#WhyIDoIt: By Supporting Front-Line Health Care Workers, Patient Transporter Feels Fulfilled
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our health care workers have made sacrifices each day to provide care and comfort to our community in crisis. This series of stories is a snapshot of what inspires the people who do everything possible to save lives during this unprecedented time. From everyone at the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network – thank you. We want to recognize these efforts and express our deepest gratitude. Your dedication and compassion will not be forgotten.
March 19, 2021
3 minute read
“I recently retired from my job of 23 years as a medical recruiter. Over the years in that career, I became so impressed with health care professionals. I got to know many of them, and they’re kind, caring and compassionate people. They embody the type of person I want to be, not just professionally and personally, but spiritually too. They have such modesty and humility while providing a service, a critical service sometimes, in a life-or-death situation. I have great admiration for health care professionals because they do things that I could never do. But I can support them, and that’s why I became a transporter at Froedtert Hospital.”
“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my wife and I couldn’t enjoy our retirement by traveling like we had planned, and I’m not the type of person who can sit still at home. I knew I wanted to do something to fight back against the pandemic, and I knew I needed it to be in a way that would help front-line workers. I could never be a surgeon or a nurse with my human resources background, but I knew that as a transporter, I could help health care workers by taking their patients wherever they need to go. That is fulfilling. I spend my day transporting patients in their hospital beds or wheelchairs all over the Froedtert Hospital campus. I take them to their procedures, to their appointments or to their rooms. I wear a Fitbit and an Apple Watch, and I clock anywhere from 9.5 to 13.25 miles walking per day.”
“Being a transporter is also my way of building up the people who contributed to my success. When I worked as a medical recruiter, at one point, I was 320 pounds. It was a desk job, and I gradually gained the weight. Over the last five years, I cut my weight in half. Now, I weigh 155 pounds. That is something I owe to health care professionals. I worked with individuals that I recruited or that I interpreted for who taught me the fundamentals of nutrition and exercise. I am diabetic, but today, I no longer need to take insulin. I wouldn’t have been able to make the lifestyle changes I have without the health care professionals who stood by me and supported me along the way. This is my way of doing what I can to support them.”
- Carlos Gutierrez, Transporter, Froedtert Hospital
