The value of caring staff, past and present
By the late 1990’s Western State Hospital began to admit a number of Russian patients with limited English language skills. At the time the Library, a branch of the Washington State Library, had no Russian print material. When discussing this problem with one of the recreation therapists, the 2 of us suddenly realized that the Internet was an entirely new universe for Russian web sites as well as for other countries and in many languages.
One day, probably around 2000 or 2001, a Russian patient with some English language ability and I sat in front of one of our computers. I asked her the name of her home town. With that information I typed the name, and a number of web sites of her city came up. The web sites contained both text, in Russian, and photos. As I remember, the railroad station was prominently featured. As she was viewing photos of familiar buildings and streets and reading the information, tears welled up. I also found, with the patient’s assistance, the home town newspaper web site. She returned to the Library for several weeks to view Russian web sites with staff asistance until she was discharged. While she was still a patient, I attempted to print out a couple of the pages from her home town paper. Unfortunately, it did not work out as well as I had hoped. The quality of printing was rather poor.
Although I don’t remember specific incidents, many times patients on the forensic wards expressed their appreciation that Kathleen, Sharon, and I once every 2 weeks brought up a variety of books, music tapes and CD’s, and later videos to the locked wards for checkout. It also provided patients to talk with people who are not ward staff. I am sure that Nancy at Eastern Hospital experienced the same gratitude from patients.
At one time during the 1990’s, a patient recognized my accent, and asked in Dutch for my name. He also wanted to know whether I was born in the Netherlands and whether I spoke and understood Dutch. This particular patient spoke excellent English, but he loved to converse in Dutch with me. After he got to know me better, he loaned me a history book of his native province and town in the Dutch language. He sometimes used the opportunity to gripe about the ward staff and ward conditions knowing, of course, that I was the only person able to understand him. It was important for him that he could speak to me in confidentiality and had an outlet for his frustrations. If there had been an indication that he was planning to endanger himself or others, I would have immediately brought it to the ward staff’s attention.
These stories illustrate the fact that patients need and appreciate the personal attention that the library staff was able to provide.
Due to the state budget cuts in 2002, outreach programs to the wards were dropped. Except for responding to specific requests from patients, this service never returned.
Neal Van Der Voorn
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