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Duke University Medical Center, InterGom
June 1965
Members of the Duke Medical Center Health Careers Recruitment Team are shown above
during a presentation given to the students at Sanford Central High School on March 18.
Recruitment Program to Go Nationwide
New Hospital
Laundry Stirs
State-Wide Interest
The smell of clean linen permeates
the air as busy hands sort, fold and
iron the various articles that only a
short while before were in soiled linen
carts waiting to be washed. Starchy,
stiff folds are carefully preserved by
hands, long-experienced at folding.
The sound of hissing steam competes
with the w'hir-r-r-r of the washers.
Suddenly you are aware of a melody
slowly rising above the other sounds,
as voices rise in harmony, created by
a sure but preoccupied rhythm.
You have arrived at the new Hospi
tal Laundry. It is machines and it
is people.
Opened on March 8, the new Laun
dry is already handling over 7 tons of
laundry a day. It is in operation
eight hours a day, five and a half days
a w’eek.
“We hope that this will be the
most efficient institutional operation
in the South,” says Mr. E. T. Parrish,
manager of the Laundry for almost
eight years.
Before construction began on the
Laundry in February 1964, tw'o years
had been spent in careful planning.
“I’ve travelled thousands of miles,”
explains Mr. Parrish, “—alone and
with others—to get the best ideas to
put into this operation.”
“Since we began operation in
March, a great deal of interest has
been stirred up across the state in our
new i)lant,” he adds with understand
able pride.
Included in those institutions
which have sent representatives to
Duke to study the Laundry opera
tions are: East Carolina College,
Greenville: Women’s Prison and Rex
Hospital, Raleigh; Memorial Hospital,
Chapel Hill; Forsyth Memorial
Hospital and Hotel Robert E. Lee,
Winston-Salem; and also Emory Uni
versity, Atlanta, Ga., and Holston
Valley Hospital in Tennessee.
Each of these rej)resentatives has
observed the operations with the con
sideration of possibly installing a
similar plant in his institution.
Those who are interested are invit-
A student recruitment program
here at Duke University Medical Cen
ter has been so effective that it will go
nationwide.
Lewis Flint, a senior medical stu
dent and president of the Duke Chap
ter of the Student American Medical
Association, announced recently that a
study of the Duke program will be
financed by a grant from Merck-
Sharpe-Dohme Pharmaceutical Co. of
New York.
Under the title of the Duke Medical
Center Health Careers Recruitment
Team, students from five health
fields “took the hospital to high
school students” across North Caro-
ed to call Mr. Parrish and request a
“tour” of the new facilities. For
those w'ho do not have the time for
this, however, there follows a brief
description of the activities in the
new Laundry.
First, the linen arrives and is de
posited in the “soiled linen room”
(all contaminated linens having been
autoclaved at the Hospital before
delivery to the Laundry). It is then
sorted and sent down through chutes
to the three washing machines located
on the floor below'. Each machine
washes 600 lbs. of soiled linen per
hour. A fourth macfhine, much
smaller than the others, accommodates
such articles as mops and rags, etc.
(Continued on page 6)
lina. Represented in the tour group
were medical students. X-ray techni
cians, student nurses, medical technol
ogists and physical therapy students.
The Duke group usually sees about
12,000 students annually, but this
year the total w'as about 5,000. Flint
explained that this year was different
because the team was studying itself
and its program.
A full report of the study will go to
SAMA’s national headquarters, where
a model plan based on the Duke pro
gram will be drafted and made avail
able to similar university or medical
center student organizations in the
United States now without such a
program.
According to Flint, this “stiulent
to student approach” has been very
effective in creating interest in health
careers among high school students.
“They can appreciate the real live
action of the job that they would be
doing,” he said, by seeing college and
graduate students -who represent suc
cess in fields in which they, too, are
interested.
Stimulating this interest and pro
viding information is about as far as
the Duke group can go. And of
course measurement of success or fail
ure is impossible. Duke rates its ef
fectiveness by losing a questionnaire
which students complete at the end of
a presentation.
The five-year-old program features
facts, concepts, case histories, slides,
discussion and the Duke team mem
bers themselves.