Model health professional, Dr. Yvette Martin, is a ‘Special Person’

Dec 01, 2013 News

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“You are not born to be here and that’s it. You must contribute something in life…and when you are young, that is the best time.”

By Sharmain Grainger

The term stagnate simply doesn’t fit into the vocabulary of Yvette Anitha Martin, and therefore, its meaning hasn’t been allow to invade her nearly six decades of existence. In fact, she can easily be voted the person who is busy getting an ambitious task done even when others are convinced that it isn’t possible.

This attitude was instrumental in helping her to remain focused and committed to the delivery of health care, moving from a nurse to a specialist doctor who also currently holds the position of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Registrar at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
This, by extension, means that the local health sector is only too fortunate to have a veteran professional of astounding calibre offering selfless service to those accessing the facilities offered at the public hospital.
Although Dr. Martin has over the years developed a mentality to forge ahead even when clouded with some degree of ambiguity, her existence could have been a daunting one had she given much thought to her biological family.
You see, while she knows her mother Joyce Wintz gave birth to her on June 22, 1954, there isn’t much else to remember.
What she does remember is being parented by loving and caring foster parents, Harry and Olga Pryce. With no children, the couple was only too happy to share a comfortable abode at Bagotstown, East Bank Demerara, with the young Yvette.
She attended Peter’s Hall Anglican School before moving on to the Indian Education Trust College, to complete her secondary education.
Immediately after her schooling she was struck with a desire to embrace the teaching profession, but as fate would have it, her application to do so was not acceptable.
Although she was crushed, Yvette somehow knew that she had a significant purpose and was determined to uncover same. And it was during what could be considered an inopportune episode of her life that she was exposed to a most endearing profession.
Yvette was stricken with an ear infection and was required to visit the hospital on quite a few occasions.  She recalled seeing a nurse attired in uniform complete with a head veil, giving her an impeccable professional appearance.

The nurse was later identified as Sister Brown, and according to Dr. Martin, during a recent interview with this publication, “I saw her walking in the compound of the hospital and she was so upright and lady-like…from that moment I knew I wanted to be a nurse.”
The enthralled Yvette was soon applying to undergo training at St Joseph Mercy Hospital to become a professional nurse.  She commenced training in 1973, and by 1976, was ready to portray a similar image of the nurse she had enviably gazed upon a few years earlier.
But even as her goal of practicing nursing was being fully realised at Mercy Hospital, another memorable and life-changing event occurred in her life.  The young nurse and her sweetheart, Ernest Martin, decided to get married. The two had previously met at a church crusade.  At the time she was a member of the Eccles Assembly of God Church and was very active in its youth Ministry. Her husband even then had a fervent interest in Christianity. He is currently the Reverend at the Lusignan Assembly of God Church.
“To be quite honest, at first I wasn’t really interested in him, but he was very persistent…” Dr. Martin recounted as a smile formed on her face.
Their union produced three children – Carlos, Coletta and Catherine.
But although she was happy with her family life and profession, she somehow knew that there was more to be had.
And so before long she was on her way to embarking on a midwifery programme. This saw her being seconded to the GPHC where the training was being done.
On completion by 1980, she returned to Mercy Hospital as a Staff Nurse/Midwife and would remain there until 1982 when she left the private institution altogether.
Her move was one premised on the need to expand her academic horizon by pursuing the Ministry of Health’s Medex programme at Liliendaal, Greater, Georgetown.
After graduation from the latter programme in 1984, she was placed as the Medex in Charge at the Kitty Health Centre. Although she had seven fulfilling years there, she was constantly overwhelmed with the feeling that she had more to offer to the health sector.
“I felt that wasn’t enough…I had the distinct feeling that I needed to do something more,” Dr. Martin reflected.
She explained that her motivation was the need to encourage her own children to strive for the best that they could possibly be in life. According to the soft-spoken Dr. Martin, “you want your children to see that they should not remain where they are…they must see the sky as the limit.”

It was just this she had in mind when, although much older than most applicants, she decided that it was time to up her qualification a notch; this time pursuing Medicine at the University of Guyana.  But this wasn’t going to be an easy task. In fact, in the first year of the programme she was convinced that “I made a mistake. I remembered coming home one day in tears because somehow I wasn’t getting Bio-Chemistry…I came home and said I’m not going back…this is it! I decided I was going to go back to being a Medex.”
But destiny wasn’t about to give up on her.
You see it was some years earlier during a symposium at the Central Assembly Church that a young pastor spoke prophetically about her life.  The pastor, she explained, had in essence predicted long before she even planned on studying medicine that she would become a doctor.
In 1992 when she was finally accepted to undertake the medical programme at UG, she realised that studies in this regard was much more than she had anticipated. However, her memory of the prophecy was the element that helped her to remain steadfast.
“I had to pull myself together and I went back to UG…It was hard, but I had a lot of support from my colleagues and my family.”
By the end of 1999 she was ready to graduate, and according to her, “it was as if I was finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
With her newfound expertise, she was strategically placed in the Anaesthesia Department at the GPHC. It was quite a satisfying feeling, she explained, being able to make the necessary decisions to help improve the health of patients. This was especially important to her since she recalled during her practice as a nurse it was always the doctors making such decisions.
With the ability to understand the delivery of health care at the levels of a nurse, medex and a doctor, Dr. Martin disclosed that “it feels good when you see somebody come in, in a bad state, and you are able to say and do the things that can help them out…and when they look at you and say thank you it can be so heartening.”

But being a doctor is no simple task, since according to Dr. Martin, there can at times be sleepless nights. For the past few years she has been at the helm of the ICU and is able to offer critical care to patients. Added to this, she is oftentimes tasked with counselling and giving moral support to patients’ distraught family members.
“Being in a position to say something comforting to a family member, and to see them, even though the situation might be grave and having a positive outlook knowing that you are trying your very best to do whatever you can, is comforting to me,” said Dr. Martin.
Dedication to her profession sees her, on a daily basis, attending thoroughly to, on average, seven critically ill patients, even as she collaborates with other doctors and surgeons in the quest to render proper health care.
But her desire to do even more in the medical field has not remotely diminished. Perhaps by now she would have gone on to broaden her knowledge in intensive care, had it not been for the high cost of such programmes.
However, she is optimistic that her ambitious endeavours during the course of her career would serve to not only help improve the wellbeing of ailing patients, but also as an encouragement to other health professionals to improve their health care delivery skills too.
“I usually tell especially the nurses to take me as an example. Do not be contented with just being a nurse and always try to improve your status; don’t just stick to nursing…”

Dr. Martin is an ardent advocate for young people seeking to achieve their full potential, once possible, while they are still young.  According to her, a life could be considered wasted if every effort is not made to “fulfil one’s potential”.
“You are not born to be here and that’s it. You must contribute something in life…and when you are young, that is the best time.”

 

 

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