Getting to Know Us: Sue Ramberg, BSN, RN
In 2007, after 40 years working as a nurse, Sue Ramberg was ready to retire. The changes she had seen in the healthcare system had robbed her work of the joy she had once felt. She shared her plans with the late Dr. Rekha Yagnik, ChesPenn’s founding pediatrician and Medical Director, who immediately replied, “Now you can come to work for me!” Sue tried to resist. She felt that she was ready to be done, but Dr. Yagnik had a better idea. She stopped by Sue’s office every day until Sue finally gave in. “I said ,‘If I give you a year will you leave me alone,’ and she said yes,” she remembers. “At the end of my year she came to my desk and said, ‘Can we have one more?’ She was so amazing that I couldn’t say no.” Eventually Sue let Dr. Yagnik know that she would stay as long as ChesPenn needed her.
“I found something at ChesPenn that I had lost, and that was how to be a nurse again and how to care for people and help them get what they needed to be healthier or even just a little bit happier.” It gave me the opportunity to be what a nurse should be. That’s always doing whatever you can to help the person. Even if it’s not medical, even if they just need you to listen to them for a few minutes. Every day I still hear Dr. Yagnik say, ‘Take care of my family.’ To her, our patients were family.”
Sue works as a “triage nurse,” evaluating patients’ conditions, resolving problems, and consulting with providers. Requests vary from help accessing resources to refilling prescriptions to help getting a same-day appointment. In some cases, she may need to recommend that a patient go directly to the emergency room or to urgent care based on their symptoms. This is where her training as an RN becomes so important to patients. She knows what questions to ask, and how to really listen so that she can determine whether a patient can schedule an appointment or needs attention immediately.
Sue’s care for patients doesn’t end there. Patients call because they’ve lost paperwork for referrals or have some other need that’s not medical. Her approach is to help patients with what they need in the moment. Sue commented that sometimes the patient’s need is more psychological than medical. When she sees that need she can connect them to behavioral health or social services. “That’s why ChesPenn is so wonderful and why the vision of Dr. Yagnik was to treat the whole person – not just this disease. ChesPenn helps the entire person, body, mind, and soul. And that’s why I stay.”
