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| Arline Erb, Mary Ann
Furuichi |
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Volunteers Excavate 100 Years
of History
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For volunteers Arline Erb and Mary Ann Furuichi, it started
as a simple enough task: Organize the boxes of old photos
and memorabilia the hospital had accumulated over the years.
But the project became a sleuthing exercise that would
take three years and encompass 100. The volunteers’ hard
work culminated in a commemorative book, A
Century of Caring: A Pictorial History of Alta Bates Summit
Medical Center,
published this year to celebrate Alta Bates Summit’s
centennial, as well as a historical exhibit.
Arline and Mary Ann met for several hours each week to
sift through fading black-and-white photographs, newspaper
clippings, legal documents, old menus, and ledgers. “There was
no organization whatsoever,” Arline says. “A
good portion had no date, name, or anything.” The two
used any clue they could find—the apparent ages of
hospital employees, car models, hair styles, types of medical
equipment—to date the material. Arline said she would
corner staff in the hall and ask them to name the people
in the photographs. Having been a volunteer with Alta Bates
Summit for the past 33 years herself, her own knowledge was
a valuable resource. “It was real detective work,” she
says.
Both women have long histories of volunteering for the
hospital. Mary Ann worked at Herrick as a candy striper
in her teens, and returned as a volunteer seven years
ago, when she retired from her career as a Berkeley schoolteacher.
Arline has been a regular face at Alta Bates since 1972.
She worked the refreshment cart, front desk, and in transportation
dispatch before serving as president of the Alta Bates
Volunteer Association and helping to establish the student
volunteer program.
“It was an honor to work on this project,” says
Mary Ann. “Whenever I’ve had health problems,
I’ve been treated at Alta Bates Summit. My grandniece
was born there, and my mother passed away there. I have a
very close affiliation with the place.”
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| An Artist’s Homage to Compassionate
Care |
When preeminent graphic artist David Lance Goines was commissioned
to create the poster for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s
centennial, he didn’t have to look far for inspiration. David’s
sister Lisa has been a nurse at Alta Bates for 20 years, most recently
in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, and, to him, she represents
much of what the hospital is about. “She’s helped more
people into this world and into the next than you could shake a
stick at,” David says.
David, a long-time Berkeley resident, is a world-renowned artist
whose work is in the collections of the Louvre, the Smithsonian
Institution, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His mother,
Wanda Burch Goines, has also contributed her artistic talents
to the hospital. She illustrated the calendar that is given
to all the new moms who give birth at the medical center, and
her paintings of joyfully frolicking babies brighten the hospital’s nursery
walls.
The centennial poster depicts a nurse tenderly cradling a bouquet
of cut roses as if it were a baby. David says he sought to
create a comforting image, one that would honor nurses and
the difficult work they do. “It is just perfect,” Lisa says. “It’s
got the roses and the thorns. There are things about [nursing]
that are wonderful and things that are heartbreaking. That’s
part of the job.” The limited-edition posters are available
by calling (510) 869-8216.
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| Gained in Translation: The Rewards of
Dedication |
As a nurse at Providence Hospital since 1985, Grace Lee-Tom was frustrated
by the difficulties patients encountered when they didn’t speak
English. Patients would show up unprepared for an exam or procedure,
for example, because they had not understood the instructions they
had been given by the physician. And they became frightened when
they didn’t understand what was going on.
So, with a determination colleagues say is typical of Grace, she
decided to do something about it. Having been born in Hong Kong
and raised bilingual, she began using her free time to translate
patient materials into Chinese, handwriting all the translations
since she didn’t have Chinese characters on her computer. “I went
through the whole hospital, from unit to unit, to explain how to
educate Chinese patients and let staff know we had these materials
available.”
From Grace’s and others’ efforts nine years ago sprang
the Asian Outreach Program. Since then, Asian Outreach has not only
provided multilingual signage, hospital documents, and educational
materials, but has also developed programs to help the medical center
be more culturally sensitive through special ethnic menus and enlisting
bilingual volunteers to serve as patient advocates.
Grace, who still works as a nurse on the Summit campus, “is
one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met,” says Asian
Outreach Coordinator Arlene Swinderman. “She is willing to
go the extra mile for anybody. ... She does in one week what most
people do in a year, and she does it with all her heart.”
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