 The
tributes just kept pouring in. It seems our 'Kudos to
your admin assistant' contest was just the opportunity
doctors at Huronia Urgent Care Clinic in Barrie, ON, were
waiting for to publicly tip their hats to their office
manager/guardian angel/Ms Fix-it, Cathy Wood. So just
who is this paragon of multi-tasking?
"Cathy lives and breathes the clinic,"
says Dr Gus Zachos, the clinic's director. "She looks
after everything and everybody. One day, she took it
upon herself to clean all 60 chairs in the waiting room,
because they were stained." Adds one of his clinic colleagues,
Dr Ian Maxwell, "I came in one day and she was down
fixing a toilet. Hats off to Cathy."
It's not just the cleaning and
the plumbing, either. According to Dr Zachos, she's
also been known to slap a fresh coat of paint on the
office walls every now and again. While she's at it,
she might also replace some old drywall, or install
a new tap. "But most of all," wrote another clinic doc,
Dr Mitchell Whyne, in his tribute, "on days when we're
completely swamped and the staff is getting frazzled,
she orders some food and makes sure everyone gets to
the back room for a few minutes to regroup, refresh,
recharge and return to work."
That's over and above the normal
duties involved in running a busy private clinic with
25 doctors, 22 employees, a rotating roster of co-op
students and an average of 200 patient visits each day.
Not to mention going over doctors' notes for follow-up,
taking care of inventory and payroll, hiring, training
and scheduling new staff, and the constant management
of little crises.
AW,
SHUCKS
Ms Wood is almost preternaturally modest about her achievements,
giving credit to her co-workers. "They're lovely people
to work for," she says. "The clerks are great, the nurses
are good at nursing. There's not a lot of bickering.
I think people are happy there, because they're treated
well. It makes it a nice place to work, and it makes
you want to keep it a nice place."
Keeping it nice is one thing —
but coming in after hours to paint? "Well, the clinic
is a seven day operation. If you're hiring somebody
else to do it, then you pretty much have to go in after
hours to let them in and keep an eye on them anyway
— so I might as well do it myself," she laughs.
Several of the doctors at the clinic
clamouring to laud her commended her for her determination
to save the clinic money — "She manages every penny
like it was her own," wrote Dr Maxwell in his tribute.
"If she can find it cheaper somewhere else like Costco,
she will."
"And I'll fix things myself rather
than call somebody in to do it," she adds. "We had some
electrical things that needed to be fixed, and phoning
around to electricians, they wanted so much money for
doing them...." You guessed it: Cathy Wood to the rescue.
As if all that wasn't enough to
earn her a place in heaven, she also does charitable
work in the 'spare' time. "She is not only kind to patients
and staff," wrote another practice physician, Dr Zahir
Poonja, "but often helps less unfortunate people in
the Caribbean by collecting unused or unwanted medical
supplies and equipment."
TOOLBELT
MUM
She says she picked up a lot of her more esoteric skills
— the wiring, the drywalling — while raising
her four children. But the skills she learned as a parent
didn't stop at light construction. "Being a mother also
helped me learn how to handle people, how to get the
most out of them," she says. The kids are all grown
up now and doing well. She proudly reports that her
daughter decided, after a year working at the clinic,
to go into nursing.
While her handywoman skills stem
from her home life, she's no newcomer to the ways of
the office. While raising her family, she also worked
for several years in the health records department at
Scarborough General Hospital. When her family moved
to Wasaga Beach on Georgian Bay, she took a job in the
local hospital's bed allocation department. Six months
later, she was offered a job at the brand new Huronia
Urgent Care Centre, and the rest is history.
WHERE
THE HEART IS
"I care about the place," she muses. "It's kind of like
my own home, you know? I always kept my home in good
shape, and because the office is where I am all those
hours, I take care of it."
So what's Ms Wood's advice for
cultivating a healthy, happy working atmosphere? "If
you have a pat on the back, you're going to want to
do a lot more for that person than if they never said
anything. I brought up my children that way, and I try
to be good to the staff that way. When you show respect,
you get respect." But while she can sure dish out praise,
she's maybe a tad uneasy taking it, saying, "I don't
like having fusses made over me." But she admits she
was pretty tickled when she got more than a pat on the
back from the Huronia group, when practically all its
physicians sent in accolades for the contest.
REWARDS
ON EARTH
But Ms Wood says it works both ways. The clinic's positive
atmosphere has material benefits for her, too. With
a nearby hospital offering higher salaries, you'd think
it would be difficult to hold on to qualified staff.
Not at Huronia. "They say they could earn more at the
hospital, but they like it better here," says Ms Wood.
"We have very low turnover... and I really appreciate
the staff's loyalty."
Dr Monica Wolnik has another theory
about the staff loyalty. "Cathy is one of the most genuinely
caring and thoughtful people I've ever met," she wrote
in her entry. "She never forgets a birthday or special
occasion and always senses when one of the staff members
needs some special attention."
It appears all this goodwill has
trickled down to the clinic's patients as well. In nearly
five years of operation, Ms Wood says with pride, there
have been less than half a dozen complaints.
Clearly, all Ms Wood's hard work
is paying off. But what's the secret to her success?
For Dr Zachos, it comes down to diligence, commitment
and especially character. "When she started here, she
probably couldn't turn on a computer, and now she's
our software expert. She's worked through it all; she's
committed to the process. At the end of the day, she's
a wonderful person, and that's what makes everything
else go."
For Ms Wood herself, the motivation
may be even simpler: "Now that the kids are all grown
up," she says, "it's nice to go down there and be needed."
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