2014 Quarter Century Plus Celebration
This week we recognized and celebrated colleagues who have been with our institution for 25 or more years. Milestones of 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 years are marked every year with the Quarter Century Plus Celebration. For 2014, we have an impressive 616 honourees, three of whom are celebrating 50 years of service while ten are celebrating 45. We even have a volunteer who has reached 65 years of service!
The MUHC thanks each and every one of our honourees for their contributions to health care. Dedication, perseverance, compassion and loyalty are just a few words that can only begin to describe our teams at the MUHC. For this, we are thankful.
Following a spotlight on three of our honourees is a list of everyone who has reached a Quarter Century Plus milestone.
65 years of volunteer service at Lachine Hospital: thank you Ms. Marleau!
Agnes Marleau was 26 years old in 1949 when she signed up to be a volunteer with the Auxiliary—formerly called the Patroness Ladies Foundation (Fondation des dames patronnesses) and the Auxiliary Ladies Foundation—at the Lachine Hospital. Sixty-five years later she is still going strong!
When congratulated for her generous participation as a volunteer at Lachine, she says: "I don’t feel I am worthy of this... yes I was always busy over those years, but I loved every second of it! I was very blessed." She adds that altruism was taught to her from an early age. "When I was little, we were not rich, but my mother would help families in need."
Marleau represented the volunteers for 18 years on the Board of Directors at Lachine, and served as president of the Auxiliary for four years. She has also served on several committees and helped organize many events, such as Daffodil, heart disease and kidney disease days. Today, at age 91, she participates in the monthly book sale held at the hospital and knits bed jackets and blankets. "There is always someone to take me to the hospital and back home," she says. So she keeps up with her generous work, naturally.
Linda Maruska: 40 years of service and still loving her job!
“I came to the Montreal Neurological Hospital in 1972 for six months to complete my Neuroscience nursing course,” says Linda Maruska, a Quality, Patient Safety, and Risk advisor for the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). “And I never left.”
Maruska was hired as a staff nurse and worked in this position for a few years before climbing the ladder to a nursing supervisor position, working evenings. By 1981 she moved to days and 20 years later she made the leap to the MUHC Quality Management Department, which at that time was just in its infancy.
“Back then Marilyn Kaplow was head of that department and she only had a few people working with her,” says Maruska. “She was growing her team and I had worked with her on the 2000 Accreditation and really liked it, so I moved from Nursing to Quality.”
Maruska said she made the change as she wanted to close the loop. “At the Neuro as a nurse I did auditing of quality and tracking but at that time I found there wasn’t enough follow-up in the end. By working in Quality I could pull some of this together and do it on a broader scale.”
Fourteen years later Maruska still loves her job. She admits she misses the patient and family interaction but she thoroughly enjoys working with the clinical teams.
“My main mandate”, she says “is working with the Mission teams on such things as training, developing patient outcome measurements; reviewing literature and best practices; and investigating adverse events.”
Maruska says it is the sense of family, teamwork and support that has kept her at the MUHC for so long. For the newbies she has three words of advice: “Enjoy the ride!”
Patricia Vandecruys celebrates 25 years of service!
Patricia Vandecruys, a trained Pharmacist, was recruited by the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1985 to set up the first Operating Room pharmacy satellite. “When I came here, I was a young professional. I really got to grow up at the MUHC,” says Vandecruys, who is now site manager of the Pharmacy Department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
No matter what project she has worked on, Vandecruys has never been bored with what she does. “I have always felt satisfied with my job and like I’m doing something important,” she says. “When you work close to and for patients, there is not a day that goes by that you don’t feel you’ve made a difference in their life.”
“One thing has never changed throughout my career: the spirit of the people with whom I’m working,” says Vandecruys. “Everybody wants what is best for the children and working with them really changes your perspective on life. It makes you appreciate it even more.”