Pamela V. Brown

Write Path, an L.L.C.  

Photo by Ron Kosen / Photo-Spectrum

   Kauai Business Report January 2006

Virginia Beck One of Nation's Most Inspiring Nurses

Helping expectant mothers one of her specialties

By Pamela V. Brown

A loving presence, nurse Beck specializes in seeing and treating her patients as whole people, not just as an assortment of symptoms, allowing them to feel nurtured and nourished by her presence.

Specializing in women's health, Beck says she looks at a woman's whole life when assessing her health needs: what are the stressors in her life that may be causing or contributing to her health conditions? "It's senseless for me to 

Virginia Beck 

Photo by Pam Brown.

By taking time to talk with women, finding out what's really going on in their lives and teaching them ways to take care of themselves, "I really want to empower women with being in charge of their own health care," she said.

That desire to empower women - especially expectant mothers - to take control of their own health, is what led Beck to create the innovative Ten Times Healthier Babies program several years ago using grant money from the March of Dimes.

So impressed by her efforts was the Honolulu staff of March of Dimes that it nominated Beck for the third annual Inspirations Award sponsored by the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health. When she was named a runner up in the national competition this summer, the rest of the country learned what Kauai women already knew: Virginia Beck is a compassionate champion for women and their health.

"A lot of us don't realize that the health of the whole family and the whole ohana depends on the women who are at the center of choosing food, organizing family activities and making health care decisions for the entire family," she said. "So when you take care of women, you're really taking care of the whole community."

Beck says she doesn't see this order of things as putting an extra burden on women - it's a responsibility women naturally take on. "If we can make them stronger and make other people healthy, the burden on women won't be so great," she said. "When you take care of women, they'll take care of everyone else. That's what they naturally do."

And that's naturally what Beck does for her patients.

Alarmed for years by the high number and astronomical cost of premature births in Hawaii, heavily caused by stress - ranging from $1 million to $6 million in medical expenses per baby - Beck figured that if new moms could learn how to take care of themselves and their unborn babies better, stress levels would come down and so would the numbers of premature births.

Thus the origin of Ten Times Healthier Babies, a program that offers tips revolving around the number 10: start OB care by 10 weeks of pregnancy, have 10 or more OB visits and 10 times healthier babies means 10 times healthier moms.

The challenge was figuring out how to deliver this information to women who most needed it. Beck determined that all pregnant women needed to be targeted - not just those in a pre-determined risk group.

"A lot of the premature babies are born to women who show no risk factors," Beck said, explaining that singling out a certain type of mom wouldn't adequately address the problem. Besides, she said, "Women don't want to be labeled and stigmatized. Want to come to a group for high risk women? Doesn't that sound inviting?"

Through her many years nursing on Kauai, Beck determined that many new Kauai moms don't look for information in magazines or newspapers, so much of the March of Dimes grant money went for radio ads. Beck gives special thanks to H Hawaii Media for their partnership in getting the word out about what services and education is available for pregnant women.

Grant money made it possible for Beck to create easy-to-read and informative brochures about healthy habits during pregnancy, warning signs of premature birth and things to avoid to prevent pre-term births.

Also funded by the March of Dimes grant as part of the Ten Times Healthier Babies program is a series of free childbirth classes that Beck teaches. "We thought it was a big obstacle for young couples to pay for a childbirth class so we thought free classes might make it more accessible."

The classes have been a success but also a challenge for Beck. "I discovered that you have to do about 100 times more work than you think you have to, to create change and get people to start thinking differently. It seems to be a mainland concept for people to go to childbirth classes." Some nights there are lots of Kauai couples in attendance and other times there are mostly no-shows.

"I have to be like water on stone and keep hanging in there, keep being there," she said. The response has been positive from those who have attended. "They've said they learned a lot and said that even though they thought they might bored, they found they didn't want to leave the class."

Beck's dedication to her patients and their health is certainly felt by her loyal clients who range from ages 13 to 90, crossing all ethnic and socio-economic and geographic lines, some driving to Eleele to see her from as far away as Kapaa and Kilauea.

When she's asked what she typically does when she sees a patient, there's no set answer. "I really customize the needs of the person that I'm with. If I'm dealing with someone who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and who has a history of being abused, we need to do an entirely different type of exam than for someone who's in her 20s and wants some birth control pills."

Beck credits her ability to give the personalized care she does to the compassionate attitudes of the physicians she works with and the chief operating officer Orianna Skomoroch of West Kauai Medical Center, of which West Kauai Clinic is a part.

"My organization has been very understanding and supportive," she said. "I think it's partly because we live in a small community. This is our community and we have to take care of it.

"Every time we can prevent just one premature birth or get one mom higher quality care so that she doesn't have a problem birth, that's really the ultimate pay-off, the reward of all rewards," she said. "Just knowing that there's a healthier baby and a happier mom, that gives me the most joy and why I keep going to work."

Virginia Beck will be holding an open house January 14 at West Kauai Medical Center. She can be reached at 335-0579.

Contact Information:

Pamela V. Brown

(808) 651-3533 cell

(808) 821-1027 fax

pam@writepath.net

"Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art."             --- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose

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