Celebrating a Century of Service With Riverside Health System
Newport News, Va. (PRWEB) July 24, 2013 -- Add a new milestone to the history of Riverside Health System.
Nearly two years before Riverside itself recognizes its 100th anniversary, two team members came together to celebrate a century of medical service to the Virginia Peninsula community.
This summer, Queenie Wellman-Swinton from The Gardens at Warwick Forest and Pecolia Coppedge of Riverside Regional Medial Center surpassed 50 years of service each – the first time in the health system’s history any employee has hit that landmark.
“Riverside takes great pride in the longevity and dedication of our team members,” said F. Michael Martin, a senior vice president with Riverside who oversees the Lifelong Health and Aging Related Services division. “What we do is directly tied to the great people that dedicate their lives, as these two ladies have done, to putting our patients and residents first.”
Riverside has a special recognition lapel pin for the 962 team members with more than 20 years of service. There was even one created for the first team member, who years ago, hit the 45 year mark.
This marked such a special and unique accomplishment for Riverside that for Wellman-Swinton and Coppedge, new pins were designed to honor them.
“Riverside has been extremely fortunate to have Queenie and Pecolia as team members at two of our facilities for 50 years each,” said Sally Hartman, a senior vice president with Riverside. “They are daily role models of our mission of caring for others as we would care for those we love and an inspiration to all of their fellow team members.”
Read more about these women here, their history with Riverside and how they’ve watched health care evolve in the last five decades.
Queenie Wellman-Swinton. As soon as she graduated from high school, Queenie Wellman-Swinton came to work for Riverside Health System, then the Patrick Henry Hospital for the Chronically Ill. Over the years she’s worked as an aide, dispensing medicine, admitting people and helping patients. Today, she works as a unit secretary overseeing multiple units and making sure they run smoothly. She isn’t directly caring for patients, but she knows she’s taking care of things so they can be taken care of at The Gardens at Warwick Forest, a continuing care retirement community on the Newport News and York County border.
“My mother told me to treat patients just like they were my family,” Wellman-Swinton said. “I will never forget one patient I had, who’d had a stroke and was a quadriplegic, and I would go in to bathe her and I would sing. She would have tears running down her face. I just put myself in her place, that could be me or my mother.”
The biggest change Wellman-Swinton has seen in the last 50 years of health care? While patient care remains essentially the same, technology has changed a lot about her job. Where she used to write out medication records for five floors a day, by hand, and delivering medication on trays with cups labeled with the patient’s name, today, the medication process is computerized and identification is done with bar code scanners and wristbands.
Wellman-Swinton has no immediate plans to retire.
“I wake up feeling good enough to get up and come help patients. I think about these patients and they need assistance. (They) need love and care and respect, and they deserve it.”
Pecolia Coppedge came to work at Riverside Regional Medical Center in 1963, at the recommendation of a friend. Through the years, she’s moved and worked up and down the different floors of the Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News.
East. West. Hematology, oncology, intensive care. As a nurse’s aide who enjoys taking care of patients and meeting nice people, Coppedge has always been willing to go where she’s needed.
Coppedge was 20 when she started and over the years has watching health care change, including the increase in technology and the length of time people stay in the hospital.
“At night, after visiting hours were over, we would take around the juice cart to offer patients drinks, and offer backrubs to people who were bedridden,” Coppedge said. “Patients were there longer and so we knew their personalities better. But, one of the reasons they were there longer was that there wasn’t any laser surgery, everyone had incisions that took a while to heal.”
The one thing that has stayed the same, year after year for 50 years, Coppedge said, is that “taking care of people is at the heart of it. If you aren’t willing to do all of it, to wait on people and to listen to them, this isn’t the career for you.”
Coppedge plans to retire this fall.
“I hope I made a difference, that I was able to make someone more comfortable, and to help them heal,” Coppedge said. “And for the ones who didn’t heal, I hope that I was a comfort and a blessing to them.”
ABOUT RIVERSIDE HEALTH SYSTEM:
The original charter for Riverside dates back to December 15, 1915. The company began as one hospital, founded by the community and built on a site at Huntington Avenue and 50th Street in Newport News, Virginia. In 1962, the hospital relocated to the present site of Riverside Regional Medical Center in central Newport News on J. Clyde Morris Boulevard. Since then, Riverside has evolved into a flagship regional medical center with affiliates throughout the region in every aspect of healthcare.
Riverside is a 501c(3) tax exempt, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health and saving lives. Riverside Health System is governed by a voluntary Board of Directors, as is each of the Riverside affiliates throughout the region.
Read more about the Riverside Health System history here: http://www.riversideonline.com/about_riverside/history.cfm.
Stephanie Heinatz, Consociate Media, http://www.consociatemedia.com, 757.713.2199, [email protected]
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