{"id":138115,"date":"2024-12-04T19:21:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T00:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=138115"},"modified":"2024-12-04T19:21:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T00:21:39","slug":"st-lukes-miners-longest-serving-employee-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=138115","title":{"rendered":"St. Luke\u2019s Miners\u2019 Longest Serving Employee on Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

The nurse is celebrating three 50-year milestones.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On January 6, 2025, Betty Benulis, RN, will celebrate\u00a0a half-century of employment at St. Luke\u2019s Miners Campus<\/u><\/strong>, a milestone that no other employee of the Coaldale hospital is known to have reached.<\/p>\n

She admits, she wouldn\u2019t have predicted spending 50 years at any job but isn\u2019t surprised she\u2019s achieved it at St. Luke\u2019s, which has managed the hospital since 2000, or half of her tenure there.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime goes fast, and I like my work,\u201d said Benulis, 71 and a long-time resident of New Philadelphia, Schuylkill County.<\/p>\n

She found her niche caring for the sick and recovering patients as a proud member of the nation\u2019s most trusted profession and never second-guessed her decision. And it doesn\u2019t faze her that she has been employed at the Miners hospital longer than some of her coworkers have been on Earth.<\/p>\n

Becoming a nurse<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cWhen I graduated from Nativity BVM High School, in Pottsville, in 1971, my father told me I could go to college to become a teacher or to nursing school to become a nurse,\u201d she recalls. She soon left the coal town, where she was born and raised, to attend Allentown\u2019s Sacred Heart Hospital\u2019s School of Nursing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had a really good reputation,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I came out, in 1974, I was well-prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating, she returned to Schuylkill County, following a brief stint at the Hamburg Center, which had treated persons with physical and mental disabilities since 1960 but closed in 2018.<\/p>\n

Benulis really reached her stride at Miners, serving on general medical-surgical units, then the ICU, which she managed. Working part time for a period, she and her husband, whom she married in 1974, raised their three sons.<\/p>\n

Later, after moving into cardiology, she proudly helped introduce several innovations in heart diagnostic technology, one of them assisting the cardiologist and radiology technologist in performing the first nuclear stress tests at the hospital in the early 1990s. \u201cIt was nice seeing how patients benefitted from these advancements,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Celebrating two more half-century milestones<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

She finds the evolution of information technology most fascinating, especially for patient records charting using the Epic platform. \u201cThere\u2019s all that information right at your fingertips,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s instantaneous and nice!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1996, Benulis started working in the hospital\u2019s cardiac rehab unit. She has been employed since 2012 in the cardiopulmonary rehab unit, where patients go to recover from a heart attack, cardiac bypass or valve surgery or find hope living with heart failure, lung conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, pulmonary fibrosis and peripheral vascular disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel good that I can help people,\u201d she says, observing that, \u201clots of the patients of my age come there.\u201d She works part-time, appreciating the flexibility of having more time to spend with her husband, with whom she celebrated\u00a050 years of marriage<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0on Oct. 5, and to work out, walk her black lab and watch her seven grandchildren grow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coincidentally, another half-century celebration occurred in October \u2013 the Sacred Heart Hospital School of Nursing Homecoming \u2013 where Benulis joined some of the surviving alums from her nursing school class on Oct. 19 for a reunion dinner at the Lehigh Valley Hotel, in Bethlehem, marking\u00a050 years since graduation in 1974<\/u><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree of our graduating class are still working,\u201d she noted, adding that 41 of the original 48 graduates are still alive.<\/p>\n

With five decades of experiences, wisdom and memories as a nurse to reflect on, Benulis says she would do it all again at St. Luke\u2019s Miners Campus. And she would encourage graduate nurses to blaze their own paths in the profession that she has served and that has served her so well, in return.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a nurse, you can get experiences in many different areas, treating patients with different diseases,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can work five years or 50 years, and it will be challenging but also very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Luke\u2019s Miners Campus Timeline<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1910 \u2013 Founded as Panther Creek Valley Hospital<\/p>\n

1919 \u2013 Hospital transferred to state control<\/p>\n

1973 \u2013 New hospital building dedicated<\/p>\n

2000 \u2013 Miners Memorial Medical Center joins St. Luke\u2019s and becomes St. Luke’s Miners Campus<\/p>\n

About St. Luke\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founded in 1872,\u00a0St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites.\u00a0 With annual net revenue of $3.4 billion, the Network\u2019s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke\u2019s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke\u2019s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.\u00a0 In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only four-year medical school campus.\u00a0 It also operates the nation\u2019s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 52 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 500 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke\u2019s, a member of the Children\u2019s Hospital Association, opened the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.<\/p>\n

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare\u2019s\u00a0five-star<\/em>\u00a0ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.\u00a0 It is both a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades\u00a0Top Hospital<\/em>\u00a0and a Newsweek World\u2019s\u00a0Best Hospital<\/em>.\u00a0 The Network\u2019s flagship University Hospital has earned the\u00a0100 Top Major Teaching Hospital<\/em>\u00a0designation from Fortune\/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in 2023 when it was identified as THE #4 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.\u00a0 In 2021, St. Luke\u2019s was identified as one of the\u00a015 Top Health Systems<\/em>\u00a0nationally.\u00a0 Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the\u00a0Most Wired<\/em>\u00a0award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN\u2019s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information. \u00a0The Network is also recognized as one of the state\u2019s lowest-cost providers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nSam Kennedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The nurse is celebrating three 50-year milestones.\u00a0 On January 6, 2025, Betty Benulis, RN, will celebrate\u00a0a half-century of employment at St. Luke\u2019s Miners Campus, a milestone that no other employee … Continue reading St. Luke\u2019s Miners\u2019 Longest Serving Employee on Record<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley","category-press-release-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Betty-Benulis.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/138134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}