Acceptance Speech
Hello, my name is Char Fentress. I am a certified medical assistant at the University Health Center. I am completely humbled and grateful to have been selected for this award. My heartfelt thanks goes to Cari Casarez, Nancy Cox and Allie Heaman for their nomination.
Thank you to the Senate for taking the time and effort in choosing the recipients of these awards. My congratulations goes to Cimmerone Gillespie, also a recipient of the Classified Staff Leadership Award.
I have spent many hours trying to come up with a speech that was fitting for this type of award…..with the state of the world, it has proven to be very difficult, especially working in healthcare. Therefore, I want to talk about a project that started 4 years ago. I was asked by Dr. Brunader, our medical director, to overhaul our PPE equipment. Usually, that acronym would take some explaining, but at this point, it is well understood.
An adventure to our stockroom in the basement of the health center yielded supplies that would not generally work for standard equipment in the healthcare setting. What we had available at that time was equipment that had been purchased during the Ebola crisis.
After many trials with gowns, face masks, shields, hoods, etc., I was able to come up with equipment that would serve to protect our staff & providers, as well as our students. Thinking I was finally done, I soon found that this would require written policy, processes and procedures, one of my first experiences in understanding that the health center requires these for EVERYTHING! This would encompass a number of things: understanding the diseases, requirements of state reporting to teaching how to put this equipment on and, more importantly, taking it off safely to prevent contamination. Again, thinking that I had completed this project, I was then asked to create a table matching each disease process with the exact PPE that would be needed. All in all, this project lasted over 18 months, and recently has reemerged to deal with CoVid. During that time, I was asked why there was so much time, energy and resources put in this project….my only response was “You never know, we might need it someday”
Someday came January 20, 2020 at 3pm….. A student who had just returned from Wuhan China reporting a cough and fever walked in to the Health Center. The process was put to use that day, and for a few days after. It was put to rest as we watched the CoVid 19 virus move across the world, never thinking that would appear in our backyard . As we started to see this in the Pacific NW, it was becoming obvious that we soon would be affected. Fast forward to Spring Break…..returning to campus after Break was like walking in to a whole different world. Our health center was not immune to these changes. Social distancing practices were put in to place, masks were required and a separate clinic was created to accommodate any student with possible viral symptoms. We, like the rest of the world, had limited PPE supplies. We were fortunate enough to have an alumni donate both N95 masks as well as procedure masks which have currently kept supplies at a safe level.
Not only have I seen this project come to fruition, but I have had the opportunity to work in our viral clinic for the past 11 weeks. Meaning that I have become the end user of my own creation.
I am incredibly proud to part of an amazing nursing staff at the health center….they say that our occupation is the heart of healthcare……..I would like to say that the University Health Center is truly the heart of the University of Oregon.
In closing, I would like to share with you some words of Steve Jobs, a person who never graduated from college, but had a vision and became one of the founders of Apple. The following is a excerpt from a commencement speech given at Stanford University.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward: you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life”
What Jobs says applies to most of us. As our crystal ball gazing may not always yield success, it is imperative that we try our best in whatever we do and hope that in the future someway the dots will connect. Work hard. Be nice. Help others. Pay it forward. And trust the dots will connect somehow, somewhere………………..
Looking back 4 years, I was able to connect the dots.