Joy Plamann, President, St. Cloud Hospital

I’ve been at CentraCare for 27 years and been in a variety of positions from staff nurse to charge nurse to educator. I still know the number to the staffing office, I still know the number to the lab.

I know what it’s like at 2:00 a.m., and who is here and who isn’t.

Joy Plamann, SVP, President, St. Cloud Hospital

And I think that really helps me in my daily work as President of St Cloud Hospital. Because I can find what we call ‘missing Fs’ potentially – things that we might need to think about or questions we might need to ask or be curious about.

What I’m most proud of throughout the pandemic is honestly just how each and every staff member showed up. Every single department was impacted by the pandemic – every individual that works here. And I just am so proud of our people. We could not have gotten through this without each and every one of them.

We can’t forget, we can’t just put COVID behind us because we’ve learned so much, we’ve grown so much and changed so much. But we’ve also hurt so much, too. So how do we continue to heal from that? Everybody needs a little something different and everybody needs to do it in their own way, on their own time. But I know staff are hurting. And it’s not just a quick flip of the switch, where one day you’re going to wake up and feel like all is good. It’s going to be a progression. But we really do need staff to tell us what they think will help and how we might be able to help them. I know when you’re feeling down, you can’t always articulate that, but as an organization and as leaders, we want to help our staff and help ourselves move ahead.