Recollections of a Former Worker in Ypsilanti's Beyer Memorial Hospital

Over at my annarbor. com story about Beyer Hospital's onetime newspaper, a former hospital worker stopped by to add a charming and touching comment, which I am reprinting here in the interests of adding to our collective understanding of the onetime culture of our hospital:

"Beyer Hospital was a wonderful place to work, I am still in contact with co-workers that I had while I worked at Beyer. It was not like going to a job, it was like being with a second family working at Beyer hospital. When I reached the age of 30 while working at Beyer, co-workers and Administration gave me a surprise birthday party at a Roller skate rink in Ypsilanti and then every one came to my home for cake. The small hospitals are gone and now you have the big hospitals that are a corporation and no one even knows when your birthday and if they do nothing is said to you and the same for any holiday. At Beyer, a weekly news letter come out and told all the news about the workers from who got married and who died and their Birthday."

Time to Party with the Beyer Memorial Hospital "IBM Department"!

It's Friday night. That means time for fun. So here we go--how about a cartoon, drawn by an engineer, depicting, uh, er, I think it's depicting the punch-card system of....something....at Beyer. How patient information is processed? Or employee check-in? I don't rightly know. Perhaps those wiser then Dusty D can help figger out what in the Sam Hill this is all about and why it's supposedly funny! (Click for larger image).


I do know this: the cartoon figure in the 9:30 panel, pulling his hair, and in the last 2 panels, seen messing around with wires in the punch-card (?) machine, is John Jenkins, the superintendent of Beyer. You can see him here demonstrating one of Beyer's IBM machines to two Pennsylvania Hospital delegates. Beyer's IBM system was, the caption says, "recognized as one of the most modern in the country, which [the Penn Hospital guys] want to use as a model for the Pennsylvania Hospital."

Beyer's Visiting Nurse Program Once Sent Nurses Right To Your Home

Beyer Memorial Hospital used to have quite an active Visiting Nurse program. According to the hospital's newspaper, the Beyer Banner, in one sample month in 1954 the Visiting Nurses made 375 visits to Ypsilantians, or, a dozen a day. Nurses gave baths to homebound old people, advised new parents on how to prepare for and care for new babies, checked two possible child polio cases, delivered and injected penicillin to children sick at home, counseled a patient scheduled for an operationi, and in general provided an invaluable service to the community.

One wonders why the hospital was able to afford and provide this wonderful mobile service 50 years ago and why it seems like an unimaginable luxury today.

Five Wonderful Things about Beyer Memorial Hospital’s Little In-House 1950s Newspaper

New story in AnnArbor.com which I hope you enjoy.

The Telephone Reflects a Hospital's Personality

How good are you at making friends and influencing people on the telephone?

The telephone is one of the greatest aids to modern living there is, and your future may be affected by how well you use it.

The telephone plays such an important part in relations between our institution, our patients, our outside contacts and ourselves that voice personality is often as important as your face-to-face personality.

What makes a good telephone personality? The rules are simple.

1. Answer promptly.
2. Speak directly into the mouthpiece in your natural tone of voice.
3. Be courteous.
4. Listen carefully; make the caller feel you are interested in what he has to say.
5. Don't tie up lines with personal calls.
6. Don't insist that the other guy get on the line first.
7. If a call is switched to your line accidentally, take the time to have it transferred promptly to the proper local. Don't just drop it.
8. If you take a call you can't handle satisfactorily or at once, take the caller's name and number and say he will be called back or refer him to the right person.

If you're observing these eight simple rules when you answer the phone, you're making friends for yourself and Beyer hospital.

--"Beyer Banner" newsletter from Ypsilanti's Beyer hospital, March 1954