Kari Higgins represented Soin Medical Center as an Ohio Hospital Association Health Care Worker of the Year nominee at this year’s OHA annual recognition dinner on June 9. Leaders of each Kettering Health Network hospital selected a health care worker who gives back to the community and regularly goes beyond the call of duty.
Kari helps the social services team at Soin Medical Center by organizing education activities and providing feedback. As social services coordinator, she also contributes a unique viewpoint to Kettering Health Network as a whole, bringing the perspective of social work into various projects and strategies. Kari gives this same perspective to the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Associates organization, where she serves on the committee. In addition to multiple professional organizations, she is also involved in her church and Beavercreek Select soccer.
Her nomination read:
“Kari truly has each patient’s best interests at the heart of her work. She looks to, ‘what does this patient desire from their access with our system?’ She looks to patient rights as the driving force to any recommendation we provide. She embraces the patient experience and patient’s self-identified goals as a primary success factor for her interaction. Kari does not self-impose her values, however, reaches the patient at a spiritual, medial, and psychosocial level where they are today, and what their plans are for living successfully in where they call ‘home’.”