I had quite a roller-coaster week at work last week. Amazing, considering that I only work 10 hours per week! Thursday was the culmination of months of work to promote and select winners of our annual "Award for Excellence in Family-Centered Care." On Monday we finally got an email together announcing this year's nominees and winners and sent it to the hospital's CEO to distribute to the entire staff (over 8,000 employees at this point).
The email went out Tuesday. Wednesday we began to get messages back that our list of names contained errors of spelling and credentials. Being families, most of us thought, "Oh well. It was an honest mistake, and heaven knows our names and our kids' names are mispelled and mis-pronounced constantly at the hospital. No-one lost money or got sicker over this. No big deal."
But the email replies continued and it occurred to us that we'd made a pretty visible error that reflected on us and on the CEO, under whose name we had sent the message. We'd missed one doctor's "MD" and hadn't had time (given that we only work 10 hours per week) to research the other credentials (like RN, CNP, SLP, etc) for the other staff. And we'd misspelled a particularly cranky neurosurgeon's name (Apparently he's wonderful with families but can be mean to staff.).
So in the midst of the final push to get the award ceremony and reception together for Thursday night, we had this hanging over our heads. We wrote apologies, corrected programs, and did what we could to make it right. But this mistake really threw a damper on the day.
At the reception we met with the chairman of the board of trustees for our hospital. He had enthusiastically agreed to speak at the event and is a very sweet gentleman. He asked me and the other parent coordinator for the Family Advisory Council (FAC) to step aside with him right before the event started. There he informed us that on October 29, the board of trustees will be voting to adding both of us as "ex officio" members of the board, by virtue of our positions as co-chairs of the FAC! We would hold those seats on the board so long as we were co-chairs, so he said we need to stay at least 2 or 3 years!
To say we were floored is an understatement. It is quite possibly the craziest thing (in a positive way) that has ever happened to me!
According to Wikipedia, a group of trustees for a company could also be called a Board of Directors. We're really not sure what trustees do, but it would seem that in a way, Kay and I, in our little 10-hour-a-week jobs, will hold positions at the highest level in the hospital! It's actually quite awkward. Our new supervisor is a middle manager, yet her little part-time employees will be rubbing shoulders with the CEO, a pack of vice presidents, and the entire board of trustees. This move pretty much smashed the corporate ladder into bits where we are concerned. It's uncharted territory for us and is going to require kid gloves.
Despite the awkwardness, we're both excited. It's a huge honor and a huge opportunity to influence the hospital's direction at the highest level. We're supposed to get a packet with more details after the vote (assuming we actually get voted in).
