Evergreen Newsletter
October 2019
Are you looking for a safe place to take the kids this year for Halloween? Come see us at the EFM South location on October 31st. We will be participating in the Annual Halloween Street Fair from 4pm- 7pm. The building will be decorated and we will be handing out candy!
Trick Or Treat At Myrtle Creek
Myrtle Creek News:
We started our EFM South PFAC (Patient & Family Advisory Council)
Three years ago, our Roseburg campus began to implement the Patient and Family Advisory Council. We can proudly say that Myrtle Creek has started theirs too!
The Evergreen Family Medicine Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) strives to ensure that we will deliver high-quality patient and family centered care. The PFAC was formed with the recognition that patients and families are an essential resource to our practice. By partnering with patients and families, we will enhance processes, procedures, and care delivery to fulfill our stated mission.
Goal
The members of our Patient and Family Advisory Council will be committed to advancing patient and family centered care. By creating a platform to hear patient’s voices we can continue to improve our delivery of care, and make changes that matter. We aspire to encourage patient participation in their own health to ensure patient satisfaction with better health outcomes.
Vision
Advance a new face of health care at Evergreen Family Medicine by providing access to patient and family perspectives that will promote the delivery of high-quality patient and family centered care.
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Flu Season is Upon Us
New Faces Around Evergreen!
Dr. Stephanie Riccalarsen
Dr. Riccalarsen moved to Roseburg to join Evergreen Family Medicine in September 2019, after practicing traditional family medicine in Coos Bay for 10 years. In 2017, Dr. Riccalarsen started studying Obesity Medicine, and now is board certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine as well as the American Association of Family Physicians.
Graduating from Creighton University School of Medicine in 2006, she stayed in Omaha for another 3 years to do her residency training at University of Nebraska Medical Center. Then her husband, Tony, got out of the Air Force, so she was happily able to bring her family home to Oregon, where she had grown up in the Medford area and had gone to college at Oregon State University.
Her favorite part of being a physician is helping patients focus on preventive strategies to maintain their health, and helping them lose weight is a very rewarding extension of that. She also particularly enjoys women’s healthcare and pediatrics.
When she is not at work, Dr. Riccalarsen likes to keep herself healthy by participating in aerobics classes and lifting weights, and trying to resist her sugar addiction (but not always succeeding). She unwinds by reading, writing good old-fashioned snail mail, and doing crafts of one kind or another, such as sewing patchwork baby blankets, making notecards, and painting rocks to hide around town for others to find. She also has fun watching her kids’ sports games and occasionally going tent camping.
Michael Graham, PA
Michael grew up in Roseburg, OR where he attended Umpqua Valley Christian School with his 3 younger brothers. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology from Oregon State University in 2016 and currently resides in Roseburg with his wife, Jade, and his two young sons, Jackson and Lincoln.
Michael did not always want to be a Physician Assistant (PA) but felt pulled to the profession after a conversation with Terry Bancroft, PA-C in 2013 and after seeing one of his good friends, Scott Goebel, go through one of the top PA schools in the country at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Since deciding to pursue a profession as a PA, he has worked in a variety of healthcare fields including Radiology, Physical Therapy, Cardiac Rehab, Exercise Clinics, as a Medic in the Oregon National Guard, and as a medical scribe all prior to his matriculation into OHSU’s PA program in 2017.
He is now returning to Roseburg to work as a Physician Assistant after graduating from OHSU’s PA program in 2019 and is looking forward to working at Evergreen.
In his free time, Michael enjoys almost all athletics, being with friends and family, and sampling local brews and wines. He strongly believes the Portland Trailblazers will win a NBA championship within the next 5 years.
Evergreen Urgent Care
Urgent Care Hours of Operation:
Monday-Friday 7am-7pm
Saturday-Sunday 9am-5pm
The Evergreen Urgent Care team is here to provide a variety of services for treatment of many medical needs. When ill or injured, your PCP is the best resource for determining where you should seek treatment. Evergreen Family Practice can be reached at 541-677-7200 and they will ensure your medical situation is promptly evaluated so that you can go to the medical setting that best suits your needs.
By working closely with our Evergreen Family Practice clinics, patients are now able to get Urgent Care appointments scheduled to minimize the wait for treatment.
Why does my Urgent Care provider ask me so many questions?
Some of them don’t make any sense…
As health care providers, it is our job to get to the root of the acute problem plaguing our patient’s that report to the Urgent Care.
During patient intake, a member of the nursing staff will ask a number of routine questions, i.e., name, date of birth, allergies to medications, prescriptions and past surgeries. These questions make sense and they help the health care team decide if something in the patient’s medical history could be contributing to their current medical issue.
Then, sometimes the questions seem to be completely unrelated, for example:
Meet Frank, a 64-year-old grandfather of 4, who reports to the Urgent Care with fatigue and new onset shortness of breath.
During Frank’s intake the nurse asks if the patient has any chronic lung condition, i.e., asthma, COPD, reactive airway disease that could be causing his shortness of breath? Frank denies any chronic conditions. The nurse notes that his oxygen is low and his heart rate is fast. She then asks this seemingly unrelated question.
“Frank, have you been doing any long-distance travel recently? Have you been on an airplane or taken a long trip?”
Frank thinks, why does that matter; I can’t breathe, but answers, “Well yes, I just got back from Florida visiting the Grandkids.”
The question seems random, irrelevant and oddly timed. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it does to the health care provider. In this case, the nurse is assessing the patient’s risk for a blood clot in the lungs called a Pulmonary Embolism (PE), which is a medical emergency.
People who have recently traveled are at risk for developing blood clots deep in the veins of their legs. These clots can dislodge and travel to the lungs causing severe shortness of breath. In our case, Frank was seated for hours on a cross country flight, this placed him at risk.
We understand that the last thing anyone wants to do when they are not feeling well is to answer a bunch of questions. However, those questions, as odd as they may seem, can get you the care you need, fast.