Sandy Guilfoyle RN is the second longest OHC employee. She will be with OHC for 20 years on July 30th.
She started as an LPN and went back to school for her RN.
Sandy has been to more different sites than any other nurse. I cannot think of a client in Massachusetts that Sandy has not covered at. She is the first one to raise her hand for the strange assignments we get.
She has a great sense of humor and is helpful.
Sandy we are so happy you have spent the last 20 years with OHC!
Here is Sandy’s story:
Wow, I’ve worked for Occupational Health Connections for almost 20 years! We each have our own nursing stories to tell and mine started when I was preparing to go to High School. The guidance counselor and my teachers recommended that I take college courses and I just needed to have my parents sign off on that. Neither of my parents had gone to college and refused to sign off on this. They had just bought a house and had huge medical bills from a very ill newborn, and at that time, newborns were not covered under health insurance. They said that I would probably get married and my husband would support me.
So, after high school I had a very good job working for an investment firm in Boston for 4 years. Wanting to move out of my parents home, I moved to the Cape and the South Shore with my friend for a few years, having had some good experiences and some tragic ones, too! This spurred me onto my original goal to be a nurse. I moved back to the Boston area and started working at a local nursing home, where I met the most wonderful people. I started to take college preparatory classes and applied to a free LPN course. Little did I know that most people applied multiple years for this program before they were accepted into the course. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case for me.
After graduating, I worked in CCU, ICU and as a float nurse in a hospital, north of Boston. While my children were young, I worked as a float nurse at MGH part-time and I also went on to do private duty nursing. Once all of my children were in school full-time, I got hired to work for an educational collaborative, working with disabled adults and then children in a school setting. I had the same vacations as the students, including two and a half months in the summer.
One of my friends got an email from her boss at OHC which was to ‘Bring your friend to work.’ So, I went to Dana Farber to do a week long TB clinic with her. I was a little apprehensive, but my friend convinced me to do it and said that she would teach me how to plant the test. It didn’t take long to learn and become proficient at it. After that I would pick up jobs with OHC on my vacations from my regular job.
Within a couple of years I decided to return to college to get my RN degree. Two of my children were in college, too! I started part time in the evening taking my prerequisites and then began the RN program. I was even inducted into the Honor Society. My mother told me how proud she and my father were and wished that they had looked into my going to college when I was younger, but they really didn’t know that there could have been financial help for us.
After I got my degree, I worked at a medically fragile daycare, which was located in a children’s hospital, than I was offered a job as a high school nurse at my old high school. My youngest son was a senior that year and non to happy to have his mother at his high school that year. But he sure knew where to find me when he needed a permission slip signed or money. Having school vacations and getting out of work at 2:30, I continued to work for OHC part-time.
When I retired as a school nurse, I went to work for Nancy, sometimes full time, but mostly part time.
About 10 years ago, I decided it was time to learn to play the violin. I started taking lessons for a few months and than went to my first fiddle camp.
Working for Nancy I have been able to get the time off I needed to attend fiddle camps in the states, Canada, Spain, Scotland and Shetland. It is nice to have this flexibility in my retirement job! I have worked at over 100 different sites through Nancy. And I have also been able to keep up with my hobbies; reading, genealogy, golf, gardening, volunteering, the Boston Scottish Fiddle Orchestra, traveling (until recently), and spending time at our cottage in Maine.
One of the things I have learned from working for Nancy is to never say goodbye at the end of an assignment, instead I say, ‘I’ll see you later’, and I almost always do!