Tenet Heroes HOF salutes Scottsdale employee
Staff Reports | Digital Free Press
Gerry Coleman of Abrazo Scottsdale Campus has been named to the Tenet Heroes Hall of Fame.
Mr. Coleman was nominated for the award in recognition of his community service and passion and enthusiasm for his job. Induction into the prestigious Tenet Heroes Hall of Fame is an honor bestowed this year to only 23 of the company’s 100,000 employees nationwide, according to a press release.
Tenet Healthcare is Abrazo Scottsdale’s parent company.
With a sunny disposition well-known to hospital employees and visitors at Abrazo Scottsdale Campus, Mr. Coleman overcame a serious brush with COVID-19 and is the hospital’s No. 1 cheerleader.
Mr. Coleman, a Phoenix resident, was nominated for outstanding service in 2021 by his supervisor, Jean Revard, food and nutrition director at Abrazo Scottsdale Campus. During the height of the pandemic Mr. Coleman, who had been vaccinated, was hospitalized for at Abrazo Scottsdale with COVID. His experience turned him into an advocate of vaccinations, she said.
— Jean Revard, Abrazo Scottsdale
“Gerry went through very rough days. With the help of our great nurses and doctors at Abrazo Scottsdale Campus, he recovered and did not need to go to ICU,” Ms Revard said in a prepared statement. “One of the doctors told Gerry if he had not been vaccinated he would not have survived. Gerry had not missed work in the eight years he had been here. The first few days after he returned to work, whenever I heard spontaneous applause I just knew someone else had just run into Gerry.”
Ms. Revard contends Mr. Coleman has an infectious attitude.
“Gerry had always been such a promoter of Abrazo Scottsdale Campus to everyone he came in contact with — whether it was in the grocery store, the cafeteria, on a patient unit. Now he was a promoter of the vaccines, and he was telling everyone about the caring doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and asking people to trust our great medical experts,” she said.
“He was the most positive person to everyone who was still debating the vaccines and gave his story in a way that inspired people and did not make them feel guilty or bad because they had not yet received the vaccine. He talked to anyone who asked about his experience, employees, doctors and nurses,” she said.
Mr. Coleman was also recognized for his compassion for people, from the doctor talking to Mr. Coleman about his favorite restaurants, to the employee asking for help, to the patient asking for more food, and to the person ordering their cappuccino at the coffee shop
“The Tenet Heroes program celebrates those individuals who make a meaningful impact within their communities that goes above and beyond their daily responsibilities. That description fits Gerry to a ‘T’,” said Abrazo Scottsdale Campus CEO Naman Mahajan.
