Lynn Ledford, lab assistant at Saint Joseph Berea, is a small-town person at heart, but she also has what you might call dual citizenship.
Though the Garrard County resident lives in Cartersville where she grew up and has family ties, she also has a claim to Berea, where she has extended deep roots into that community, too, because of her job of nearly 25 years.
Lynn works as a phlebotomist, mainly in the outpatient lab. The job is detail-oriented and straightforward, but the flow of different patients and interactions with them provide variety, she said.
“I know the majority of my people and they know me,” Lynn explained. It’s one of the reasons she stays in Berea to work.
“To me, it’s being in the community. It’s just a small community and I love it. I feel like I’d be fine in a bigger hospital, but my heart is at Berea,” she said.
The relationships are so strong that she has had patients call into the lab to be sure she’ll be on duty when they come in for a blood draw. In fact, patient satisfaction surveys have recognized her as a champion caregiver.
The people she sees do not look forward to blood draws, so Lynn said she cultivates a calm bedside manner to help reassure and listen to them. It helps, too, that so many patients know her because of her long service there.
Patient anxiety can run high if the bloodwork is critical to diagnosing a serious condition. In those cases, Lynn said, “I just try to reassure them that they’re in God’s hands and if something comes back abnormal, that we’re going to start praying and have faith that the Lord will bring them through it.
“And that we will, as a community hospital, be there for them. People really like to know someone is praying for them — that’s a big thing.”
Not surprisingly, Lynn is active in her church and participates in blood drives. She has two adult daughters, a son and eight grandchildren, part of her “extremely close” family.
Lynn worked as a CNA many years ago in Ohio before moving back to Kentucky. She began working at the former Berea Hospital as a housekeeper before her supervisor encouraged her to apply for a lab position.
Lynn views her work in the lab as being part of diagnostics, like X-ray, at the front end of caregiving at Saint Joseph Berea. “Even though it’s a small part, we are the first steps to maybe finding out that someone has something abnormal going on,” she explained.
When it comes to discharge from the hospital, she added, the bloodwork is at the back end, too, often determining whether a patient is well enough to go home.
Lynn said Saint Joseph’s values, to her, can be boiled down to The Golden Rule. “I treat people how I want to be treated, and that brings into play every one of our core values,” she said. “If you treat people the way you would like to be treated in any situation, you’re going to show those values.”
The humankindness aspect, she said, ties into thinking of the people she cares for as humans, not just patients. “You have to think of them as someone who has feelings and heart,” Lynn said.
That humanity is what stands out to her as she looks back on her more than two decades at Saint Joseph Berea: “The friendships I’ve made, co-workers, and patients that literally are like family to me now. They’re a big part of my life.”
Humankindness works here. Learn more about careers at CHI Saint Joseph Health.
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Spirit of Health magazine's print edition is distributed quarterly and focuses on topics related to our CHI Saint Joseph Health purpose and values.
