It was a bittersweet event for the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital (OSMH) nursing school graduating classes of 1973 and 1974 on Friday.
The OSMH Nurses Alumnae celebrated the decades since that graduation, while also saying farewell to the organization after 117 years.
“It could have folded (earlier) … but I wanted to see it through to 50,” said Glenna Tinney, who graduated in 1972 and is president of the OSMH Nurses Alumnae.
The alumnae are proud to have donated $50,000 to OSMH and its front-line workers, who they share passions with, over the years. Bake sales and “old-fashioned” efforts were ways they contributed with the resources available to them.
Most of those present for the reception Friday at Hawk Ridge Golf Club noted how circumstances have shifted since they entered the profession.
“When I first started out at OSMH, it was a village within a village,” said Tinney.
She advises students today to rely on each other and ask for help when needed.
“Nobody is an island unto themselves, and your patient is your first priority,” she said, noting it is also OK to not know something and to ask questions.
For many of the 50-year grads, the defining differences between nursing students in the 1970s and today is they used to come out more prepared. Janet Zablocki, graduate of 1973, said the OSMH school of nursing “gave us hands-on stuff, practical and well-thought-out experiences of how to do stuff.”
Zablocki also helped reach out to others when they were organizing the anniversary gathering. Since they’ve all experienced life with its milestones, living in new places near and far and changing surnames, she used Facebook and Instagram and internet sleuthing to send invitations to the grads.
Sharon Balkwill, now retired, worked at OSMH for 44 years. She noted how most everything about the profession has changed, from the number of patients on a floor to the type of care and the length of stay they experienced. She said the training nurses received was less theoretical than it is now.
The event Friday included table displays of photo albums and pictures framed, some dating as far back as 1910, along with nurses’ attire from decades past.
“I got called to the director’s office one time because my white shoes weren’t white enough,” Tinney recalled with a laugh.
She smiles at the array of colours and adornments nurses have now, knowing full well the amount of work it takes and always will take to be a nurse.
With a daughter and a granddaughter who both work at hospitals, Tinney has viewed the evolution of the profession in more ways than just her own experiences.
“You had to be single. If you got married, you had to resign,” she said, “and that’s just in my time how far it’s come.”
Most of all, she said, it’s the camaraderie that is important among the former nurses. Tinney and others expressed the importance of friendships and relationships built working in the field together for so long. That is what the OSMH Nurses Alumnae and the school of nursing will be remembered for.
“It’s bittersweet knowing that it’s the end ... It’s changed, but we went through engagements, weddings, babies, then grand-babies … It’s the whole life experience full circle,” Tinney about the group’s semicentennial anniversary and their experiences as colleagues and friends.
