Chapter 11: A Vision for Nursing to Build the Reputation of MD Anderson
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Identifier
HilkemeyerR_01_20000523_C11
Publication Date
5-23-2000
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, Research Medical Library, The University of Texas Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Keywords
Building the Institution; Mentoring; On Mentoring; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; Professional Path; Leadership; On Leadership; MD Anderson Culture Building/Transforming the Institution; MD Anderson History; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; On Research and Researchers; MD Anderson Culture; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; Understanding the Institution; The Institution and Finances; Ethics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
So, in a sense, am I correct that you opened up a new vista of opportunity for nurses in the cancer area?
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Yes, and as soon as they heard we were doing something here, we would have doctors come in and nurses come in and people would call me… I even had some directors call me: “Can you help me with my budget? I am trying to get my budget done for the year.” I had one particular aide -her director was a good friend of Dr. [R. Lee] Clark. And she would call me and she would say, "Renilda, I don't know how to do my budget for this today. I've got to get it in. Can you help me?" And I would say, "Sure. Give it to me over the phone," because we didn't have a fax, we didn't have anything to work with, just telephone and mail, and that was about it. And that was about all you had to do. So, it was kind of different.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
I know there are many aspects to your career and to the nursing that you did here that would require an interview 200 pages long. But I would like to see if we could have you arrive at some overall sense of the role M. D. Anderson has played in the nation.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Yes, because the only other places there is Memorial Sloan Kettering. They are a private hospital. Roswell Park is a state institution. And they pretty much took care of themselves. They didn't go out looking for stuff. And I guess the other thing is that we tried insofar as possible to help others. We always did. We did it with students. We did it with nurses who wanted to come for maybe a special program of some kind. We did it by going out and helping people in other areas. And we did things with the American Cancer Society, with the National Cancer Institute. So, I think yes, I think we did a lot. I can tell you one thing: We were doing things here that they thought I was crazy, because we were so far ahead of what the other people were doing, like when I was talking to you about chemotherapy, and I called these people to see if the nurses were giving it. "My Lord, no," she says, "we won't even let them hang a bottle of dextrose and water," she said. "So no, we are not doing it. We are not going to do it." I think that is . . . Virginia Barkley, who was the cancer consultant at the American Cancer Society, and I did a five-day trip to Peru. And we did five days of teaching cancer nursing to the nurses in Peru. We thought we would have 100. We had 400 who showed up, none of who could speak English, and we couldn't speak Spanish. How was that? Cute!
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Yes.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Well, we finally found an OB [Obstetrics] nurse in a mission who could come and... we sat and wrote all our notes down and we did the program for five days. And then, every time we turned around, they had something else for us to do. 'Would you make rounds with us?' I said, "I do it all the time. I don't know what is different down here. There has got to be patients. They must have some of the same stuff." So, yes, we made rounds. We did the teaching. We helped then with anything they wanted to have help with. And I have done that many a time; you know, to go some place and just be asked if you would come and help. And that, I know, always happened if you would go for the Cancer Society for a meeting or something like that, you could almost bet you are going to be meeting with people before you do the regular program. You are going to be meeting with people afterwards that are going to have you. And when I was on the National Cancer Institute Grant Review Committee, this other nurse and I laughed because the system was that they wasn't anything for us to have except for maybe $30,000, so we would have to review and write up and have ready to take on to the meeting. And then, we would meet all day, and we would break for supper time. We might go down and have a beer, a drink, or something like that. And the next thing we were doing, we were doing a consultant service. Every doctor around there . he would say, 'What do you think my nurses ought to do?" "Do you think they ought to be doing this?" "Do you think they ought to be doing that?" That kind of thing.
And the people that were at the National Cancer Institute, believe you me, we taught them a lot of things that they didn't know either because they were not in the advanced places, you know, they didn't have the clinical situation. So, I think you can say that Anderson more than contributed to what went on in the cancer world, and very well.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
From listening to your comments that you made earlier, you gave Dr. Lee Clark a great deal of credit for this.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
He was a very visionary man. He really was. And we were so short of staff, and I decided that we had to do some other things. I had already got them to up the salaries and do things like this. And so, I said, well, one of the things we desperately need is a child care center. Do you know about the Child Care Center?
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Yes.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
O.K., well anyway, I went to talk to Dr. Clark and he said, "Well, look around and see what you can find." Well, we looked around and we didn't have enough room in the building to have a child care center. So, I went back and I said, "Is it all right if I go talk to the Medical Center?" So, I went and talked to the board. They said, "Why should we be fiddling with a child care center?" I said, "Well, you'd better. You've got all these fancy hospitals going up and you don't have anybody to staff them, so you'd better be doing something to get the kids taken care of so mama can work." So, before I knew it, I am contacting the Child Welfare Agency and am writing a program for a child care center. I don't have the faintest idea what a child care center is supposed to be, but I could read and I could write, and we sat down and got the women to talk with us and got the directors of nursing in the institutions around here and the hospital administrators. Now, if you don't think that was something, to get six hospital administrators and six directors of nursing to agree on something, it worked, believe you me. And we had a good child care center, too. And it helped us recruit nursing people. So much so that the second one, when we built the new one, it got named for me. How is that?
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
That is an honor.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Yes. And Dr. Clark said then, you know, he said, "If that is what we need to do, then we need to do it." But I think we had very good people, and we had very good clinical staff. We had very good people. And I think the quality of the care here has always been good. don't think that will ever change. And in addition to that, I think the people that came here went away, if they left, better than when they came. Just like nurses .... you may not be able to tell them, but if you take them and they can see what you are doing and what difference it makes to a patient that, that is altogether different and it is going to make a difference in the care.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Do nurses actively involve themselves in radiotherapy,
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Well, I know I have pressured you a little here, keeping you longer than you probably really wanted to be, but is there anything else you would like to add before we conclude?
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
No, because I don't know what you are really looking for.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Well, you have given me a lot of what I was looking for. I wanted to find out how the nursing program here began, its problems, an inside view of the person who accomplished it. That is the main thing. And the impact it has had on M.D. Anderson.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
I was saying that we’ve received an insight into what we really want to know, well probably the main points that you can think are important.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
I think there is no question that the institution has a very good reputation and always has had. And I think it starts at the top. If you don't believe that or are not interested, then you are not going to stay very long. I had the same thing with the nurses. If that is somebody who is not going to be able to carry out what you want done, you are not going to keep her, whichever it is. But I think that there is so much more that can be done for people now that could not have been done for them 20 years ago. It’s just like educational programs. All of those things we just didn’t have in any way shape or form to the point of where we could do what we can do now. We didn’t have the money we have now. So I think the people that come to this institution, if they are a patient, really feel that this place is going to do the very best they can for them, is going to help them with their problems. And I think that is true. I think the nursing has always got to be top notch, because if it isn't, a lot of the other things are going to fall by the wayside.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Well, I want to thank you very much for taking the time out, I know you have been very busy, and it is now almost 8:30 p. m. On behalf of myself and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, I want to thank you very much.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Well, I have enjoyed it. If you don't figure it out, you can holler at me.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
I will. You can count on that. End of interview.
Recommended Citation
Hilkemeyer, Renilda RN, BS, Dr.P.H. and Marchiafava, Louis J. PhD, "Chapter 11: A Vision for Nursing to Build the Reputation of MD Anderson" (2000). Interview Chapters. 1605.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1605
Conditions Governing Access
Open
