Brown Delivers Care To Staff And Patients Alike
When registered nurse Katie Brown sees something that needs doing, she just goes ahead and does it.
So, she was a bit taken aback that anyone would single her out for an award.
“It’s kind of like being a mother, you take care of things and that’s what you do. You prioritize, you organize and you keep everyone from killing each other,” Brown said during an interview in an office in St. Vincent Hospital’s emergency department, where she is the third shift’s nurse manager. She’s been a nurse for 23 years, with most of them spent at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester.
Doing The Right Thing
But her co-workers and her supervisor, Paul MacKinnon, also a registered nurse and the chief nursing office at St. Vincent Hospital, believe it’s a lot more than that.
A perfect example is when a co-worker’s grandmother died in England, and she wasn’t able to go back for the funeral. Brown arranged for a remembrance mass to be said at the hospital’s chapel.
“I get a lot of credit for that, but I have to tell you that a number of people made that happen,” she said. “It was the right thing to do, and I know it really meant the world to her.”
Doing things for co-workers comes naturally not only to her but her fellow workers. “The people I work with are fabulous. You spend a lot of life with these people. We’re a small group and we work well together,” Brown said.
It isn’t just her co-workers that get her attention. Brown lights up when she talks about students in the nursing assistant program at Worcester Technical High School.
She was in the emergency department for a number of years and then became the manager of the float pool, which is a pool of nurses that “float” to wherever they’re needed. The high school students are paired with different float nurses every other week as part of their curriculum.
“Some of these kids are the family’s only paycheck, but you’d never know it. From the time they hit the door until the kids are gone, they have such a great attitude. They’re all smiles and they work hard,” she said.
Her supervisor sees her interaction with the students as another facet of Brown’s caring nature.
“She truly embraces these students by imparting the values of hard work and the importance of caring for people,” said MacKinnon. “She inspires them to want to achieve great things. “
And there is the matter of the free ambulance. Brown laughs when you bring it up, claiming it was an “old battle axe” of an ambulance. Someone asked her if she could help the Worcester Vocational High School find an ambulance for their emergency medical technician program. Brown stepped up and found them an ambulance.
She even got her son to go pick it up and deliver it to the school on a borrowed ramp truck.
“Once it went through their auto body and automotive shops, it looked brand new, and the EMT students were able to use it,” she said.
Brown is also devoted to the hospital and the medicine practiced there. She’s an active and integral member of the hospital’s emergency management committee and the physician satisfaction team.
“This is a good place to work. I don’t think I’d ever want to leave,” Brown said.
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