Holloway retires after more than 50 years at Sparta hospital

By: Travis Lott, The County Journal

Few people can say that they have consistently done anything for five decades. Ruth Holloway is an exception.

Holloway retired last week after 52 years with Sparta Community Hospital, a tenure that began when she was just 15 years old, working as a “candy-striper,” a junior auxiliary member who assists the medical team and other hospital staff, named for the red and white stripes they would wear.

Holloway started young, not being allowed to assist on the medical floor until a year later when she was 16.

Holloway grew up in Baldwin and went to school in Sparta. Despite having little family connection to the medical field, it was something that interested her very early on.

Her mother was a teacher and sponsored the pre-medicine group in the high school. That limited exposure may have been enough of a spark.

By the time Holloway was in sixth grade, she wrote an essay on physical therapy, an assignment in which many of her peers wrote about animals or other age-appropriate topics.

“I just thought it was interesting,” Holloway said.

Through the hospital’s auxiliary, Holloway received the Guardian Angel scholarship, which paid for her to go to nursing school.

Under the scholarship, nursing students would be incentivized to return to Sparta because if they worked at least one year at the hospital after graduating, they wouldn’t have to repay the auxiliary for tuition.

Holloway said many of her peers took the opportunity and left Sparta after they put in the time for their scholarship to be paid, but she felt well positioned to climb the ranks in the system.

Holloway taught prenatal classes in Sparta while she was attending school, having learned techniques that were then fairly new that were not being implemented in Sparta, such as Lamaze classes and other exercises for expecting mothers.

“I went through OB at school and learned about all these exercises and I said ‘hey, we need to be doing this,’” Holloway said.

Holloway had an immediate impact, but she wasn’t done.

Obtaining her bachelor of science in nursing in May 1976, Holloway was well-situated, as few of her peers obtained that level of education.

She was named head of patient teaching, social services coordinator, discharge planning and utilization review one year after starting her career as a registered nurse.

The year after that, in 1978, Holloway was promoted to director of nursing.

While working as DON, Holloway never stopped learning and striving to be a leader in innovation at Sparta hospital, bringing the latest and greatest techniques to patient care and hospital management.

Holloway was instrumental in starting the quality management program at the hospital, a program that has since permeated every aspect of the hospital’s mantra.

“It truly has blossomed over the last 40 years,” Holloway said.

Holloway was also on the ground floor of Sparta’s swing-bed program, allowing the staff to better utilize hospital rooms by switching room use from in-patient acute care to skilled care, allowing the hospital to “swing” its reimbursement status of hospital beds interchangeably for billing purposes. Holloway began working on this program in the early 1980s.

It was her ability to evolve and adapt with the ever-changing medical culture that Holloway credits for her longevity in the profession.

“I feel like I’m a self-motivator,” Holloway said. “In Sparta, we’re constantly changing and evolving.”

She said she always enjoyed being a part of the planning process at the hospital, able to use her background and love of the industry to improve on those plans.

Holloway was named vice president of patient services in 1992, director of quality management in 1996, nurse executive in 1998 and finally director of quality management again in 2013 with a greater scope of focus including risk management, accreditation, regulatory compliance, social services, infection control and pediatric quality.

She also continued her education, including earning degrees in health services management from the University of Dallas in 1996, Sparta hospital’s Six Sigma Black Belt in 2006 and a certificate for professional healthcare quality in 2014.

Of course, in 52 years in the industry, the medical field has changed drastically. There were obvious changes, such as technology, with medical charts, pharmaceutical distribution and every other aspect of the system becoming digital instead of being kept in hand-written records.

There were other major changes, too, such as the creation of an ambulance service in the region. When Holloway started, patients were often brought to the emergency room by private vehicle or by one of the funeral homes in the area, which used their vehicles equipped with stretchers to double for both the living and the departed. Now, patients have a much better chance of survival with emergency medical care being administered by a paramedic from the moment their ride to the hospital arrives.

Holloway said she leaves the nursing profession knowing she had an impact.

“I’ve enjoyed my time there,” Holloway said.

Now, she said she looks forward to spending more time with her family, taking some day trips and even getting back into fishing, which she used to enjoy with her mother when she was young but has had little time for in her busy career.

Lott, T. (2022, December 29).  Holloway retires after 50-plus years at Sparta hospital. The County Journal, 1,5)