Dedicated to Helping Others

Women have long been the back­bone of both the help­ing and health­care pro­fes­sions, pro­vid­ing care and sup­port to indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties in need. As we cel­e­brate Women’s His­to­ry Month, it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize the count­less con­tri­bu­tions that women have made to this field. From doc­tors and nurs­es to social work­ers and ther­a­pists, women have played a vital role in pro­mot­ing health and well­ness for all.

Accord­ing to the U.S. Bureau of Labor of Sta­tis­tics, women make up 77.6% of employ­ees in the health­care and social assis­tance indus­tries. At Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG), more than 80% of our staff is made up of women.

Cindy Cook, RN Coor­di­na­tor in Car­diac Reha­bil­i­ta­tion, joined QMG in 1988. Pur­su­ing a career as a nurse was a choice inspired by her family.

“I always enjoyed my sci­ence class­es and I liked work­ing with peo­ple, so health­care seemed like a good fit,” she shared. ​“I was orig­i­nal­ly a Med Tech major, and after a cou­ple of years of think­ing about the jobs a Med Tech degree pre­pared me for, I decid­ed to change to nurs­ing. My mom and Aunt Prudy were both LPNs and I’m sure their expe­ri­ences influ­enced my decision.”

Her mom worked in a vari­ety of roles as an LPN, which allowed Cook to learn about the many oppor­tu­ni­ties found in nursing.

For Nik­ki Shields, Direc­tor of Behav­ioral Health, her path became clear dur­ing a class in high school.

“My sopho­more year psy­chol­o­gy class lit a fire for me — I need­ed to under­stand how peo­ple worked. I had strug­gled with anx­i­ety for much of my child­hood but didn’t real­ize that was what it was until much lat­er,” she said. ​“Learn­ing about how the brain works relat­ed to emo­tion helped me put my own strug­gles into a frame­work that made sense, and I decid­ed I want­ed a career that would allow me to help oth­ers do the same.”

Both Cook and Shields ded­i­cate their careers to help­ing oth­ers and using their exper­tise to make a pos­i­tive impact.

Shields said there are many things in her work that she’s pas­sion­ate about — from how the brain works relat­ed to emo­tions and behav­ior to under­stand­ing child devel­op­ment to help­ing peo­ple find new ways to think about and address strug­gles in their lives. At the core of her work is help­ing people.

“If I had to pick one pas­sion that tops all of the rest, it would be people’s sto­ries. At the heart of any inter­ac­tion with a patient, I’m look­ing for clues about how that per­son got to this moment in time,” she shared. ​“What expe­ri­ences cre­at­ed the many nuances of their per­son­al­i­ty? What have they been through and how did they get through it? How do they make sense of their jour­ney so far? What keeps them going on hard days? What gets in their way? When are they at their best? These are the ques­tions that dri­ve my work. Any­time one of these clues clicks into place, I am remind­ed that for all of the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing health­care today, I’m right where I want to be.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, for Cook, help­ing peo­ple on their jour­ney is what dri­ves her work and con­tin­ues to inspire.

“Patient edu­ca­tion is my pas­sion, which is prob­a­bly the result of the years I spent in Car­diac Rehab. I am pas­sion­ate about pre­ven­ta­tive health, men­tal health, and shar­ing my knowl­edge with the patients,” she said. ​“I enjoy answer­ing patient ques­tions about their devices, health, tests, etc., and calm­ing their fears.”

As we cel­e­brate Women’s His­to­ry Month, we take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize the impact of the women who came before us and thank all women who lead with their hearts, as well as their tal­ents, to make a pos­i­tive impact by help­ing oth­ers each day, espe­cial­ly those among our QMG family.