(left to right) Dr. Andrew Baumgartner, Tammy Anderson, Vicki Adolf, Cali Letchworth-Bahati, Lori Davitt, Dr. Thomas Magnuson and Dr. Steven Wengel celebrate Adolf’s 35 years with Nebraska Medicine.
Department of Psychiatry nurse Vicki Adolf says she’s seen more than 25,000 patient encounters since she started at Nebraska Medicine in 1984, and Dr. Steven Wengel says she probably remembers all of them.
This year, Adolf, a nurse in the geriatric psychiatry, celebrated her 35th year with Nebraska Medicine. In her first years at Nebraska Medicine she worked with Dr. William Roccaforte, Dr. Matthew Egbert, Dr. Mark Fleisher, and Dr. Steven Wengel when they were residents and later worked with them after as psychiatrists. Wengel, who works with Adolf in geriatric psychiatry, said Adolf possesses a fantastic memory. Adolf visits fifteen facilities regularly and has to learn the passwords and records procedures for each location. If that isn’t impressive enough, she needs to remember important personal information about her patients.
“Vicky sees hundreds of patients and knows so much about them, whether it’s their former jobs, family members, hobbies. She knows so much about their lives,” Dr. Wengel said.
During her time at Nebraska Medicine, Adolf has worked as a nurse and manager for inpatient psychiatry, inpatient geriatric rehab, and outpatient geriatric medicine and psychiatry.
“I’ve always liked it here and been very happy,” she said. “I go to 15 different facilities. I like going to different places and meeting different people. I love the variety. I work with really nice people. It’s been great.”
Adolf said some significant changes she has seen during her 35 years has been the onset of electronic records and the growth of geriatric psychiatry.
“I started in the adolescent unit. Then one day, somebody said they needed help on the adult unit. I liked it and stayed on,” she said. “At first, there wasn’t a separate unit for geriatrics. But soon, we had a geriatric unit, and we had to become geriatric experts quickly.”