Life Changing Is … Going Beyond Your Job Description

Jenna R. – Contact Center Specialist

“It’s very rewarding to help somebody.”

Jenna makes it an everyday mission to meet struggling patients’ needs. She has worked in women’s imaging scheduling since July 2022, helping to schedule mammograms, DEXA scans, ultrasounds, CT scans, and more. She previously worked for the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center at UPMC St. Margaret.

While younger women may now take advantage of scheduling mammography online, Jenna says she still receives many calls from older women to schedule. She enjoys helping them find what they need.

Much of Jenna’s work is very near and dear to her heart. She watched her grandmother go through chemotherapy and eventually die from cancer when she was a kid.

Now, when she works to schedule cancer patients, she does everything she possibly can to help them.

“It’s very rewarding to help somebody in that way,” she says. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t really do anything to help my grandmother, but now I’m able to play a small part in helping these patients. Just the other day, I was able to reschedule a cancer patient’s CT scan for a month earlier than originally planned. It meant so much to her and to me.”

Jenna isn’t afraid to go out of her way to get patients to who they need. For example, she helped a pregnant woman whose husband was in the military and had an ultrasound appointment rescheduled. The appointment’s original date and time was the only time the woman’s husband could attend, so Jenna worked to get her an appointment at another location.

“I called out to all of these locations that I don’t schedule for and tried my hardest to get what she needed,” Jenna says. “I ultimately wasn’t able to schedule her myself for the ultrasound but was able to connect her with someone who could. I think she really appreciated all of the time I took with her.

“I made it my day’s mission to get her in. I think taking your time to talk to people and understand how we can improve our service really helps. Even going out of what my job description really is benefited this patient. I would do it over and over again. As long as they are happy at the end of the call, I’m happy.”

It’s just one example of the way Jenna and the team of women’s imaging schedulers go above and beyond to help patients.

“I want to make it a breeze for patients,” she says. “They have so much else going on, I just want to make it easy on my end when they call me. It’s eye-opening to learn what people are going through every day. Just to be able to be kind in that way and take time with them makes all the difference in their life.”

At UPMC, Life Changing Medicine means doing whatever we can to help.

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