PRESQUE ISLE — “The Women’s Health Center is unique in its approach to the whole woman. Our patients are evaluated from head to toe and heart to soul — with every visit. We do not take shortcuts here,” said Glenda Capps, RN, a nurse at the center.
The Women’s Health Center, a department of The Aroostook Medical Center (TAMC), is a customer service-based health care office for women only. Services include comprehensive family practice exams, massage therapy, and health care education.
According to Women’s Health Practitioner Lucy Richard, she and the staff are devoted to women-friendly, women-centered, and women-relevant care.
100-year-old Doris Bernard holds up the Red Sox jersey given to her by the team at TAMC’s Women’s Health Center at the Centennial Birthday party they threw recently in her honor. With Bernard are Lucy Richard, left, TAMC Women’s Health practitioner and Glenda Capps, RN, nurse in the Women and Children’s Health Center. Family members attending the party are sitting in the background.
“In our setting women’s health is addressed from a holistic perspective, which embraces a wellness approach, rather than being problem focused; lifespan perspective, which recognizes that women have different health and psychological needs as they encounter transitions across their lives; and a social perspective, which recognizes that women routinely perform multiple overlapping social roles,” said Richard.
This way of approaching care is certainly working for patients like Nancy Duncan of Presque Isle.
“Having Lucy as a provider has made me more aware of my health as a woman, and she has helped me look towards the future, the quality of life as I age,” explained Duncan. “I have become an advocate for myself as a woman and a partner … not a patient, but a partner with Lucy … in the decisions in the type of care she provides.”
Encouraging education and a patient’s involvement in their health care decisions is sentiment not only of Richard, but the entire Women’s Health team. Richard, Capps and the administrative staff respect the patient’s confidentiality and work as a team, with each staff member exercising their own unique qualities to make each patient feel a part of the family.
The center aims to make every patient welcome and works to enhance patient experience by keeping a clean office that is warm and inviting, rather than a strictly clinical area. According to Richard, this is just one of the ways the staff works to improve the patient’s visit.
“We try to make the patients feel like they are our only patient,” said Richard. “Being attentive to their requests, answering phone calls in a timely manner, promptly doing their referrals, or their refills. My approach to my patients is to treat them just like I want to be treated, or like they were my mother, my sister, or my daughter.”
Obviously, Duncan agrees. Not only did she follow Richard to Women’s Health from a previous practice, but when her daughter became a teenager, Duncan decided she should become a patient there. And when her mother lost her health care provider, Duncan wanted her to be cared for there as well. All three generations are now patients at the center.
“The relationships developed between literally generations of women Richard has cared for has created such a warm, nurturing environment,” said Capps, who believes the generations of relationships at the center also reflects the staff’s commitment to going the extra mile.
“Our patients know we care,” said Capps, citing examples of the staff’s efforts to reach out, including: supporting a patient in using every program available, providing patients with test and procedure results, phoning in prescriptions, following up with patients through phone calls, and other similar methods. While today’s time limitations can be a hazard to patients falling through the cracks, at the Women’s Health Center, the staff consciously choose to disallow today’s frantic pace to affect the care of their patients.
“We make it work because we care,” said Capps. According to Capps, her primarily focus is on advocating for patients and caregivers, and practicing effective communication and flexibility. A self-proclaimed professional multi-tasker, Capps said, “I love my job.”
One such example of the powerful relationships formed at the center occurred earlier in September, when the center’s staff planned and hosted a surprise party in honor of patient Doris Bernard’s 100th birthday. Richard and her team customized the fun with a Red Sox theme, specifically pleasing to Bernard, a long-serving and devoted fan of the baseball team.
Bernard shared her secret for a long life at the celebration, and said, “My secret is all the good people in my life who help me. I have a lot of good friends and family.”
And among those she credited was Richard, her practitioner for the past decade.
“She is more than just a doctor to me, she is a great friend,” said Bernard.
The Women’s Health Center is location at TAMC’s A.R. Gould Memorial Hospital at 140 Academy Street.
