MEMBERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Heidee Albano, RN, BSN, CNOR

Turning foul language into community support

In a way, Heidee Albano, RN, BSN, CNOR, took an old saying about making the most of a bad situation and made it her own. Instead of taking life’s lemons and turning them into lemonade, Albano has taken her facility’s swear words and turned them into. . . a cow.

More than a nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Albano also serves as her facility’s “swear patrol.” Collecting $0.25 for each no-good word since 2007, Albano was beginning to amass a pretty good collection for a future pizza party. That was, until she read a news article in the Boston Globe about a poor family in Haiti that was forced to sell its entire livelihood – two cows – in order to pay for treatment for their son’s encephalocele and arachnoid cyst.

A physician at Children’s Hospital Boston, through association with nonprofit group Partners In Health, worked to bring the child, Dumanel Luxama, to Boston in order to perform the surgery. Though the procedure was a success, Luxama’s family was still forced to recover from the loss of its livestock. Touched by the story of Luxama and his family’s sacrifice, Albano looked for any means she could to help.

“I asked permission to use the money from the swear jar and instead of a pizza party, to donate it toward a cow for the family,” Albano said.

And the more staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center heard about her efforts, the more honest they got.

“It used to be just me collecting money whenever I was around; no one wanted to do it for me,” Albano said. “But then people started becoming more conscious, and were being honest about it. At the end of the day they might come and say ‘here is a dollar for you, I had a rough day.’”

Several others, including a couple Haitian employees at BIDMC, simply donated to Albano’s efforts. Today she is working with Partners In Health to see to it the Luxama family gets a new cow. Albano, who also led her facillity’s Katrina follow-up project, showed how little efforts can make a difference in other peoples’ lives.

“She truly leads by example, teaching all of us at BIDMC that reaching out to others is not event related but continuous,” said AORN President-Elect Charlotte Guglielmi, RN, BSN, MA, CNOR, who works with Albano at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Albano sees the outcome of her swear patrol as something that will carry on and help others.

“I hope this is just the beginning,” she said.