Helping to make a needed impact at the GPHC, Elizabeth O’Brien is a ‘Special Person’

Jul 22, 2018 Features / Columnists, News, Special Person

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“I feel great about the service I offer here. I must say I love my job and once I get positive outcomes, I can’t help but feel good.”

 

By Sharmain Grainger

In a hospital setting, there is no denying that the presence of nurses and doctors is especially crucial. However, often bridging the gap between the health professionals and the patients are just as important people, the likes of Philippa Elizabeth O’Brien.

Commonly referred to as Ms. O’Brien or just Elizabeth, she has over the years become a very familiar and friendly face at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC]. Although she is currently a Social Worker by training, her designated position at the GPHC is the Hospital Discharge Coordinator.

A typical shift for O’Brien at the GPHC entails her walking throughout the hospital, meeting with health workers and patients, all with the aim of executing the job that she is employed to do – coordinate the discharge of patients. This is an undeniably important role, since the discharge of patients is necessary so that the hospital can make space for other patients who are in need of medical care.

“To turn the system over, we have to make sure that from admission to discharge, everything moves smoothly…this means working with the nurses, the doctors, the patients and the family too is very important,” O’Brien related.

Over the years, she has been able to master the art of carrying out her duty with such poise and finesse that many patients might have mistaken her for merely a friendly passerby who they can easily relate their concerns to. In fact, she has been among the crucial personnel of the hospital that help family members understand how to cope with their relatives once the time has come for their discharge.

In this regard, O’Brien revealed, “I do a lot of education with family members to let them know the reason why it is important to take their discharged relatives home.”

WORRISOME

But the situation that continues to bother O’Brien as well as her other colleagues and the entire GPHC administration, is that there continues to be a problem of abandonment of patients. This situation has been known to not only limit the available space for patients who actually need it, but can contribute to the premature death of some of these abandoned patients.

According to O’Brien, she has over the years been desperately trying to explain to many relatives that once patients have been cleared for discharge there should be no hesitation in taking them home. This is in light of her understanding that they could be exposed to cross infection or cross contamination in the very wards, they occupy.

“If they remain there and everybody is going and coming, they can become re-infected, and I am sorry to say, but many of them can die passively…we are having too many deaths of abandoned people because of this situation,” said a disappointed O’Brien.

But she is pressing on by reaching out and educating family members as far as possible about the importance of ensuring that the process of discharging patients is not taken lightly.

Using her background as a trained Social Worker, O’Brien is able to counsel many family members, and is often able to help them develop the coping mechanism to deal with those being discharged.

“I feel great about the service that I offer here. I must say I love my job and once I get positive outcomes, I can’t help but feel good,” confided O’Brien.

EARLY DAYS

Born to Evelyn Sparrock and Cyril O’Brien on March 3, 1958, as the sixth of 10 children, Elizabeth grew up in the mining town of Linden, Region 10.  She attended the McKenzie All-age school.

As she reflected on her early days during a recent interview, many thoughts of years gone by flooded her mind. O’Brien even recalled living for a period in Buxton on the East of Demerara and shared of her experience at National Service. “I am para-military,” she blurted out with pride. “I am a second intake pioneer…that was back in 1976,” she recounted.

However, from an early age she had a passion for nursing, and so commenced some training in that field, immediately out of National Service.  Armed with her training, she was able to secure a job at the Linden Hospital Complex in 1981.

“It was beautiful, caring for the patients…it was a great experience, because you are able to give service,” said O’Brien of her nursing exposure. Taking pride in nursing was especially easy for her, since she was very much a people’s person, and therefore was able to relate to just about anyone she encountered.

This, however, might have been a trait she developed having been born into a very large family. Although she is mother to only one, O’Brien said she certainly appreciated the way she was raised.

“We were seven girls and three boys and we grew up in a helping family. But although we were such a big family, my mother would take in Tom, Dick and Harry…other people’s children, and she kept them until they grew big. My father said to her one day ‘why don’t you open a crèche?’” remembered a smiling O’Brien.

She recalled that her mother was a seamstress and her father was a foreman, and they always managed to make ends meet for their ever-growing household.

TRUE CALLING

But as she grew older her interest drifted to other things. This, moreover, saw her opting to become an entrepreneur. This too was no challenge for her, since she had grown up seeing her parents also indulging in what she described as a ‘back door’ business.

A ‘back door’ business, O’Brien explained, was one that literally entailed the selling of products through one’s back door rather than out of a traditional shop.  “Anything we sold out of our back door. From kerosene oil to aji to cubes, and other little small items, we sold everything even greens,” O’Brien reminisced.

But as an entrepreneur, O’Brien’s sale of goods saw her travelling to various parts of the country. “I would travel from Linden to Berbice and even went to Essequibo too to sell,” she recounted.

She, however, disclosed that the passion for being in the health field still lingered. This saw her delivering some level of home care to persons in need of medical attention.

But she knew she had so much more to offer.

She decided to delve back into the health sector, applying simultaneously at the GPHC and the privately-operated Woodlands Hospital for a suitable position.  Her application was found favourable by both institutions, thus O’Brien had to make a choice. Choosing the GPHC, O’Brien is convinced, was indeed the better choice.

At the GPHC she started off as a Patient Care Assistant and even became a Patient Advocate as she worked her way up the ladder of health care delivery.
“Everything was task-oriented, and so I was able to find time to talk with patients to find out how they really felt and what I found is that they sometimes end up telling you things that they don’t even tell the doctor,” O’Brien revealed. She recalled serving as the first Patient Advocate at the GPHC and Social Worker at the Enmore Health Centre for a period, catering to many social issues. However, her service was much more needed at the GPHC.

Although O’Brien has over the years helped to train a number of young people to adopt her mode of conduct, her service continues to be in demand. This might be owing to the fact that O’Brien has, throughout her career, sought to improve the service she offers.

“I always thought I was doing a good customer service, but last year I decided to do a City and Guilds customer service training programme and that helped me to be able to deliver even more effectively,” said O’Brien, who is convinced that age has also helped her to be more caring and very understanding during her many interactions.

PROFESSIONALISM

O’Brien reflects that her training as a Social Worker at the University of Guyana has helped to propel her further as an efficient and effective professional.

“Understanding self is very important in this profession. If you don’t understand yourself, you are going to be in big time trouble. So persons who are coming to be Social Workers, need to do a thing we call internal introspection, and that is understanding self. Get over your hurdles, your issues, or whatever the case may be, and then you can be able to deliver to people,” O’Brien asserted.

Failure to do this, she cautioned, could essentially see persons in such crucial fields setting themselves up for unsuccessful outcomes.

O’Brien is convinced that Social Workers can do even more to help the society become a better place. As such, she stressed the need for the establishment of a Social Worker fraternity that has as its vision a plan to help unearth the root causes of some of the shortcomings in society.  “We need to have genuine analysis of what is happening around us, so when we hear the issues, we understand and know exactly what we can do about them. We have to examine situations, not only with the women, but the men too, because the men also need help.

I have had so many men share their stories with me and I have been able to help them through situations too,” said O’Brien, who has a passion for helping to resolve issues families face.

“For me, I prefer to reach out to people than to just wait for them to come and sit down and tell me their story. My aim is to help people to move forward…I always think about how I can help the person I am dealing with,” said O’Brien.

For this very reason, she often adopts an empathic stance to achieve the desired goal.

“I share my own situation sometimes, in order to get the information that I need from people, to help them. Because if you just ask questions, most times you can’t find out what is somebody’s problem; they have to trust you to share it with you,” related O’Brien, who thrives on keeping her client information confidential.

For helping to make a noticeable difference through the work she does every day, today we at Kaieteur News bestow O’Brien with the title of ‘Special Person’.

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