University Hospital welcome challenge for nurse-activist
Article and Photos by
SHERRY HALBROOK
A large university teaching hospital
is a challenging place to work, and that's just what Brian
Hyde likes best about his job as a nurse 2 in the recovery
room of University Hospital at the state University of New
York Health Science Center in Syracuse.
"I've been here 18 years, and I find the diversity of
the challenges very satisfying. There is no typical day here.
It's never boring," Hyde said. "I think this is a
phenomenal place. We have so many specialty areas. In fact,
it's hard for most people to comprehend how much occurs
here."
Hyde is quick to tell you, for instance, that University
Hospital is the only academic medical center in the 15-county
region, and that it attracts the most challenging patients in
that region.
LET'S TALK - Nurses Brian Hyde and Kelly Littler check a
recovery-room patient at University Hospital (SUNY HSC) in
Syracuse.
"Our's are not your
typical patients. We have lots of very unique patients,"
Hyde said. "They come here because we offer more skills
and services.
"The acuity level (a measure of how ill the patients
are) of our non-Medicaid patients is very high," he
said. "It's gone up from 2.3 to 2.5 - one of the highest
severity mixes in the state.
"This is the only hospital in the region that can do
transplant's. It's one of only two regionally that does
open-heart surgery and it's the only one with a pediatric
intensive-care unit."
It's the regional trauma center, burn center, AIDS care
center and poison-control center. Furthermore, it's one of
only 10 Joslin Centers for Diabetes, nationwide.
The hospital also does a lot of neurosurgery. It treats
prison inmates and multiply disabled patients. It has a
locked-down psychiatric unit, and isolation rooms with
negative or positive air pressure for patients with
contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis.
Balancing
job, PEF, family
While Hyde's nursing duties center on the
"post-anesthesia recovery unit" or recovery room
where he works, the broad range of PEF duties he has
gradually taken on over the years make him interested in and
sensitive to everything that goes on throughout the Health
Science Center's urban campus.
Among the many union hats Hyde wears is council leader and
Executive Board representative for PEF Division 320 - made up
almost exclusively of the approximately 700 registered nurses
at the hospital. He is also a PEF steward.
He is PEF chair of the local labor-management committee and a
member of the health and safety committee. And Hyde was
recently elected chair of PEF's Statewide Nurses Committee, a
duty he will assume in June.
Stay
totally focused
"I like both my nursing and my union jobs," Hyde
said. "When I'm doing one, my only regret is that I
can't be doing the other. "The hardest thing," he
said, "is to shift gears and turn away from one job to
focus on the other."
Hyde makes that transition several times a week - working two
days a week in the recovery room and three days a week at his
many PEF responsibilities.
"In some ways, working in the recovery room may be
easier than the union work for me, because the nursing is so
tightly focused," he said. "Usually, I'm assigned
to one patient at a time and I have to be completely focused
on that patient. I might have one patient for an entire
eight-hour shift, or I could be running all over with five
different patients over that time.
"It's highly stressful because even the most simple case
can become the most complex case within seconds. It's
frustrating because I can't look away to return PEF or
personal phone calls or pages or take Faxes that don't relate
to that patient. I'm so focused when I'm with a patient, that
the world could probably crash around me and I just wouldn't
know it."
It's an environment Hyde chose.
Just
like your own family
After graduating in 1981 from the nursing school next door at
what was then called Crouse Irving Hospital, Hyde began his
state career as a nurse in one of University Hospital's
medical/surgical units. Soon, he was looking for more
challenges and joined the helicopter transport team that
brings in the most urgent emergency cases. But in 1985, Hyde
transferred to the recovery room. "I deliberately
switched to the recovery room where I only work with
individual patients for a short time and I don't get so
involved with them," Hyde said.
That's still not easy to do when a child cancer patient, for
instance, may come through the unit every day for five weeks
while undergoing radiation therapy. Although the child did
not have surgery, he is anesthetized each day because he
couldn't hold still long enough for treatment without it.
But whether the patient is old or young, critically ill or
stable, Hyde finds his greatest reward in "trying to
make the experience as easy as possible for the patients and
their families. I try to treat every one, the way I would
treat a member of my own family."
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