The Saline Courier Weekend

SMH employee recognized on 40th anniversar­y

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When Saline Memorial Hospital got its first ultrasound, an ATL Mark 100, Cathy Seals and her boss Barbara Varnon were the first to learn how to use it. At the time, Seals worked in nuclear medicine, and she balanced her time between ultrasound­s and nuclear medicine for a while.

The ATL Mark 100 was analog and black and white; Seals jokes that image was so pixelated that you could count each individual pixel. Over time, the quality of the ultrasound equipment improved, and the volume of ultrasound requests grew to the point that now the hospital has three ultrasound machines and three technologi­sts to operate them. Seals is still one of them. She celebrated her 40th anniversar­y with the hospital on Wednesday.

“I have always liked the hospital, and I have worked with a lot of good people here,” Seals said. “The people make Saline special.”

Seals grew up in Benton and then went to college at the University of Arkansas in Fayettevil­le. She left college for a time when she got married and had her first two children, but then she finished college while she was pregnant with her third child.

She started working at Saline Memorial Hospital when her children were still small because it was close to home, so she could get to her family when needed. Varnon particular­ly made her feel welcome, including getting to know Seals’ family.

“She just knew how to put you at ease,” Seals said. “She knew how to make you laugh, and she was good to my family.”

Seals has enjoyed working in diagnostic imaging because even though the work becomes routine, every person and situation is different. Even routine procedures sometimes yield unexpected findings. For example, once while she was turning a patient who was having the aorta checked, she found a mass on a kidney that turned out to be cancerous.

“To be able to actually see anatomy and to be able to find abnormal anatomy and to feel like you made a difference, it’s been pretty rewarding,” Seals said. “It’s not always a lot of fun, but mostly rewarding.”

The other members of the diagnostic imaging team said they love getting to work with Seals because they know they can rely on her experience.

“I just know that when I hand off a mammogram patient to her

for an ultrasound, that patient is going to be taken care of,” said Patti Chilton, X-ray technologi­st. “She is very thorough, very profession­al, and she always does an excellent job.”

Chilton herself has been at Saline Memorial Hospital for 31 years, and several others on the diagnostic imaging team have more than 10 years of experience. Working with such an experience­d team has been a huge benefit to newer technologi­sts, like Kelly Efurd, who joined the team about a year ago.

“I feel like I can learn a lot from them because they are so experience­d,” Efurd said. “They have lots of pointers that they can share.”

Patients also benefit from having experience­d imaging technologi­sts like Seals, according to Lisa Hyde, diagnostic imaging director.

“Our team is blessed to have people like Cathy with so much dedication and experience,” Hyde said. “We rely on their knowledge and skill to provide high quality care to our patients.”

Saline Memorial Hospital, a part of Lifepoint Health, is a 177-bed acute care facility dedicated to making our communitie­s healthier. The hospital is accredited through The Joint Commission for meeting quality and safety standards, the American College of Cardiology as a Chest Pain Center with Primary PCI, the MBSAQUIP as a bariatric surgery center and the AASM as a sleep center.

For more informatio­n about Saline Memorial Hospital, please call 501.776.6000 or visit Salinememo­rial. org. For more informatio­n about Lifepoint Health, visit Lifepointh­ealth.net.

 ?? Special to The Saline Courier ?? Cathy Seals has worked as a ultrasound technician at Saline Memorial Hospital for 40 years.
Special to The Saline Courier Cathy Seals has worked as a ultrasound technician at Saline Memorial Hospital for 40 years.

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