Editor,

In the 1990s I worked the last seven years of my 40-year nursing career in most all departments at Whidbey General Hospital.

I can affirm that timely and appropriate care at WGH is a life saver.

Whether it is to treat my husband’s healthy 27-year-old uninsured physical trainer’s acute appendicitis, which struck on a weekend night, or future injuries from the big earthquake that some say is overdue, lives are saved at WGH.

Emergencies are never planned. They are always a surprise, and we want to be prepared for any disaster. The current bond issue will keep our community’s hospital from slipping into the backwater of patient care.

In the last 25 years I have observed WGH mature into a facility where quality standards of hospital practice is available for most medical and surgical problems without the added time and expense of going off-island.

As with heart attacks where time is equal to saved heart tissue, we go forward or backward; there is no standing still, no status quo.

From here we either continue to get better or we get worse.

As Barbara Jordan said, a community “is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.”

A “yes” vote is for continued improvement in quality standard of practice which will attract not only more patients but also the most qualified health care providers.

For all our sakes, let’s vote “yes” for the hospital bond issue.

Susan M. McDonald RN
Oak Harbor