Labor of love
Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth opens
Pulse editor
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth in Cumming officially opened its doors on Aug. 6 at 7 a.m. At 7:44 a.m., the center’s first baby — a boy — was born.
“I had feelings of euphoria, mixed with relief, after all our planning and hard work. Looking around the room and seeing the proud looks on the staff’s faces — it was exhilarating. I felt like we were giving birth, too,” said Melissa Sugg, RNC, BSN, manager of women’s services at the center.
Photo courtesy of Northside Hospital
On Aug. 6, Hudson Lee Bickers was the first baby born at the Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth. Parents Allyson and Russell Bickers and big brother Brayden are all smiles as Hudson snoozes.
Barry Williams / Special
(From left) Lydia Waltering, Amy McPhail, Sandra Grady, Melissa Sugg, Janet Stephenson and Jill Thompson work at the Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth.
Barry Williams / Special
Melissa Sugg is manager of women’s services at the Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth.
Sugg, a 12-year nursing leader at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, had helped build maternity services there and has been involved in the planning for the Cumming facility since the beginning. Since January, she has overseen the construction, wearing a hard hat to go with her nursing shoes.
Sugg’s unique talents made her ideal for the job. Before earning her nursing degree, Sugg worked in interior design and space-planning.
“As a child, my first love was architecture,” she said. “I loved house plans and blueprints, but in college in the 1970s in a small town in Alabama, I was encouraged to go the interior design route. That’s what girls were supposed to do.”
While she studied interior design, Sugg took every drafting class that she could.
She worked as an interior designer, got married and raised her children. Then her daughter became seriously ill.
“She’s fine now — a graduate of Georgia Tech and married — but her illness got me interested in health care, and I had always adored babies,” Sugg said. “I went to nursing school intending to work in labor and delivery at Northside Hospital.”
But the leadership team at Northside recognized Sugg’s talents and allowed her to get involved in building projects.
“Being able to build an entirely new program here is the dream of a lifetime, because it combines my favorite hobbies and my passion for nursing and team-building,” she said.
Sugg knows how empowering it feels to have people appreciate all of her talents, and that’s the approach she takes with her staff.
“I try to look at the whole person and acknowledge all [their] abilities,” she said. “I love empowering younger women and teaching them what they need to be confident and successful.”
The Women’s Center at Northside Hospital-Forsyth hired 135 employees; Sugg sat in on 95 percent of the interviews.
“Putting together the best staff was the most challenging and most fun part of this process,” Sugg said. “It was imperative that we have a cohesive, skilled and experienced staff that shared our vision for giving the best care and customer service.”
Most of the team members are seasoned Northside Hospital employees, some of whom are from the Cumming area. For them, the opening held the added emotion of coming home.
“I saw tears in their eyes opening day,” Sugg said. “This is their community and, as they walk the halls, they’ll be meeting their friends and neighbors.”
Jill Thompson, BSN, RNC, operations coordinator for the labor and delivery unit, is a lifelong resident of Forsyth County. She found it difficult to put her feelings into words on opening day.
“To see this state-of-the-art new facility here, I felt like I had to pinch myself [to realize] that it was real,” she said. “All of the staff was on Cloud 9, and I felt like I was going to burst.”
Closer to home
When Thompson worked at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, she commuted 70 miles a day; now she lives eight miles from work.
“When I take a call, I’ll be able to get here in 10 minutes,” she said. “The other day my husband and 9-year-old daughter, Mandy, stopped by with lunch. They had never been close enough to do that before. I can’t imagine anything better than to work in labor and delivery in your own community.”
In her role at the center, Thompson hired the 65-person labor and delivery staff and oversaw the installation of the unit. The new facility mirrors the setup at Northside Hospital, but Thompson has noticed a difference.
“Because this is a small hospital environment, we’ll have more of a team approach between the departments. Labor and delivery is so big in Atlanta (about 300 on staff) that you rarely get to know anyone in family care services or the nursery,” she said. “Here we’ll all get to know each other. It’s a small-town atmosphere, yet we’ll have all the resources of being part of the Northside sytem.”
Thompson expected things to get off to a slow start, but her team delivered seven babies in the first two days.
“I was sitting in my office and suddenly heard a baby crying. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed that,” she said.