Whitehorse Daily Star

Image title

Photo by Vince Fedoroff

NOT GOING ANYWHERE – Val Pike, who has had a number of community liaison roles with the Yukon Hospital Corp., plans to remain in the territory she moved to in 1979.

Nursing mainstay retires after 35 years in health care

For 35 years, Val Pike has focused her career on improving health care for Yukoners.

By Stephanie Waddell on September 19, 2014

For 35 years, Val Pike has focused her career on improving health care for Yukoners.

In early October, Pike will retire from her day job as the spokeswoman for the Yukon Hospital Corp.

She will, however, continue her efforts to ensure Yukoners receive quality health care for the community as she plans to keep up volunteer activities in the city that has become her home.

As she recalled in an interview this week, it was on Sept. 4, 1979 that she arrived in the territory and soon began working at the old Whitehorse General Hospital, having moved from Winnipeg where she had began her career as a nurse.

She had been working at Saint Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, the same hospital where she had done her training to become a nurse, and wanted a change.

“I was just tired of big hospitals,” she said.

She moved to Whitehorse, having been here a couple of times previously to visit a friend. Whitehorse gave her the chance to experience a smaller community and, thus get that smaller hospital experience she was seeking.

Like so many who become Yukoners, she thought she’d stay in Whitehorse for a year or so and never looked back. More than three decades, a husband and five kids later, she has no plans to leave.

Pike joked that her husband’s to blame: had she not met him, she may have indeed moved further north as she had thought about doing in those early days in the territory.

Fortunately for the community, she remained, and continued to move up the nursing ranks at the old Whitehorse General Hospital from staff nurse on the medical ward to head nurse and then as a nursing supervisor.

Working at a smaller hospital meant she could get to know not only the patients, but their visiting friends and family.

Even now, there are times when she’ll be stopped in the street by someone who was one of her patients years ago.

Just as she enjoyed working with each patient, she also enjoyed honing her skills as a team leader in the role of head nurse and a supervisor.

Pike acknowledged it was a very different era in hospital care when nurses had more time to spend with patients. In fact, she can remember some shifts when there were more nurses on the ward than patients.

“That doesn’t happen any more,” she said, noting that when it did occur, nurses would go assist in other parts of the hospital.

With no computer system in place, all the paperwork involved a lot of paper.

Night shift nurses were largely responsible for filing the day’s work and ensuring it was ready to go the next day. The cleaning of medical equipment and supplies also often fell to the nursing staff as well.

“We did a lot ourselves,” Pike said, also recalling many more changes over the years.

When she started working at the hospital, nurses wore traditional white uniforms with nursing caps.

Within a few months, nurses were permitted to wear uniforms of any colour and eventually the move was made to pantsuits. The caps became a thing of the past.

As her career continued, her family also grew to include five children.

It was in 1997 that Pike began focusing her health care work on the greater community at large.

With the completion of the current Whitehorse General Hospital around that time, there were a number of changes for staff, including an end to the nursing supervisor positions that Pike was in at the time.

She found herself in a new position with the hospital, that of community liaison. The role eventually came to include communications, essentially making her the hospital’s public representative.

Along with working on the public reports, brochures and other publications released by the hospital corporation, Pike also addressed the media.

As well, she found herself putting in time on a number of volunteer initiatives aimed at raising money for health care initiatives in the territory like the the PARTY program, Run For Mom and Mardi Bra, among many others.

That’s in addition to a number of volunteer roles she’s served with other organizations.

Those include many sporting bodies she worked with when her kids were playing anything from organized golf to hockey to soccer and others.

It’s a job she’s enjoyed for nearly 20 years.

There are other areas of health care to work in locally outside of the hospital which Pike did not have a strong desire to leave aside.

At one point, when she felt she needed a bit of a break, she did a three-month stint working for the Department of Health and Social Services on a project focused on healthy eating.

As Pike noted, the hospital corporation has been a good employer, and she’s enjoyed working there.

The staff are very much like family, she said, noting most of her good friends are those she’s met through her work at the organization.

While Pike has enjoyed her work at the hospital for more than three decades, she said she wants to depart on a high note, admitting her “flame is starting to flicker a bit.”

She will be leaving her day job, but noted there are several committees she will continue to serve on after she wraps her work in early October.

As she pointed out, volunteering is a great way to know the community.

Pike has no plans to leave the territory save for some holidays next month she and her husband had been planning regardless of her retirement.

Outside of allowing her to slow down a bit, Pike said she doesn’t expect a lot to change with retirement.

She is setting her sights on some skiing in in the daylight rather than after work and, perhaps, a bit of golf during the daytime hours in the warmer months as well.

The territory’s three hospitals, the others being in Watson Lake and Dawson City, now fall under the hospital corporation.

As Pike looks ahead to the care at the three facilities, she said she hopes the focus on compassionate care is maintained, and that health care providers never lose sight of the most important person there: the patient.

Comments (3)

Up 2 Down 0

C. Lyons on Sep 22, 2014 at 11:17 am

Congratulations Val, well deserved recognition for our dedication to nursing and patient care over the years. It was a pleasure working with you.

Up 6 Down 0

Groucho d'North on Sep 21, 2014 at 9:20 am

Thanks for your service Val! I know many who have benefitted from your compassion and dedication.
All the best in your future.

Up 9 Down 0

Susan Barchyn on Sep 20, 2014 at 9:44 am

Well done Valerie. Congratulations Valerie on a fabulous career. Your kindness and compassion will be missed by many. Enjoy your retirement. So lucky to call you my friend.

Add your comments or reply via Twitter @whitehorsestar

In order to encourage thoughtful and responsible discussion, website comments will not be visible until a moderator approves them. Please add comments judiciously and refrain from maligning any individual or institution. Read about our user comment and privacy policies.

Your name and email address are required before your comment is posted. Otherwise, your comment will not be posted.