A versatile and phenomenal woman… Nurse Penelope Layne-Lewis is a ‘Special Person’

Mar 08, 2020 News, Special Person

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“I want to see this profession regain the respectability it has lost. I want nurses to understand that they have to respect themselves first before anyone can respect them. I want nurses to understand that they have to love and genuinely care for people. I am working very hard to raise the standard of nursing in Guyana.”

By Sharmain Grainger

There are many facets of the health sector that are crucial to keeping a nation healthy, and Penelope Layne-Lewis has proven herself versatile enough to play not one but multiple roles within this realm.

But just who is Mrs. Layne-Lewis, you may ask? Well, to describe her precisely, she is a phenomenal woman with a heart of gold, whose passion for whatever she does is unmatched, having been forged by years of never giving up and forever enduring in the quest to improve the delivery of health care.
Her qualities are not only demonstrated professionally, but they transcend her personal life as well, making her a giant of a woman by any standard.
In addition to being a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend, she is a nurse, a counsellor, an educator, and by virtue of her being the Registrar of the Cancer Registry, she plays a key role in helping this country understand its cancer situation, with the aim of channeling measures that can effectively help to combat this scourge.
To many, she is just Nurse Layne, but she certainly wears her many hats like a crown, and never once does she let it slip, for she knows not just a few, but rather, many are depending on her to remain a woman made of resilient substance, who must take the lead in helping to change the world for the better.
It should therefore come as no surprise that we here at Kaieteur News have decided to name her our ‘Special Person’ of the week, on a day dedicated to celebrate women across the globe.
Designated by the United Nations, March 8, annually, is International Women’s Day, and this year it is being celebrated under the theme: I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights, a notion that Nurse Layne easily subscribes to.
FORMATIVE YEARS
Born Sunday, October 27, 1957, Nurse Layne is daughter to now retired Judge, Mr. James Patterson, and Mrs Jean Harding, a retired media professional. She is the eldest and only girl among four siblings and remembers quite vividly growing up in Campbellville, Georgetown, where she also met and married her husband, Leroy Lewis, mothered and raised her two wonderful sons – Ryan, a pharmacy technician and Richard, an attorney-at-law.

Her foundation in education was at the Ursuline Convent, now St Agnes Primary, and from there she moved on to complete her secondary studies at the North Georgetown Secondary School. “We were the very first intake of students at North Georgetown…actually we celebrated 50 years last August,” said Nurse Layne, of the batch of students she was a part of during her secondary school days.
Reflecting on her young days, Nurse Layne said reading and listening to good music were among her favourite pastimes, and she was happy to divulge that, “I still find a lot of pleasure in reading when time permits, but music remains my all-time favourite. Of course, as I grew older, dancing joined the list. My husband and I do quite a bit of that whenever time permits,” she intimated.
FOCUS ON HEALTHCARE
When asked why she ventured into health care, Nurse Layne thoughtfully recalled that it wasn’t her first choice, but noted that it nevertheless turned out to be her destined forte. “You know, when God has a plan for your life, it happens at the right time. My first choice of a career was to teach domestic science, so I applied to the Carnegie School of Home Economics. I’m not too sure why I did that then…I am still awaiting a reply to that application,” she mused, adding “after being miserable and upsetting the entire household and definitely not wanting to be a secretary or typist clerk, the suggestion came for me to perhaps apply to be a nurse.”
“I speak about this all the time whenever anyone asks me about it. I was never one of the little girls who always wanted to become a nurse, it was never in my thought, but you know what, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I simply love my job,” said the career nurse.

Her nursing profession was kicked into motion at the Georgetown Public Hospital back in October of 1976 as a Nursing Assistant. As Nurse Layne recalls, “it was not an easy road, but with lots of encouragement from my family, especially my mother, who always encouraged all of my endeavours, I was able to climb the ladder to success.”
On September 17, 1984, as part of batch 94, she joined the Professional Nursing programme, and Nurse Layne has many fond memories of that phase of her life. Among them was the 100 percent passes she and her batch mates claimed at the State final examinations.
“We were all first-timers sitting the examination, so it was quite a feat. I remember Sister Radika Shaw, who was our principal tutor, was walking on cloud nine, along with our other tutors. A few that come to mind are sister Gwen Tross, who is my mentor, Sister Beaton, Sister Watson, and all the other stalwarts who were so very nurturing but firm…those were people you wanted to emulate,” Nurse Layne recalled.
Not one to remain stagnant, she commenced her midwifery training in May of 1989. In addition to practicing nursing in every department of the Georgetown Hospital, with the exception of the Psychiatric Unit, Nurse Layne worked at the Suddie Hospital in Region Two and the Best Sanatorium [now the West Demerara Regional Hospital] in Region Three. She decided to quit being a fulltime nurse in 1990.

Reminiscing on the past, Nurse Layne said, “My best time was working in the Maternity Unit. It was my last place of work before leaving and I truly miss doing deliveries and the camaraderie my colleagues and I shared”.
NEW HORIZONS
In February of 1990, Nurse Layne joined the staff of the then Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation [GPC] at Farm, East Bank Demerara, where many drugs were manufactured, both for local use and export. For five years she had responsibility for the operation of the medical facility, during which time she completed a diploma programme in Occupational Health and Safety at the University of Guyana. To Nurse Layne, “GPC was a great learning experience; it also served as a good training ground in middle management”.
By 1999, when yet another opportunity knocked, Nurse Layne willingly answered and accepted responsibility as a Dispensary Nurse for the local arm of the United Nations Development Programme. “I worked alongside Dr. Begum who was from Pakistan and came to Guyana through the UN volunteer service. We worked well together, taking care of all staffers and their relatives who came under the UN umbrella [in Guyana]. That also was a great learning experience, as you were in close contact with so many different nationalities at all levels,” Nurse Layne recalled.
However, by the year 2000 that career opportunity came to an end, and before long, Nurse Layne had gravitated to the Cancer Registry where she remains grounded 20 years later.
For her this was truly a new and different work experience. The Registry, she disclosed, was the brainchild of the now departed Dr. Walter Chin. Speaking of her integration in this area of health care, Nurse Layne recalled that it was with help from the Guyana office of the Pan American Health Organisation [PAHO], which continues to be a great support to the Registry, and the National Cancer Institute in Washington DC, that she was accepted to be trained in cancer registration at the International Association of Cancer Registries in France. She later interned at the Thames Cancer Registry in London. Over the years she was exposed to other training programmes, and has even been recognized by PAHO for exceptional work.
Although it was easy to let her passion be her guide, Nurse Layne candidly revealed, “cancer registration can be emotionally draining, because we here at the Registry are exposed to the back side of what is truly happening in our country regarding cancer. It is far from a pretty picture.”
Nevertheless, she admitted her job at the Registry, which she truly embraces, has allowed

her to develop a love for research. “I am a part of a research group, the AC3 research group that spans Africa, the Caribbean and North America; a group that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 12 years of its existence. Guyana has made quite a few worthwhile presentations,” Nurse Layne shared.
Additionally, Nurse Layne currently heads the Kingston, Georgetown Annex of the Georgetown School of Nursing, where she spends many hours of days. She has been actively involved in nursing education since 2010.
FOREVER COMMITTED
She has no regrets with the path life has taken her thus far. But in retrospect, Nurse Layne’s focus could have been easily thwarted had she not stayed true to herself and recognized early on, the importance of her existence in the land of her birth, thus enabling her to unleash her full potential.
“I had the opportunity to leave Guyana, but my sons were very young [at the time] and I could not think of leaving them here to work abroad. A thousand disturbing scenarios played around in my mind, and I did not want to take the chance. Life was exceedingly hard back then, but today I do not regret a nanosecond of making the decision to remain at home,” said Nurse Layne.
In fact our heartened ‘Special Person’ revealed that “it is so satisfying when people meet me on the road and say how nice I was during a delivery, or how good I was to them during some terrible experience. I am always amused when a mother would hail out to me and ask ‘nursie yuh still deh hay? Look dis is yuh baby’, and I have to stretch my neck to look up at some tall young man or a young woman with a child or two of her own. It’s a humbling feeling…”
But according to Nurse Layne, one of her most satisfying experiences of her life is currently unfolding. “One of my deliveries, from so long ago, is now a final year student of mine, and as fate would have it, her dad was my very first nursing supervisor when I was assigned to my first area as a young staff nurse. Now tell me, what can be more satisfying than that?” Nurse Layne asked, as she professed her undying love for the nursing profession which has helped her to truly evolve as a human being.
She however asserted that being a nursing educator is no walk in the park. But she will remain committed to this task since, according to her, “I want to see this profession regain the respectability it has lost. I want nurses to understand that they have to respect themselves first before anyone can respect them. I want nurses to understand that they have to love and genuinely care for people. I am working very hard to raise the standard of nursing in Guyana.”
Through her role at the Cancer Registry, Nurse Layne said that she is aiming to evoke some major changes as well. “I would like to see more use being made of the data we work so hard to produce. I try to encourage university students to do more research using our data. I would also like to see more attention being placed on cancer awareness, and not only on cancer awareness month,” said Nurse Layne.
This is important since, according to her, “cancer is not going anywhere anytime soon, so we need to meet our people at the health centres and other health facilities; we need our cancer survivors to see their doctors on a day dedicated to them, so we can have more interaction with them; talk about their diet, try to get them to join a support group…these things would be so beneficial to them.”
But sometimes, just sometimes, it can be quite a challenge to remain a versatile and successful woman. It is days like these that Nurse Layne is able to lean on the ever-dependable shoulders of her husband who, she revealed, is “always extremely supportive”. These days she makes full use of his supportive ways as she pursues her Master’s in Advanced Nursing Education at the University of the West Indies.
“Everyone is so very supportive, and my staff and fellow tutors are my greatest cheerleaders,” Nurse Layne confided.
She is compelled daily to continue to be the best version of herself, especially when she recounts the many days her students say, “Sister, I would love to be like you”.
“It is a nice compliment, but I tell them they have to be prepared to put in the hard work it takes to become a successful person, and this means you always, always, have to keep learning,” Nurse Layne asserted.
Amidst her too many responsibilities, Nurse Layne, who is also a professional counsellor, somehow finds time to counsel cancer survivors and their relatives, an undertaking she believes is lacking and very much needed in our society. She also avails herself to as many young people as possible, since parenting is another area that she believes is sorely deficient and has caused many youths to suffer.
For being a woman for all seasons, who never takes a day off from being her very best, we at Kaieteur News today say hats off to Nurse Penelope Layne, a truly ‘Special Person’ indeed.

 

 

 

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