After 22 years of service working in emergency medicine, a dedicated nursing nun has retired to take up a new leadership position within her religious order. A staple in her community, both inside and outside NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx (NCB), which started the process of merging with NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi in 2019, Sr. Mary Catherine Redmond, 60, left a large void when she retired from her position at the hospital in September 2021.

 

Now leading over 200 of the faithful in her chosen Catholic religious order, The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she has likened the job of leading her fellow sisters to, “being CEO of a multimillion-dollar corporation.”

 

“It involves the care of the sisters, but also the promotion of the mission of who we are as Presentation sisters,” she said. “We’re looking at the issue of women and children as it relates to economic, ecological and racial inequities,” she added.

 

As for her time at NCB, she said, “The beauty of emergency medicine is that no day was like any other day, and I always said that to my friends. I always went to work with a really good attitude, because I never knew when I was going to have a bad day. It was handling whatever came in the door.”

 

Redmond said the biggest part of her role was advocating for her patients. “We are from the Norwood section, we serve primarily the uninsured,” she said. “Medicaid populations are underserved and so, we did a lot of advocacy for them, and along with their physical needs were social needs, and emotional needs.”

 

She continued, “So, it was really a multi-faceted approach, which was one of the reasons I was always proud to be at North Central, because I felt that we were able to provide a real well-rounded care of our patients.”

 

Her time at the hospital was initially inspired by a trip to Guyana during her religious training, where she said there was a disparity in healthcare. “I was previously an audiologist at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, and I asked the congregation to go back to school to become a physician assistant (PA), so that I could provide medical care to the underserved,” Redmond said.

 

She said what she loved the most about being a physician assistant was working with patients. “So much can be learned,” she said. “I always used to say to the PA students, you listen with your heart to the heart of another person. It was hearing what people were telling you, but it was also hearing what they weren’t telling you and asking the right questions to get the information that you needed.”

 

On the topic of State health insurance, available to low-income New Yorkers, the sister noted that the biggest issue with it was that people didn’t know such insurance was available to them.

 

She said because of this, and coupled with their fears over their immigration status, many patients would arrive at the hospital much later than was necessary with illnesses or injuries, even when insurance was not an issue at the hospital. Redmond said, regardless of immigration status, care for patients was the number one priority. (Indeed, Norwood News has been regularly highlighting this point for our readers in our regular Neighborhood Notes features, as reported.)

 

The sister recalled that at the height of the pandemic, like in most hospitals, the uptick in COVID cases sent large numbers of people to seek hospital care. At NCB, as previously reported, the fifteenth and sixteenth floors were renovated to specifically handle the COVID surge, and at one point, the Department of Defense were brought in during the Omicron wave to support existing staff. Gov. Kathy Hochul even paid a visit at one point to thank all at NCB who had worked together and fought so hard to keep their patients alive.

 

Norwood News had previously reported on some of the novel ways in which some relief and levity was being brought to what was otherwise a very intense and serious situation for both staff and patients. In the end, the pandemic served the raising of discussions about how it would potentially shape the hospital’s future, and indeed the future of healthcare, more generally.

 

Though language was often a barrier for some patients, Redmond said hospital staff worked hard to overcome it. “We have language lines in the emergency department where people can speak in whatever language it is that they speak, and we have a program called ‘I CARE’,” she said.

 

According to Redmond, the program seeks to treat patients in a way the patient wants to be treated [culturally tailored], while still caring for them in the best way possible. “Talking in their own language would be important to the staff, as well as the patient,” the sister explained.

 

Most of the patients Redmond saw in recent years at NCB were COVID patients, and she said the most surprising facet of the pandemic for her was the lack of preparedness. “Providers who were used to knowing the latest treatments, treatment regimens, and techniques were left with nothing, and that was hard,” she said.

 

“It was really a lot of very quick learning, and the virus presented itself in so many different ways that it was really hard to even know what…there wasn’t a pattern. After a while, it was like, whether it was a stomach flu or respiratory illness, whether it was like the sense of smell and taste, it was COVID.”

 

One she was nominated for the leadership of her congregation, Redmond said she had much to think about, especially in terms of the pandemic and whether she was ready to retire from the hospital. She described the community there as one she held close to her heart but eventually, she did retire.

“I don’t know if I had the ability to fight a third wave [of the pandemic],” she said. “I really don’t, because I will tell you, very honestly, I poured myself out during the first wave.” She added, “I said to my friends when I left, I wanted to leave respected for who I was, as a physician assistant, but more importantly, respected for who I was as a religious woman.”

 

As she reflected on her career, we asked the sister if she had noticed, prior to retiring, an uptick in people wanting to change professions in light of the pandemic and train to become nurses, in the way that others decided to train to become firefighters or police officers after 9/11.

 

Redmond said she had had a lot of contact with PA students, and that the PA programs were full, and had a waiting list of people who “really wanted to serve.” She added, “Those are people that are much younger, who could choose to do anything, I guess. They’re choosing to be physician assistants and so, I would say, yeah, people see a need and they’re not afraid of what that need might call them to.”

 

She concluded, “I just think that whatever you can do in your article to allow the people in Norwood to know the wonderful services that are provided [at NCB] would be really helpful.”

 

Highlighting the ongoing needs of the local community, she recounted that a woman who was experiencing homelessness, who she had gotten to know over time, had called her recently and told her that she had been hesitant to go to NCB, knowing Redmond was no longer there. “I was like, ‘Do go to North Central! North Central are people just like me. You need to go to North Central because they care. That’s what I would like people to know.”

 

NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx (NCB) is one of eleven acute care facilities within the City of New York’s public hospital network. A 215-bed community hospital, NCB specializes in women’s and children’s services. It also provides behavioral health acute and ambulatory care. Hospital representatives say its busy outpatient department has led the way in community-based care delivered in a compassionate and culturally-appropriate manner. It’s labor and delivery service brings more than 1,000 babies into the world each year. NCB officials say the hospital and its staff are committed to providing safe, high-quality medical care for any and all in need. For more information visit http://www.nyc.gov/hhc/ncbh/.