Harriet Oloo

Text version of Harriet Oloo's keynote remarks

Good Morning, my name is Harriet Oloo, and I am an operating room technologist at Bone and Joint Hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. How have I been a courageous leader? That was a hard question to answer because I try to do my job to the best of my ability and give 150% of myself without looking at it as though I was a leader but seeing myself as part of a team.

Well, I'd say in my job there are many options to becoming a leader. For example, we have a new doctor who just happens to be a neurosurgeon. If any of you know the history of Bone and Joint Hospital, then you know we were mostly well known for our orthopedics. A lot of that has changed and we have had the pleasure of learning lots of things we have never seen, or done before. It's been a struggle, but fun and well worth it.

My Director of Surgery, Terry Meler-Flinn, sent me out to observe this doctor and in the process I took notes and asked questions and he was more than willing to give me the information he felt I needed to be successful in his cases. In the meantime, I set out to become well acquainted with the way he liked things in the operation room. I worked along with our resource coordinator, Ruth Thomas, to get the instruments and equipment we needed before he was to begin surgery at Bone and Joint Hospital. Mrs. Thomas also worked diligently to coordinate the purchase of the instruments for the doctor from another hospital that he no longer operated at. During this time, I started working 10hr. shifts/4days a week. My day off fell on a Tuesday, which left me off in the middle of the two days this particular surgeon worked. Because of this, I ended up coming in on a lot of my off days as well as staying late on Monday evenings to prepare for Wednesday. For me it was gratifying and it felt good when things worked themselves out.

As the months have progressed, there have been some bumps in the road and we have days that we have to hustle around and maybe borrow from a sister hospital, and that depends on if it is something new for us. All in all, we manage, we get through, and it becomes another obstacle we have overcome. In the process, it allows us to further our mission, which is to give the best possible care to our patients and the best possible service to our doctors who are our customers.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the SSM system for the last 6 1/2 years and I hope that I will continue to be a great part of such courageous leadership.