One of Galilee Medical Center’s telephone operators quick and perceptive responses, in coordination with the Emergency Department’s intake staff, were essential to providing swift and efficient medical treatment to an eighty year old woman, perhaps saving her life. It all began when Rena Chen, an 80-year-old Akko resident contacted the telephone operator at the medical center and told Moshe Ben David that she was not feeling well but could not locate her children. She had sounded confused and very anxious, and found it difficult to explain herself or provide her exact address, all the while saying that she was suffering from acute stomach pains and severe shortness of breath.
Ben David spoke with her patiently and kept her on the phone while simultaneously seeking help from the ER patient intake staff to track down her family. Secretary, Lilac Dahan, answered the call and transferred the details to her colleague, Shoshana Asis, who quickly succeeded in locating the telephone number of one of her children who provided his mother’s exact address. Moshe Ben David then contacted Magen David Adom requesting that an ambulance be sent to her house. Rena arrived to the hospital and spent a week in an internal medicine department while her condition improved until her release home.
Moshe Ben David: Generally, telephone center conversations are short but I felt that the caller in extreme distress and helpless. The elderly woman reported that she was alone at home, unable to reach her children and that she urgently needed to get to the hospital. I immediately thought of my father who suffered a heart attack two months ago and experienced similar complaints to what Rena described. I believed she was in a life threatening condition and I wanted to help her get to the hospital as soon as possible. I feel an enormous amount of satisfaction.
Rena’s daughter, Edna Azran: Words can’t express our gratitude to the medical center, to Moshe Be David and the secretaries who did their utmost to locate my mother’s address and bring her to the hospital as soon as possible. Thanks to them my mother received the urgent care she needed.