Nurse keeps patients the focus after five decades at the bedside
KITCHENER — A warm blanket, soft touch and reassuring smile can be a nurse’s best tools to make a patient feel better.
After more than 50 years caring for patients at St. Mary’s General Hospital, Lois Millar knows patients aren’t much interested in hearing the list of tests they’re getting.
“They just want to know they’re going to be OK,” Millar said.
Millar, 75, started at the Kitchener hospital right after graduation, and today she’s still working in the emergency department, upwards of 30 hours a week.
“When I walked through the door in 1963, I never thought I’d still be here,” she said.
Nursing has changed a lot since then, along with hospital care.
“The first thing you’d do in the morning was wash the ashtray out for the patient,” Millar recalled.
Syringes and intravenous bottles were made of glass. Doctors couldn’t turn to diagnostic tools like a CT scan or ultrasound to peer inside the body for a better understanding of a patient’s ailment.
“Everything’s come a long way,” Millar said.
“People would come in with chest pain and die. There was no intervention.”
Now St. Mary’s is home to an advanced cardiac care centre, and cardiology was one of the many departments within the hospital where Millar has worked over the decades.
“I floated everywhere but the (operating room).”
She started out in intensive care before joining the intravenous team, which was a group of nurses who went all over the hospital to start IVs and give medication, and stayed in that post for 25 years.
“I liked the fact I was all over the hospital. I got to know all the staff,” Millar said.
At the beginning of her career that included the nuns who were a huge presence in the hospital founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton, living on the 10th floor and looking after all the administration and running the kitchen.
Every department had a nun in charge of it. NURSE LOIS MILLAR
“Every department had a nun in charge of it,” Millar said.
A priest also lived at hospital and made bedside visits to ailing patients, while the Lord ’s Prayer was said over the public announcement system in the evening as visitors left for the day.
After short stints in other departments, Millar found her way to emergency and worked full-time there for a few years until 2004.
“Then I retired,” Millar said. “I was off May to August and then I came back casual.”
St. Mary’s was like a second home, and its staff was there for Millar through the good times and the bad.
“The peers and doctors and support staff and everyone you work with is like family.”
And Millar loves the work. It’s challenging and there’s always something new to learn and training to update. Millar embraces the changes, like when computers were first introduced in the hospital in the mid-90s.
“Now we triage by computer,” she said.
The nurse’s role has greatly expanded since she was a new grad wearing her smart white dress and hat. Millar recently earned her recertification for advanced cardiac life support.
“It’s just so fast-paced now,” she said. “There’s just so many more things to do for patients now.”
While there’s no longer time to give every patient a nightly back rub, Millar said she always makes time for a reassuring smile and touch because she knows that goes a long way. That’s what patients remember about their visit, she said.
Millar also acts as a mentor to the young nurses working alongside her in the busy emergency department.
“I see that as my job, mentoring these gals because hopefully they’ll be around to look after me when I need them.”
Nursing week is May 8 to 14.