Sample of The Registered Practical Nursing Journal

“I’m Where I’m Supposed to Be”
by RPN Journal Staff
Award-winning RPN Joanne Greenwood is an inspiration to patients and colleagues alike
At the RPNAO AGM and Conference
this past fall, an unassuming RPN
named Joanne Greenwood took to
the stage to accept the 2012 Award
of Excellence and Innovation. While
Greenwood herself is incredibly modest,
we couldn’t help but notice how
vocal and enthusiastic her colleagues
were about this nurse they affectionately
call ‘JoJo’. Intrigued by their
show of support, we set out to learn
more about this nurse, what makes
her tick and why she’s so beloved by
her patients and colleagues alike.
“I’ve learned that people will forget
“Joanne just has
a way with patients,
a way of making them
feel special. . . . She
greets each patient
by name and knows
their conditions,
their struggles, details
about their lives. . . .”
what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never
forget how you made them feel.”
If this quotation by Maya Angelou
is indeed true, then there are thousands
of patients of the Riverside
Court Medical Clinic in Ottawa who
will always remember how special
a nurse named Joanne Greenwood
made them feel.
“Joanne just has a way with patients,
a way of making them feel
special,” says Dr. Lisa Moore, Managing
Partner of the clinic where Greenwood
has worked as an RPN for the
past 10 years. “Joanne has an incredible
memory. She greets each patient
by name and knows their conditions,
their struggles, details about their
lives without having to look at their
charts. She makes them feel like a
person…like they’re important.”
For Greenwood’s part, she says,
“I’m where I should be. I love my job
and I love going to work with these
people. It’s like a family.”
It wasn’t always that way, though.
After starting her career in kinesiology,
Greenwood said she had a
consistent, nagging feeling that
“something was missing” in her
professional life. Taking her cue from
her mother and several aunts who
had worked as nurses, she enrolled
in the practical nursing program at
Algonquin College, from which she
graduated in 2000.
Since joining the Riverside Court
Medical Clinic in January of 2003,
Greenwood has become a popular
fixture there. In addition establishing
a track record as an exceptional
nurse with a broad knowledge base
in the specialty of primary carebased
nursing, she has also taken the
lead on numerous projects aimed
at continuously enhancing the best
practices in its nursing group. “To
a large extent, when patients talk
about this place, they’re talking
about her,” says Dr. Moore. There
are the elderly ‘snowbird’ patients
who spend their winters in Florida
and who write emails to the clinic
asking how ‘JoJo’ is doing. There’s
the woman who, two weeks after
Greenwood helped her through a
painful episode, made a special trip
to the clinic to say thank you. There’s
the Ottawa Senators fan who, knowing
Greenwood is a die-hard fan of
the Toronto Maple Leafs, brings in a
box of tissues for her whenever his
appointment coincides with a Leaf
loss. And there are thousands of
others who feel just as passionately
about Greenwood, who is the clinic’s
Lead Nurse and the RPN member of
its Family Health Team.
When asked why she’s able to connect
with patients so well, Greenwood
says, “I try to remember that
every patient I bring in is an individual.
I put my whole heart into it
and try to make them feel as comfortable
as possible. Hopefully they
remember that.”
While Greenwood says she feels
protective of all her patients, she
calls the geriatric and pediatric
patients her favourites. “With the
young ones, I love their innocence
and independence,” she says. “And
with the elderly, it’s their knowledge
and their history.”
“The clinic has a very diverse
multicultural patient population and
Joanne goes out of her way to greet
( cont’d on p.13)
www.rpnao.org RPNJ – Winter 2013
11