Her Story
About Loretta
Healthcare has always been a profession I've been interested in. I came from a family of healthcare, nursing, and it seemed to be a natural progression for me. It was at a part of my life when I had my son, and he was very young, and I needed some stability. I started with a community-based hospital, the only hospital in the area, and I really liked the hospital's mission, vision, and value system. Their mission is to heal, to teach, and to discover, and they're very much about the patient. We use a lot of patient-centric motivations around teaching our caregivers how to best enhance a patient experience within our facility, and I really supported that mission. I've been with University Hospitals Lake Health for all 22 years, working across three facilities. Currently, I have responsibility within four or five different areas of the hospital. My main expertise is within volunteer services, but I also help with career exploration for high school and college students, providing observation hours and time for individuals to do career exploration to ensure they are experiencing the opportunity of healthcare and are on the correct career path. I really provide a lot of opportunities for them to do that. I also manage two gift shops, pastoral care, volunteer services in general, onboard hospital residents and medical students within the facility, and provide fit testing for all N95 masks as well as PAPR training. During the COVID pandemic, it was very important that people were tested in healthcare for appropriate masking. First and foremost, I'm a fire extinguisher - I always call myself that. I put out a lot of fires, finding out what's happening. Every day is a new day. I can come in with an agenda of plans of what I need to get done, but that can always be interrupted. Everything that happens in the lobbies of the three hospitals I'm involved in, along with ancillary buildings, I'm in charge of. We're the first thing patients see when they walk in our building.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Loretta
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
First and foremost, people need to have a better understanding of what motivates them to look into healthcare. Do some research. Make sure to do job observations, do job observations in any field that they can. A lot of people don't think that they could do that. Interview people, ask questions. It's really important that the questions they ask individuals in a career path is what they don't like, as well as what they do like about their career, so that they can be better informed before they make that decision. And the other part is relax. No one gets to where they are overnight. They need to put in the work, they need to put in the effort, and do their own personal research to make sure that that's the career path that they want. But they don't have to have the end decision. Some people are blessed with knowing what they want at a very young age, and it solidifies them once they go to college, but if you go to college and you decide that that's not what you want, great. That's a positive situation, rather than continuing into debt for something that you don't know. So, investigation and doing observations, doing your homework, it's really, really important.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
First and foremost, the challenge is the economy. It brought about the reluctancy of people to volunteer. They need paid staff, they need paid positions, and because of that, people are not necessarily volunteering their time as much. Within COVID, hospital organizations have decreased volunteerism participation because of COVID. People are still real apprehensive of that, so that's a large challenge. Hospitals still continue to need volunteers. We've got many departments that are unable to be fully staffed because of financial situations, and volunteers can play a very important role in giving back to their community. The need for volunteers is increasing versus decreasing, and a lot of people don't realize that. Healthcare in general and some of the governmental regulations creates problems in the healthcare institutions in and of themselves that a lot of people aren't aware of. We have to create a well-oiled machine, and without volunteer support, that can not be as well-oiled as we want it to be. That's the largest need that I'm seeing in the future. We've got the Gen X and the Gen Z that don't want to donate their time, and it's very challenging to help them understand the need. There's going to be a gap. We have high school students and college students that need to have that for their resume, and then we have a large gap, and then we have those that are extremely elderly that want to volunteer their time that may not have the skill sets in which to do so. So it's a fine line that we're walking at this time.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Ohio
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.