Gayle Carr worked as a nurse for 28 years. Only one of them – the last one – was with JPS Health Network.
She planned to stay much longer. But the veteran caregiver was forced to retire before she was ready because of a lingering health problem. Despite her unexpectedly short stay, Carr said JPS touched her in a way she couldn’t forget. After taking some time to recover, Gayle realized she still had passion to help people. She wanted to do so by becoming a hospital volunteer – and the only hospital where she wanted to donate her time was JPS.
“This place stole my heart,” said Carr, who spends two days a week with patients on the sixth floor of the tower. “People here do everything they can to make lives better. There is a difference that you can feel. I have worked at other hospitals, and I can honestly say there is no place like JPS. I believe this is where I was meant to be.”
Gayle said she was amazed, when she came to work at JPS, how little things that would cut off a patient from care at some hospitals weren’t allowed to be an obstacle here. Carr said she was touched to see that here, the relationship with the patient doesn’t start or end at the door to the hospital.
“JPS will help everyone, it doesn’t matter who you are,” Carr said. “If you don’t have a way here, they’ll help you find a way if they have to send someone to come get you or give you a bus pass. One way or another, we’re going to make the patient better.”
Gayle’s last year on the job was 1995. She’s been volunteering at JPS for more than 20 years since then. She started when she heard that the health network’s No One Dies Alone program needed volunteers to sit with terminally ill patients who have no family to comfort them when they reach the last few days of their lives. She later switched to working with senior citizen patients, keeping them comfortable with a blanket when they’re too cold, with conversation when they’re lonely or by bringing them a puzzle when they’re trying to pass the time.
Still a nurse at heart, Carr stays on top of the latest information and is focused on getting her patients back to their homes.
“For every day a senior spends in the hospital, it takes four days to get back to the level of mental sharpness they had before they were admitted,” Gayle said. “So, if I can help keep their mind stimulated with a crossword puzzle or a word find, that’s going to help them keep their brain working. Sometimes they just want someone to talk to, and I can do that. Other times, they ask me to pray with them. People ask me if I wouldn’t rather be at home instead of spending all day at the hospital. Here, I feel like I am making a difference, so I would rather be here.”
Sabrina Sumner, RN Clinical Manager on T-6, said Gayle is a tremendous mentor to team members on that floor.
“She is valuable to us in so many ways,” Sumner said. “You can learn a lot from her by watching how she connects with patients. It’s easy to see that she loves each and every one of them – and that she loves what she does. She just gets it. People think that nursing is all about meds and following the doctor’s orders. But nursing is first and foremost about connecting with patients. Gayle knows that so often, it’s the little things that are the important things.”
T-6 RN Angelica Cabrera agreed with Sumner about Carr’s positive influence on team members.
“She’s just great to have around,” Cabrera said. “You can tell it’s in her heart. The days when she’s here with us are very special.”
While her time as a nurse at JPS didn’t last as long as she hoped, Gayle said she plans to make up for it by remaining in her current position for a long time. She said she never even thinks about slowing down, enjoying working with the next generation of nurses as much as she does spending time with patients.
“I really believe this was my calling,” Gayle said. “I asked God for two things: To be a mother and to be a nurse. I was blessed with twin girls when they told me I would never have children, and I found my way to JPS where I found my purpose. I couldn’t ask for more than that.”