ADMINISTRATION

Tom Bowser

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City

 

Borrrrring. That’s what small-town boy Tom Bowser thought of the work his father did as an insurance agent. Coffeyville, Kan., wasn’t going to hold onto young Tom, and neither was a career in insurance.

Well, he ended up batting .500: Bowser did indeed leave Coffeyville behind, but life’s little quirks steered him into Dad’s line of work, albeit at an elevated level: He’s CEO and president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, his employer for 40 years. His early duties as professional relations representative meant working directly with physicians—“a great way to start,” he said. “They are the engine of our health-care system. They deliver the goods. I’m proud to do my part of helping finance their great works.”

And he takes pride in knowing he has touched so many lives; nearly 1 million people in this region have health care coverage through the organization, part of a network that covers one in three Americans. “Despite the political vilification of our industry, we are doing a lot of things right,” he says. He acknowledges that costs—for treatment and insurance alike—must be addressed, but has concerns about the way we’re doing that as a nation, particularly the lack of focus on the role of personal responsibility in our overall health.

When he retires in December, he’ll leave the organization in what he says is “its strongest position ever” given the size of its customer base, levels of service offered and, of course, the health of its balance sheet. “Most of all,” he says, “I am pleased with the culture that exists within our organization. Our employeefocus is on our members and their health as we work with the outstanding physicians and hospitals in this community. I believe our future is very bright.”

 

Cheri Hunt

Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics

 

This is what leadership sounds like: “Nurses need to seize this opportunity,” Cheri Hunt says, reflecting on the nation’s raucous health-care debate. “They are in a unique position to design an innovative care delivery model, improve access to care and to ensure positive patient outcomes.” That’s exactly the message you’d expect to hear from the vice president and chief nursing officer for Children’s Mercy: Take action.

She demonstrates that daily in her current position, where she oversees all aspects of nursing, covering more than 1,200 employees and a budget of $100 million every year. Hunt was a driving force behind the hospital’s successful efforts to secure Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 2003, the first hospital in the two-state region to achieve that status. The Magnet program recognizes excellence and professionalism in nursing, words that are a natural part of Hunt’s vocabulary. “I have the privilege to lead an amazing group” of nurses,” she said. “I am inspired every day by their compassion, dedication, professionalism, and commitment to excellence.”

Children’s Mercy, for those who have never been inside, is a place where the most vulnerable among us go for treatments that at times require the littlest patients to demonstrate courage on a level many adults might never muster. “I am amazed by their resiliency, optimism and strength,” Hunt says, speaking of the patients as well as their families. She’s also amazed by what she can learn in that setting, and that’s what she calls the best thing about her job: “Every day,” Hunt says, “brings a new challenge and an opportunity to learn and influence positive changes and professional growth.”

 

Nick Comninellis

Institute for International Medicine

 

Nicholas Comninellis is among the rarest of CEOs: One whose service to the organization comes in a volunteer role. He earns a living teaching public health at UMKC’s School of Medicine and in other venues. But his true passion lies in delivering health care to “the poorest of the poor,” he says. That prompted him to found the Institute for International Medicine in 2003. He’s been from Angola to Zimbabwe and places in between: Burkina Faso, China, Haiti, Honduras and Niger. Perhaps that taste for distant locales—if not exotic ones—was instilled when he was still a high school senior, inspired by Tom Dooley’s book ‘Deliver Us From Evil’ about caring for Vietnamese refugees before the war. His reaction? “I want to do that, too!”

And he did. Comninellis practices medicine infused with a deep spirituality, and cites as his inspiration the biblical tale of the Good Samaratin. Few physicians here will ever treat injuries from a land mine. Comninellis has. He recalled the story of an elderly Angolan called John the Baptist. Brought in for care two days after the blast, John was surely doomed, Comninellis thought. But a prayer before an emergency amputation was answered when the man soon regained consciousness, recovered and went home. When he received a letter from John expressing gratitude for saving his life, Comninellis said, “I knew in my heart that all the struggle to decide what to do with my life, and carry through with those plans, had been worthwhile.”

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

 

Dean Merkel

University of Kansas Hospital

 

Save for those working in the maternity ward, joy can be a commodity in short supply at
a hospital. Not so for patients or employees who interact with Dean Merkel, lab manager for the University of Kansas Cancer Center’s Blood and Marrow Transplant program. Going on 23 years
with the hospital, Merkel has carved out a reputation as a constantly positive force in the most trying of situations. “There might be others working in health-care environments as deserving” of being a Hero in Healthcare, said Medical Director Lowell Tilzer, “but no one more deserving.”

Merkel has left fingerprints on a wide range of lab initiatives, including efforts to improve diagnoses of cystic fibrosis in children, increasing the effectiveness of stem-cell collection techniques, and assisting with construction of a new Bone Marrow Transplant team in a joint venture between KU Hospital and St. Luke’s Health System. And as for claiming ownership of challenges, he’s known for midnight runs to Kansas City International Airport to personally transport marrow donations shipped from overseas, rather than risking them in a cab ride.

Initially attracted to medicine by his love for science, he’s gravitated into roles that require much more patient interaction, which helps keep him going. “Many of our patients have overcome so much and have very few options for treatment,” Merkel says. “Anything we can do to help give them the opportunity to continue a quality life is my main inspiration.” Thus, the rays of sunshine he casts around the hospital. “Life’s little problems pale in comparison to what we see here,” Merkel says. “Remember, every day is a good day; some are just a little better.” .

 

Terrie Price

The Rehabilitation Institute

 

Winston Churchill’s oft-quoted “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” was not a reference to the human brain. From Terrie Price’s perspective, though, it might as well have been. She’s a neuropsychologist for the Rehabilitation Insitute, where the mysteries of the brain—and the challenges of helping rebuild lives after theirs have been damaged—are riddles she tries to resolve every day.

The study of brain-behavior relationships, neuropsychology is a specialty that combines Price’s two areas of interest: “I greatly enjoy the diagnostic process of assessing cognitive functions, and having
the opportunity to educate people on how the brain works.” That is not always a simple educational process. “Most of the individuals that I work with have had a major medical event resulting in life-altering changes,” Price says. “It is a constant testimony to our capacity for courage and hope as individuals wrestle to understand the ‘new normal’ and then remake meaningful lives.”

Often, she said, patients must embrace big changes in the way they see themselves and their life pursuits, with powerful emotions that must be overcome to ensure recovery. But Price is there to offer vital support, and when it works, she said, it’s an elixir for the soul: “It is truly remarkable to witness the ways in which individuals living with disabilities learn to modify and accommodate their life and environment to get the best out of work, home and play,” she says. “It is humbling and gratifying to be viewed as a positive change agent in someone’s life.”

 

Connie Poppino

Veterans Affairs Medical Center

 

Amputation. Spinal-cord and traumatic brain injuries. Blindness. Burns. Connie Poppino stares directly into the living effects of modern warfare, and doesn’t blink. As the regional face of the VA for veterans with service-related injuries, she steers them toward recovery from much more than just their physical injuries. “As I grew up, I learned that there are many aspects to the condition of ‘being healthy.’” Poppino said. “Not only does one need a healthy physical body, but it is important to have a healthy mind to support and interact with the physical body.” She serves as Transition Patient Advocate for injured veterans returning from both Iraq and Afghanistan, as many as 100 of them each month. As a veteran herself, retiring from the Army Reserve with the rank of major, Poppino knows first-hand some of the challenges veterans face finding medical care, mental-health care, financial planning aid, marital counseling and more.

Her skills came into play last year with a veteran who had served in Iraq. Financial difficulties had triggered his referral, but “it was clear to me that he had not accessed VA services or taken advantage of his health-care benefits,” Poppino said. She helped arrange for surgeries to correct a breathing obstruction and a knee injury, then worked to deliver services for post-traumatic stress disorder and financial counseling. “Things are far from perfect for him,” she says, “but he is on a path to recovery and making steady progress toward his goals.” His is the kind of success, built in increments, that keeps Poppino engaged in her work. “I am inspired,” she says, “by the resilience of our patients and the sacrifices they have made for our country.”

 

REGISTERED NURSES

 

Carol Cleek

University of Kansas Hospital

 

Twenty years later, Carol Cleek still gets a letter or a phone call from halfway around the world, reaffirming her choice of nursing as a profession. The contacts come from the son of a New Zealand woman who had suffered a massive heart attack while visiting Kansas City.

“The technological aspects of her care were challenging, but not near as challenging as being alone without family as you are dying,” Cleek recalls. So she worked to keep that patient in touch with relatives back home and to arrange funding for a special-needs flight to get her there. Six months later, the woman died, but not without leaving something behind for Cleek to hold onto. “Not only did I take care of her, but I took care of that entire family from far away. That’s what nursing is about for me—being a member of a team that cares for the person as well as their whole family.”

She came late to nursing, persuaded by her brother, a physician, who noted her lack of passion for the journalism career she’d studied for. “He saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself— how much I enjoyed taking care of people,” Cleek says.

Now, as director of emergency and critical care services for the hospital, that caring takes place by extension, working with a staff to do “what’s right for the patient 100 percent of the time.” Working toward a common goal, she says, “and having fun while we do that is what excites me every day.”

 

Patricia Gentner

Otologic Center

 

Unlike some who knew instinctively from their youth or who discovered the rewards of medical
careers after exploring other paths, Pat Gentner entered the field with some doubts. “In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was meant to be a nurse,” she says. “But the more patient care and patient education I became involved in, the more sure I was that I was where I was meant to be.”

For most of her career, that meant at the side of Dr. Charles Luetje, working with him on all of his cases as his office nurse, and in the operating room as his scrub nurse. His retirement last year ended that 32-year working relationship, but he looks back with great appreciation on her contributions. In particular, her work with him to introduce to this region the cochlear implantations that restore hearing to deaf adults and children.

“He was always on the cutting-edge of technology so we could offer our patients the latest treatment,” Gentner says, and through that work she found her own calling. “It was always extremely interesting and very rewarding. I remember our first two patients who received a cochlear implant in 1979. They both became deaf in their adult life and to watch their reaction to hear again with the implant was overwhelming.”

Private practice is a different animal than a large medical center, but that more intimate setting long ago proved to Gentner that any early doubts she had about her career choice were unfounded. “The best part of my job is what I view as total patient care,” she says. “I am able to follow patients from their initial visit, through their whole diagnosis process and treatment plan. There is a lot of patient education involved in my job as well as patient support. I love it.”

 

Debra Salsbury

Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center

 

Eight years ago, a woman in her early 40s gave birth to a boy four months prematurely, near the line that separates viability from hopelessness. She made a heart-rending plea to Debra Salsbury: “He is my only opportunity to be a mom.” Salsbury, a pediatric nurse practitioner, was part of a team that provided intensive care for months. The boy pulled through. And the mother? “Every year on his birthday, she brings or sends me a present,” Salsbury marvels, still unsure why the woman would single her out for such a tribute.

That’s powerful validation for a career that took root when Salsbury was still in grade school. “I have always known I wanted to be a nurse,” she says. “I know that sounds cliché, but it’s true. My dad was in the Army and I had two brothers. They would play “Army” and have wars. I was always the nurse on their battlefield.”

These days, she’s tending to the littlest patients in the hospital. “I love taking care of sick and premature babies,” Salsbury says. “Since my patients can’t talk to me, I know I have to rely on my assessment skills to know what is happening. I believe some of the smallest patients, those weighing even less than one pound, are truly the strongest. I have seen them endure things that I don’t think I could.” Working with them and their families for months at a time, she said, “you cry with them as well as celebrate with them the smallest of accomplishments.”

For Salsbury, it all boils down to successful outcomes—“To see a growing and thriving baby is such a great feeling,” she says—and when families end up back in NICU with another child, and ask for her to personally be involved again, “then you know you’ve made a difference.”

 

Kathleen Henderson

St. Joseph Medical Center

 

One of Kathleen Henderson’s earliest memories involve dressing up in a nurse’s costume and tending to her dolls. She had no doubt where life would take her. Less certain was the high school counselor who advised her to go into clerical work, or teaching. “I was very disheartened,” Henderson says, “and decided right then that nothing would keep me from being a nurse.” Six years later, that counselor was one of Henderson’s patients. Far more than karmic payback, though, she derives joy from her work in the stroke center at St. Joseph, work she calls a privilege. “I meet individuals at a very vulnerable time in their lives and it is my job to do whatever I can to help them, comfort them, and support them, in addition to caring for their physical needs.”

In working with stroke patients, she said, “what truly inspires me is to see their progress and recovery—to know that we made a difference in their lives. It is the most satisfying aspect of my work—to help patients recover, know that there is hope for recovery, and at times, assist those that will not have the opportunity to recover.”

No connection has left a more powerful impression on her than one that formed not long after nursing school, caring for a terminal cancer patient. “When I came in to check on her first thing in the morning, she grabbed my arm and said she had prayed that I would be her nurse that day,” Henderson says. “It was then that I really understood what I was there to do.” That episode still frames her outlook today: “I decided I never wanted to lose that part of nursing, no matter how busy I got with other tasks.”

And that helps her sum up her 33-year career. “The best thing about my job,” she says, “is the people I care for and the people I work with. That’s what it is all about.”

 

Cynthia Peters

St. Mary's Medical Center

 

For Cynthia Peters, work isn’t just a way to make it through this life—it’s connected to the next one, as well. “Coming to work every day and hearing prayer offered several times throughout the day allows me to stay anchored and focused on the work I do,” says the assistant regional director of cardiac/vascular nursing at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs. “I have been blessed most of my career to be able to work in a Catholic faith-filled environment.” And to think, it might not have happened but for a professor back at Allen County Community College in Iola, Kan. He recruited her into nursing classes, and she went on to earn her degree in it, forging relationships that have changed her life, as well as those of her patients.

She recalls the case of a man whose wife died of leukemia shortly before the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary. “Every day, this man would come to visit his wife,” Peters said. “We ate lunch together on numerous occasions while at the same time sharing stories” about his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That connection would sustain both of them when the illness claimed its final toll. “My job allowed us to connect and interact at a time when he needed to share his grief and sorrow. Our paths crossed for a reason; I connected with him and his family and he connected with me and my hospital family.” In that sense, her work isn’t truly her own; it’s shared with those around her. “I am inspired and motivated by my employees, the physicians, our system leaders, patients, and family members,” she says. “I love working at St. Mary’s, knowing we are providing a wonderful service to the community of Blue Springs.”

 

Rose Haddock-Judy

Lakeview Village Centrepointe Care Center

 

A powerful and poignant episode in Rose Haddock-Judy’s youth would steer her toward a career in health care. She was 15 years old when her father was diagnosed with liver cancer. What she witnessed during his treatment gave her life a direction just as it was really getting started. “I saw the wonderful nurses and doctors who took care of my Dad,” she says. “I will always remember the compassion and caring the staff showed him as well as my family.” Decades later, she embraces that approach with her own duties as director of nursing at Lakeview Village Centrepointe Care Center, the Lenexa retirement center she praises for its patient-centered approach to care.

“Sometimes,” she says, “the smallest thing you can do for a patient make the biggest difference to them, like taking a few minutes out of your busy day just to listen to them and their thoughts.” In itself, that can be powerful medicine. An example, Haddock-Judy recalls, involved a patient in whom she had noticed a subtle change. “Nothing that bells and whistles picked up, but I noticed it and reported to the doctor and we were able to intervene before it reached a crisis situation. The patient condition turned around rapidly; many weeks later, before he was discharged, he called me to the room to thank me. This made me feel 10 feet tall.”

That’s a feeling she hopes more medical professionals will come to know, but given the financial pressures weighing on health-care delivery, she’s concerned about her profession. “As hospital budgets get stretched, I also fear they will try to do more with less, putting patients at risk by increasing nurse-to-patient ratios,” she said.

 

AUXILLARY STAFF

Barbie Squires

Heartland Health

 

Give Barbie Squires high marks for candor from a medical professional: “I don’t have a clinical bone in my body,” she concedes. “But I have always loved volunteering and am amazed at how volunteerism can make positive change in organizations and communities.” So when Heartland Health issued a job description for a team leader in volunteer and auxiliary services, “I thought it was written for me,” she said.

Why? “The miracles that happen every day in the health-care environment continue to amaze me,” she said. “The hundreds of volunteers that report for duty week after week, year after year, because they find it satisfying to help others, inspire me, especially when I see the difference they can make in a patient by sharing a smile, holding a hand or just listening.”

The most tangible connection between volunteering and patient health, Squires said, involved a woman who worked for the community chorus and teamed up with Heartland’s Breast Center to produce a Susan G. Komen Sing for the Cure fund-raiser. Months later, that same chorale employee was diagnosed with breast cancer herself, and was successfully treated—a case that Squires says was “an inspiration to all of us.”

But the best part about her work, she said, is that it helps expose young volunteers to the possibility of medical careers, and it gives seniors an outlet for their interests in retirement years. Being part of that process, she said, “makes what I do so much more than a job.”

 

Jesse Smith

Children's Mercy Hospital

 

Accounting for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, health care is a very big business. And hospitals are a large part of that. But even before a patient is admitted, even before high-tech equipment and laboratories are put in place, even before insurance reimbursements are calculated, financial projections drawn up, capital budgets planned, something very basic has to take place to make it all work: The site must be clean.

Hospitals by their nature are gathering places for all manner of microbes that quite literally are walked into the building every day by patients suffering a wide range of maladies. The very real threat of hospital-borne infection to patients, many of whom already have weakened resistance, is the kind of thing that keeps administrators awake at night. Especially if they don’t have a Jesse Smith. He’s director of environmental services for Children’s Mercy Hospital. It’s his job to direct the staff that keeps the sprawling complex sanitary. A lot of his motivation for getting it right can be found on those little wagons that transport tiny patients around the site. “There are days when I arrive at work and may not feel well,” Smith reflects, “and in no time at all I’ll see one of our children here with the biggest, brightest smile and it will have a healing effect on me.”

He oversees a staff of 150 that is at work around the clock, and his team’s efforts consistently show up on patient-satisfaction surveys, where cleanliness of the facility routinely receives the highest marks. Driving that mission is Smith’s emphasis on what’s at stake for these very special patients and “knowing that the work we do is an important part of health care and the care of the children.”

 

Lisa Holt

Lee's Summit Medical Center

 

When the sun comes up over Lee’s Summit Medical Center, nobody has to go looking for Lisa Holt. Employees arriving for their shifts find her holding the door open for them, greeting them with a smile. “She does this on her own time, prior to timing in,” says Robin Dawson, of the hospital’s marketing staff. Asked by a hospital official what made her think of doing such a thing, Holt replied, “I want to make sure that everyone gets to start their day with a smile and some encouragement.” That’s made her a popular fixture at the hospital, where she’s worked since 2001, most recently as an environmental services technician in the perioperative ward. There, her duties include sterilization of surgical instruments— a critically vital task that helps ensure the safety of patients undergoing invasive procedures.

Holt began with environmental services as a cleaning technician, and embraced the opportunity to advance by enrolling in the hospital’s first “School at Work” program, which teaches workers the reading, math and problem-solving skills they need to pursue other learning opportunities. Upon graduation, Holt set her sights on the perioperative unit and has been there since. It’s a good fit, because she enjoys “working with people in general,” she says, and especially, “getting to know them.”

After 13 years of working in a nursing home, the Raytown High School graduate was looking for something more. She found it at LSMC, where in addition to her pre-operative work, she enjoys “helping move patients, put away stock, helping basically wherever I’m needed. I do a little bit of everything.”

 

 

VOLUNTEERS

C.L. Foster, Jr.

Truman Medical Center–Lakewood

 

JR Foster—he prefers that to his given name of Clarence Lee—knows what it means when someone extends a helping hand. “Being handicapped myself, I have relied on help from others over the years,” says Foster, who lost his legs in a work accident in 1983. So when he retired in 2002, “I thought that it was time to give back to the community.” His own aptitude for things mechanical dovetailed nicely with a friend’s suggestion that they could use some help repairing wheelchairs at Truman Medical Center-Lakewood.

Foster’s presence helps patients put their own challenges into perspective, demonstrating that, no matter how tough a hand you’ve been dealt, life goes on. His volunteer service takes on many forms: dealing cards on Mondays and Fridays for long-term residents in the “Men’s Club,” mowing grass with groundskeepers or mending wheelchairs on the fritz. His latest project is taking place in his own garage. He helped arrange the donation of a Chevy S-10 pickup, talked a salvage lot into towing it to his house, and is refitting it into a transfer vehicle for patients and their wheelchairs.

The overwhelming choice for the hospital’s Volunteer of the Year in 2008, Foster has logged about 2,500 hours volunteering there either two or three days a week, on top of what he contributes to various organizations through his membership in the Rotary Club of eastern Independence. But he realizes another form of compensation from his labors: “Everyone at TMC is so appreciative, from the staff to the patients to the long-term care residents,” he says. “I get back more than I give.”

 

Sally Tureman

John Knox Village

 

“I am a person of deep faith, and believe we’re all brothers and sisters. My work does free me to be a sister to almost anybody.” That’s how Sally Tureman sums up more than six decades of volunteer service in the Kansas City area—going all the way back to her days at the former Sunset Hill Academy. As the daughter of a realty executive who could keep the Great Depression at arm’s length from his family, Tureman was well aware that others weren’t as fortunate. She set out early to balance fate’s ledger. “I grew up in a more privileged background,” she says, “but I always felt closer to the people who I worked with in all those places.”

She’s been involved with children’s homes, Meals on Wheels, hospices, food pantries and more. At 80, she’s still giving, working at John Knox Village in Lee’s Summit with Alzheimer’s patients in various stages of the illness. She’s done so for 20 years now, and says the work adds an important dimension to her life.

“It’s a fascinating thing, really,” she muses. “Alzheimer’s seems to be totally a tragedy, but there is more to it than that. When a person doesn’t really know where they came from or who they used to be, and they don’t care who you are or used to be, you are freed in an incredible way.” That freedom allows her to make powerful, honest connections. “I thoroughly enjoy being with them; there’s love and laughter. I don’t think there’s any place I go where am I more certain I will have laughter.” One memorable example of that came in her role as non-denominational chaplain. “I wasn’t really going to preach, just say few words of love and encouragement,” Tureman remembers, laughing. “I said one sentence, and a woman got up and said ‘That’s enough of that!’ and walked away. It’s no place for anybody with a big ego.”

 

Clarence Regas

Children's Mercy Hospital

 

Clarence Regas is a man who enjoys making choices about where he devotes his time. He didn’t have the luxury of choice about where he worked—Omaha Beach—back on one of his first gigs, which soon had him in the employ of one Gen. George S. Patton. But after his military service, a couple of years in college and a 38-year career at Kansas City Southern Railway, Regas surveyed the calendar ahead of him and decided that he could be choosy about filling it. He and his wife, Jean, settled on Children’s Mercy Hospital back in 1983.

He’s been there since, most recently in twice-a-week shifts as a Pathfinder. He mans the information desk to steer parents and patients through the complex on Hospital Hill. Wearing his trademark blue volunteer’s vest, he brings to the task a gentle approach tailored specifically to the clientele, easing young anxieties with a query: “Young man, would you like some stickers?” And he brings to this year’s Heroes lineup a measure of wit-infused humility: “I think there are people more worthy of the honor, but as you get older and your peers disappear, I guess there’s less of us to choose from.”

His volunteer service, 5,500 hours of it since they began keeping count years after he started, has included manning the cookie cart making the morning rounds, working with the Family Friends program and more. Jean died in 2007, but Clarence still makes the hospital a big part of his life.

He’s said it more than once, and he says it again: “I would pay to be a volunteer at Children’s Mercy.”

 

LIFETIME SERVICE

 

Charles Van Way

Truman Medical Center/UMKC

 

Charles Van Way III thinks about the patients he’s treated during his career as a trauma surgeon, and, in a way, about the ones he’ll never see, but has touched. That’s because his true career reward, he says, has been training the next generation of physicians, and especially the next generation of surgeons. The opportunity to contribute to the welfare of his fellow man—and fellow physician—set him on this road: “I’ve always been interested in science,” he says, “But I felt that a career in pure science offered little opportunity to help people. Being a physician seemed to me at the time to combine science with a helping profession. I still feel that way.”

When he thinks about the future of medicine, and what awaits those he’s influenced over his career, Van Way can’t help but be concerned about the way doctors are viewed by many today. “Supposedly, we’re the reason health care costs too much,” he says, “but we’re also at fault because we can’t cure everybody all the time, and we are paid too much, and on and on.” He knows that the health-care system faces genuine challenges, and hopes that those intimately familiar with many of those challenges—the hands-on practitioners—will be granted a greater voice in the debate. “Physicians must be a big part of any solutions, and right now, nobody’s listening to us,” he says. “So costs continue to rise, and a lot of people have no insurance, and both Medicaid and Medicare remain dysfunctional. Where will it end? Right now, nobody knows.”

Until the retirement bug bites, Van Way is relishing a kind of zen level of balance he’s achieved in life, and in medicine. “Right now,” he says, “I have a job which is largely research, while still practicing medicine part of the time. I still get to help people, and I get to pursue science. What could be better?”

 

Sr. Judith Jackson

Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System

 

As a member of a religious order, it’s a safe bet that Sister Judith Jackson didn’t get into hospital administration for the money. But that’s not to say her career has been without rewards: “I have been able to make a difference in the lives of many, have extended a healing touch, have developed the gifts and talents of others, and have been blessed abundantly,” she said. Her life’s journey, she says, has been one of call and response, her interest in service piqued by time working as a nursing-home aide while still in high school.

After entering the Sisters of Charity 46 years ago, expecting to work in secondary education, she found new direction that took her into health care. “I discovered that I loved working with the sick and the dying,” she says. “For almost 20 years as a hospital chaplain, I daily learned life lessons from patients, families, clinicians and staff.” In 1995, she became vice president of sponsorship for the health system, where CEO William Murray says she brought to executive decision-making a vital perspective. “She provides a voice for caring that, at times, might be too easily lost in discussions of reimbursement, ROI or technology,” he said.

Anticipating her December 2010 retirement, she reflects on her time both as a chaplain and a health system executive, on what she calls the sacred nature of encounters with people, and on “the resilience of the human spirit.” Perhaps the best example of that came when she counseled a breast-cancer patient who was still in her 20s. The woman lived, married and became a hospice social worker herself. Years later, she thanked Sister Judith for the hope she needed to prevail, a powerful validation of her life’s work.

 

Jesse Roberts

NorthCare Hospice

 

There’s no getting around it: When the human body goes haywire, the outcomes can be hard to deal with. But a young Jesse Roberts discovered early in his career that he had a talent elusive to many physicians: He was able to gently and effectively communicate difficult news to patients and their families. “My passion to care for them,” he says, “became my life’s work.” Roberts was steered in that direction, in part, from witnessing first-hand the death of a man at the hands of melanoma: His father. After earning his medical degree at George Washington University in the nation’s capital, Roberts chose oncology/hematology as a subspecialty because he wanted to help patients facing end-of-life care dilemmas. Hospice and palliative medicine, he said, provided the opportunity to be the physician he’d visualized in his youth.

All the more refreshing was that he found kinship in those who embrace his own values of providing end-of-life care. “Each day provides its challenges and its gifts,” he says. “The best gift I receive is knowing that we provide the care I would want for myself and my family. Achieving that goal makes it a good day.”

And then, sometimes, the outcomes can be surprisingly uplifting. Roberts recalls the particularly aggressive—but ultimately successful—treatment required for a young man with testicular cancer. “He showed courage and motivation to return to a normal life,” Roberts said. “A few years later, I had the honor of attending his wedding and then holding his first-born child. This experience and many others like it validate my professional life every day.”