Our People - SSM Health Care

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Our People SSM Health Care has exceptional people, and they bring something special to their work – themselves – their upbringing, experiences, skills, passion and pride. They are The Twins who take pride in the miles of tiles they keep clean. The Nice Guy who knows what it’s like to be poor. The Adrenaline Junkie in the emergency department. The Young Leader. The Fixers devoted to making things work. The Safety Champion who gets up in the morning with one purpose in mind. The Accidental Nurse who discovered her love for Alzheimer’s patients. The Super Surgeon. The Knitters weaving with love and compassion. The Giver who never loses a chance to say a kind word. At www.ssmpeople.com and in future editions of OptimiSSM, we’re featuring these people, and many others, in videos and print over the next several months. We are proud to call them Our People. 4
The Twins Even before birth, the Long brothers did things together. Kevin and Kelvin Long are identical twins, right down to their matching glasses. They work together in environmental services at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Mo., and SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, and about the only way to tell them apart is that Kevin wears an earring in each ear and Kelvin wears only one. They go home together after their six-hour day shift at St. Mary’s and sleep for six hours before returning for a 10-hour night shift at Glennon, then back to St. Mary’s. That’s 64 hours a week for each spread over four days, Mon days through Thursdays. They spend their days (and nights) looking down at miles and miles of tile floors in the two hospitals, asking themselves if a floor can be buffed or does it need to be stripped and waxed. Each square of tile is their collective signature. “We do it right, and if we make a mistake, we come back and fix it,” Kevin said. Work that would exhaust most people doesn’t seem to faze them. In fact, they’re thinking about taking on other cleaning jobs outside the hospitals. It’s a work ethic that came from their father, a postal worker who did not talk much about working hard, but instilled the value in his sons by example. “I don’t think he ever took a day’s vacation,” Kevin remembers. And the quality of their work is recognized by co-workers, supervisors and patients. Pat Key, environmental supervisor at St. Mary’s, said: “They pay attention to details, and they are conscientious. I wish I had 10 of them.” From left: Kelvin and Kevin Long The Long brothers learned their job by doing it, whether it’s deftly using their wrists to control a floor buffer that’s powerful enough to leap out of their hands if they tried to muscle it with their arms, or elevating the fan drying a freshly waxed floor so air bubbles aren’t forced into the wet wax. Each element of their work has been perfected by repetition and paying attention to finer points like getting the right mix of floor stripper with water. There are a few hazards. Both have fallen. “That stripper is just like ice before you dilute it with water,” Kelvin said, laughing. They’ve become accustomed to the eye-watering fumes from their cleaning solutions, though they are aware others aren’t immune to the odor’s effect and ask patients if they would be bothered by the smell before they begin their work. And when their work is finished, it sometimes follows them home. They dream of working on floors in their sleep. The Knitters We care about you. We’re praying for you. We’ll see you through this. This is what the staff of the internal medicine department at SSM St. Joseph Medical Park in St. Charles, Mo., want their patients to know. In 2009, the department began a prayer shawl ministry, combining compassion and their love of knitting to reach out to patients having a particularly difficult time. Two employees create the blanket at home, offering individual prayers while they knit. Then the other employees and physicians use their lunchtime and breaks to affix tassels and offer their own prayers and blessings. Since beginning their ministry, the department has created and distributed 27 shawls, with several currently in progress. While the staff is happy to share their ministry, they wish only to be identified as a department, not individually. One knitter said simply, “Some of our patients only identify the shawl with the person who presented it to them. They know that there are a lot of people behind its creation, but they don't know who they are. And that's OK. All they have to know is that someone cared." Go to www.ssmpeople.com to watch Our People. 5
Page 1 and 2: A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION BY SSM HEAL
Page 3: OptimiSSM A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION B
Page 7 and 8: The Young Leader Maurine Free is he
Page 9 and 10: The Fixers Throughout SSM Health Ca
Page 11 and 12: The Safety Champion Growing up, Deb
Page 13 and 14: Record Is Better for… Nurses Mary
Page 15 and 16: Green Roofs St. Mary’s Hospital i
Page 17 and 18: Other Green Efforts Reported Around
Page 19 and 20: Heart Failure Scores for 2009 All S
Page 21 and 22: SSM-WIDE SSM Comes to the Aid of Ha
Page 23 and 24: THE S.P.A.T.U.L.A. MEETS NEVER LIFT

Our People - SSM Health Care

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