Above and beyond: Meet Evan Turner

Every week, I will be profiling an extraordinary human being who lives in our community. If you know someone who is doing something interesting with their life, I want to hear about it. Send me an email at [email protected].

Evan Turner knows one thing for sure. The resilience of the human spirit is an extraordinary thing.

He’s the Clinical Leader of the Huntsville Satellite Dialysis Unit under the Regional Kidney Care Program Simcoe Muskoka. He’s been in the game long enough to see how times have changed. He was one of the first nurses to be able to dialyze patients at Huntsville District Memorial Hospital. Over the last four decades he’s been a nurse, he’s built a lot of memories and he’s touched a lot of lives along the way.

While some people get nervous, anxious even, at the thought of entering a hospital, for 65-year-old Evan, it’s a place of comfort. It’s all he’s ever known. He started working in a busy Toronto hospital as an orderly (a position that no longer exists) when he was just 17. He knew right away that his calling in life was to be a nurse and he graduated from nursing school in 1978.

Those receiving dialysis treatment at Huntsville Hospital will be treated with care and kindness from Evan Turner, who’s been a RN for almost 40 years.

Evan spent 20 years as the nurse manager at Lions Camp Dorset, a seasonal ‘vacation’ resort for dialysis patients and their families. What made the job so much better is that he got to work alongside his wife, Kelly, who ran the camp’s office. They fell in love with the area and made the big move here from the city in 1989. Within six months of moving to Huntsville, due to his connection to Camp Dorset, Evan was contacted and asked to dialyze patients at Huntsville District Memorial Hospital as they were having to commute out of town to receive treatment. He first started with only four patients, dialyzing in a small room with two chairs. But as a need for the service continued to grow, some funding was finally obtained making a renovation possible and now it’s an “excellently laid out dialysis unit” complete with six chairs and enough machines to treat up to 20 patients at a time.

When I first arrived at [Huntsville] hospital, what impressed me so much was the quality of nursing care that was being given. The nurses were doing nursing and patient care in the way we were taught in school. In the city, it wasn’t possible to do it that way. I remember one of my first days at the hospital, I was going for lunch and a group of nurses were all sitting at one long table in the cafeteria talking to each other. It took a while for it to dawn on me that half of the nursing staff were at that table. That’s the beauty of working in a small hospital. You just don’t get that at a downtown Toronto hospital.

Evan is one of those nurses who really cares. He knows all of his dialysis patients by name and has established personal and intimate relationships with them. He’s never one to think twice about going above and beyond. For anyone, in fact. If you ask his co-workers what they think of Evan, they will tell you he’s a pleasure to work with. He’s a bubbly, happy-go-lucky guy with a desire to go the extra mile for his patients.

Work is so much better when you get along with your co-workers! Evan and ward clerk Tracey McCartney aren’t just a good team, they’ve shared a lot of laughs along the way as well.

Back in 2000, a close friend of Evan’s approached him about helping to set up a dialysis unit in a public hospital in the Philippines. By coincidence, Camp Dorset happened to be replacing their older dialysis machines and there was a bank of them looking for a home. Evan and his wife recruited a handful of people they knew within the dialysis community and helped raise funds to have those machines repaired by technicians. Finally, thanks to a collective effort of like-minded people, they had enough start-up equipment to run for three months and the machines were ready to be shipped. Evan and his wife travelled to the poverty-stricken country where they were accommodated with a “nice space” in a “very third-world hospital”. Evan worked around the clock to train nurses and within three weeks a small dialysis unit was established, which is still functioning today.

“We all came home with a deep appreciation for what we have, even though the intention of the whole thing was to provide this service to people who wouldn’t be able to get it otherwise,” says Evan. “We realized how lucky we are to live here in Canada.”

Here’s another thing about Evan: his incredible work ethic and high standard for patient care has not gone unnoticed. In 2005, prior to the amalgamation of Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare, he received an award for excellence from Algonquin Health Services. And two years ago, he was the recipient of the Human Touch Award, which honours front-line renal and cancer healthcare professionals, providers and individuals who provide exemplary and compassionate care in the province.

“It was such an honour,” he says of receiving both awards. “And knowing that I was nominated by the people I work with made it even more special.”

Evan is retiring in February and it’s safe to say he’s going to miss his job tremendously. When you truly love what you do, working a 12-hour shift (spent mostly on your feet) doesn’t really seem to bother you. For the last 40 years, Evan has been doing what he’s best at. But on the other hand, he’s ready for a change. And until he officially says goodbye, he will continue to be inspired by the strength and perseverance of his patients.

“When I see how people can go through an absolutely devastating time health-wise where it has impact on every part of their life, especially with people on dialysis. There’s no part of their life that’s not touched and yet they are living vibrant, full lives and managing to make it work. That resilience of people is remarkable. It’s one of those things that just blows me away.”

(A big thanks to Allyson Snelling, Huntsville District Memorial Hospital’s Communications and Executive Assistant, for suggesting Evan Turner. This profile and photos would not have been possible without her assistance. She, too, appears to go above and beyond…)

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