she says. "I know the whole clinical part. But the administrative part,
all the quality control and the paperwork, is new to me."
This should be a smooth segue, not sink or swim. Ms. Pickford,
well-liked by staff and surgeons, is a willing student with a mother
hen, den mother and grandmother to lean on and learn from in Ms.
Sinnk, famous for her pithy sayings known around the surgery center
as Connie-isms. A few we can print:
• "Good OR nurses are like hen's teeth: hard to find."
• "They're not my rules. I'm the keeper of the rules."
• "I was born at night, but not last night."
• "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and it ain't the
cheese."
As part of her ongoing orientation, Ms. Pickford went to her first
surgical conference last month, taking in all she could in the exhibit
hall and in the classrooms at the Ambulatory Surgery Center
Association meeting in Grapevine, Texas. Ms. Sinnk was there, too,
not because she had to, but because she wanted to be.
"It's my baby. I want it to be a smooth transition so that it's not dis-
ruptive for our patients and doctors when I'm gone," says Ms. Sinnk.
"Our responsibility is to teach the next generation because they are the
future of nursing. When I leave, I want to know I did a good thing and
a good job."
Not a bad way to be remembered. Will that be your legacy when you
resign your post?
"I have to live up to her, and I'm looking forward to it," says Ms.
Pickford. "You have no idea how much we're going to miss her."
OSM
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