2002 William Allen Award Winners
Calm presence helps friends, families of hospital patients during stressful times
Friday is Maile Ching's day off from her Boeing job as an accountant for the S&C Financial Accounting organization, and it's her day on the desk at the surgery wait area at Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center. Maile is responsible for transferring information from the induction room, the surgery prep area, the operating room, the recovery room, the post-anesthesia care unit, the procedure care unit and the patient floors to worried families and friends.
It's a stressful and crowded environment. Currently, an average of more than 60 surgeries are performed at the hospital every day, and some friends and family members are in the surgery wait area for many hours.
Maile gets a lot of fan mail. People she has helped while they waited for loved ones to come out of surgery have written heartfelt letters to the hospital, praising her work and describing her as efficient, professional, cheerful and a caring and reassuring presence.
"She was the best! I feel that this is a very important job for people to be here for us when our loved ones are going through all this," wrote one grateful family member. "It's a hard job," says Maile. "You have to be professional as well as compassionate."
Maile, says she volunteered for Virginia Mason because in 1998 she had surgery there herself, had a good experience and wanted to give back. Maile also is a volunteer for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.