospital, and I’ve shadowed physician assistants. However, I was still curious about the non-clinical side of healthcare. This is what lead me to Kelly Shroll, Director of Quality and Patient Safety at Blanchard Valley Hospital in Findlay, Ohio.
Kelly Shroll got her start as a clinician – she worked as a dietitian. She had started her college career at Otterbein University before transferring to Ohio State. After graduating and becoming licensed she worked as a dietitian for a few years. She eventually worked her way up to managing the nutrition department. She went back to school and obtained her Master’s degree in Business Administration and continued to work her way up – becoming the Director of Support Services – until she took her current job as the Director of Quality and Patient Safety.
Kelly starts her days off at a safety huddle with her quality team and other important individuals, including the CEO of the hospital. The heads of each department teleconference into the meeting and they give report while Kelly takes notes. She deals a lot with the statistics of the hospital to make sure that everything is as streamlined as possible while making the quality of patient care the best it can be. She is also involved with the accreditation of the hospital and ensuring compliance. During my day with Kelly I was also able to listen to a teleconference out of Toledo with other officials who work in Quality and look at the hospital’s quality statistics in comparison to others.
Kelly told me that she is glad that she had the clinical background before taking on a more business/administrative role because she already knew the “in’s and out’s” of the hospital workings. I am definitely taking this into consideration as I pursue my own career, because I really enjoy the clinical side of health care. She said that there is so much opportunity within the realm of health, and that it seems like my major allows for flexibility, which is a good thing. For a job like hers, she mentioned that it is important to be able to manage many different tasks at once, meet with many people throughout the day, and know how statistics work.
I really enjoyed talking with Kelly Shroll, and it served to open my eyes to the many different sides of healthcare. I actually enjoyed looking at her large book of statistics more than I thought I would. I will definitely take this into account as I further my education, because I now know for certain that I am not stuck with just one option. There are numerous possibilities and opportunities for working in the health field.
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