This February, residents Lara Wadi, MD, and Tanziyah Muqeem, MD, PhD, as well as clinical nurse Chloe O'Brien, RN, each received Duke Neurology All Star Awards for providing superlative patient care under extremely difficult circumstances.
Duke Neurology All Star Awards recognize faculty, staff, trainees, and students from across our Department who go above and beyond the call of duty in their commitment to excellent patient care, research, and education. Read the nominations below to learn more about our most recent All Stars, or nominate yourself or a colleague for an All-Star Award here.
Lara Wadi, MD
"I wanted to nominate Lara Wadi for an excelling job managing a busy service for inpatient consults at DUH. She knew the patients, provided compassionate patient care, and guided and taught the team seamlessly."
Nominated by Suma Shah, MD
Tanziyah Muqeem, MD, PhD
"Recently, Dr. Tanziyah Muqeem recognized that a couple of suspected stroke patients received BP medications by an EMS agency that wasn’t in line with our guidelines. This prompted a review of all pre-arrival protocols with that agency and we were able to update their protocols thus impacting future transfers."
Nominated by Swaroop Pawar, MD, and Melissa Freeman
Chloe O'Brien, RN
"I wanted to formally recognize Chloe for going above and beyond for a patient that was admitted to the EMU. As I mentioned this morning, this pt was prescribed Epidiolex, and anticipating that getting this medication would not be easy as an outpatient, I asked the housestaff to involve the discharge planners/social work the day before discharge. They were unfortunately unable to come up with a reasonable solution. Unfortunately, this patient had failed just about all other seizure meds, and Epidiolex had helped reduce her seizure frequency from 40 to just a few a day. On the day of discharge, at 8:40 am, I was informed that the medication had not been approved and that per the case worker it would take a month to get it approved. This meant that we had unreasonable alternatives – she not get meds for several weeks and continue to have many seizures per day or stay in the hospital for several more days to get outpatient meds worked out.
I called my assistant, Janet, who, after a few calls to insurance, called Chloe to help. I’m not sure what Chloe did, but in the span of several hours she was able to get the medication approved by insurance, and she called the patient’s mother and told her where to pick up the meds. Because of Chloe (and Janet) this patient was able to leave the hospital only a few hours after originally planned. I know that Chloe and the other 1L RNs are very busy with many outpatient PAs and do not have time to also address inpatient issues, but I was very grateful that Chloe did and was able to get this sorted out. Just thought you and the rest of the leadership team should be aware."
Nominated by Aatif Husain, MD