Hospital Administrator, dedicated health- care worker, Lion, and counsellor

Leila Clarke- Daniels is a ‘Special Person’ | By Leon Suseran

Being a healthcare provider calls for a lot of patience, hard work and determination. Leila Clarke- Daniels has been in the health care system in Guyana for over 40 years and even though she spent much of her years seeing the system is managed and administered properly, she did, from time to time perform tasks and jobs that healthcare practitioners perform such as cooking and caring for patients in Berbice.

She has a pure love for the system and has been passionate about it from the very start, upon entering the New Amsterdam Hospital as an ordinary clerk. Little did she know that it was the beginning of a fruitful and rewarding career in the field of health, moving up the ranks as Hospital Administrator and then being recalled to Head the National Psychiatric Hospital after retiring a few years ago. Leila has a wealth of experience that she has garnered from decades of practice and shares some of this with us today on this journey of recollection and reminiscing.  
Born Leila Clarke at Trinity Street, New Amsterdam on the 12TH January, 1952, to Elvira and Harold Clarke, her parents had acquired a house at Savannah Park Housing Scheme in the outskirts of the town. She had attended the All Saints’ Anglican School. “When I entered Fourth Standard, the schools were taken over by the government and we were all transferred to the Vryman’s Erven Primary School, then I moved up and wrote the College of Preceptors Exam at that school where I acquired 5 subjects including English and Maths”, she said. She then moved on to the Victoria High School where she completed the General Certificate of Education (GCE). While awaiting the results for that exam, she entered the Victoria Commercial School “where I s

tarted doing the Commercial subjects…Shorthand was my favourite subject and at that time the principal was Ms Eileen Benons- King”. Being a gifted student, young Leila then quickly wrote one exam after another and even started working at the school where she taught Shorthand. A few months after in 1974, she entered the public healthcare system, where she would grow and nurture her professional career for the next few decades. She entered as an accounts clerk at the N/A Hospital (then located at Charles Place). She later moved on to furthering her education by doing a Management Programme at the Kuru Kuru Co-op College and another management course at the University of Guyana.
She was appointed Assistant Hospital Administrator in 1985 and later transferred to the National Psychiatric Hospital after which she then became Hospital Administrator at N/A Hospital in 1989. She retired in 2007 in that position and retired for 3 years. She was recalled and is currently serving as Administrator at the National Psychiatric Hospital.
“Those years were really, really challenging years. I could recall persons coming to the door and asking ‘Can I talk to the Administrator?’ and when they see the face of a woman, they are taken aback. They were shocked to know the Administrator was a woman. But, I would tell them that there are no differences. Women can also do the functions as a man, and even better than a man. I find that the staff that I managed, that they felt at ease to come to me at any time, usually I will tell them that my doors are always open, that they should free and at ease to come to me at any time and talk to me. I try to befriend them though I am not being very soft with them; I am firm, but you know, in a friendly way”, she asserted.
She remembered some of the challenges being Hospital Administrator; particularly a big General Strike in 1992 where she had to manage some of the hospital wards herself, around the clock. “At that time, most of the staff was out. We had to manage some of the wards ourselves. I remembered actually working for 24- hours during the day and just going home, freshen up and come back at nights so that we can make sure that the hospital had coverage”, she recalled.
She remembers “cooking for 3 days”. “Once at the Psychiatric Hospital, we had to prepare meals for 3 days for 220 patients because all the staff was out. I had to manage the kitchen. I    had to bring the patients out, manage the laundry, get their clothes washed and clean and so on, and after 3 days, I begged the staff, I said ‘Please do come back , I cannot do it any longer, it’s too much”, she reminisced.
“I loved working in the health services. As a young clerk, I can recall that were advised that we were into health and we were dealing with people’s lives and as such, we had to be very efficient in whatever we were doing”, she noted.
The health care provider is also a member of Damon in the USA, a global network that deals with mental health. She also became a member of the Lioness Club in 1991 New Amsterdam for over 20 years. At that time, it was the Lioness Club “because we were females and a little after, the female arm answered the conversion call, that there should not be any segregation, and that we should all be classified as Lions, so I was transferred to the Lions arm of the organization”. She then later served as president of the organization where she served as the Zone Chairperson of the Berbice area.
A staunch Anglican, Ms Clarke- Daniels has served for the People’s Warden for 6 years at the All Saints’ Anglican Church. Today, she dishes out a lot of advice to persons in need. “Some come for advice, for help, they bring their children, they ask me to talk to youths, to do counseling. You name it, I am there always reaching out to whoever need my help and assistance”.
She found her soul mate, Vincent, at age 24 whom she has been married to for 35 years. The marriage resulted in 3 children, Marlon, a teacher; Rhonda, a Medical Technologist at the Davis Memorial Hospital in GT; and the youngest, Andrew is a Seaman.
“We’re still together. We look back on our marriage on a daily basis and as it gets older, it is more enjoyable”, she noted. She advised young married couples to “trust and communicate with each other”. “I never listened to people telling me things about my husband. I never pay them any heed; I am a person who likes to find out for myself”, she noted. “We talk a lot to each other, and most of all, we have God in our lives”. They got married on July 1, 1976. “At that time I was a good looking young girl and I went to a dance at the Christian Men’s Club (CMC) at the BERMINE management centre and every month end they used to get dance, so a bunch of us girls used to get together and I met this young Prison Officer”, she said. Her husband was transferred to Mazaruni and this affected her family, but not until after she stepped in and asked her husband to look for another job “because these children need a father in the home, particularly my daughter, she was very close to her father and she used to be asking for him every day”. He did leave and became a hire car driver.  

Ms Clarke- Daniels enjoys giving her service currently at the country’s lone Psychiatric Hospital. She finds that working in health, that one’s job is never completed unless one works at the Psychiatric Hospital. “Working here, I find makes you a rounded person because its not just de

aling with persons with health issues, but with an additional mental health issue, and I find that I have a flare for mental health, a soft- spot for these patients because of the type of illness they suffer”, she posited. She loves it there because the work is easier there, ‘that you can manage the patients better maybe because of the type of illness they have”. Clarke- Daniels stated that she enjoys seeing patients rehabilitated and reintegrated into the Guyanese society and it is something she works tirelessly to see happen. “We have a therapy programme. We try to identify patients with strengths and weaknesses”, she said. They build on the strengths and are encouraged to see what the hospital can get them to work on. “There are number of skillful and educated patients here. These patients, we bring them out on a daily basis, we have them do a lot of arts and crafts, carpentry skills, leather craft, sewing, knitting, some even go to the laundry and assist with washing their clothing”, she noted. “This we feel will keep them occupied and let them know that when they leave here, they can go back into society and become useful individuals.
The Hospital Administrator said that it is quite sad that some families do not lend the quality of support they should give to their mentally- ill families. “Particularly the families, I would like to let them know that these patients are human beings and as any human beings need love, support, they need to know that someone cares for them”, she noted. How happy and responsive it would make a patient feel when a relative visits. “They should not leave the patients, abandon them”. “Relatives need to know that they need to be kept on their medications. We discharge and send them home and give them a parole, and then within 2-3 weeks, they are back. When you find out, the relatives did not keep up and maintain the medication”.
As for words of encouragement to young health care workers in the system today, Clarke- Daniels said that they do not only have to take up the job for the money part of it, “but there has to be a lot of caring, loving individual. They gotta love the job and it would cause them to have the dedication to the job, we know money is important, but you’ve got to love the job also and the people who you serve”, she noted.
Hoping to fully retire and leave the system one day, she is determined to leave some footprints and leave an impression behind for those to follow.
“I enjoy working with the Lions Club. It is like if my life blood is in the club. I enjoy reaching out to suffering humanity. I like to see a smile on people’s face, particularly children and I find that whenever you do a service, you see that smile”, she noted.  
Inaugural Speech as President of Lion’s Club (‘ 95)
Looking back over the years, you could have heard the sadness in her voice as she sat and reminisced about the saddest day of her life, the day she lost her best friend, her mother, Elvira. “It was on the 1ST July, 1995, I remembered the loss of my best friend, she was my best friend, my hero, the one who encouraged me a lot. I remembered her at nights. In those days, we suffered from a lot of blackouts; and like I remembered her with that lamp in the dark and encouraging us to study. If only she were alive…if only…she was my best friend”. Her father, a former boat- builder, is 90 years old and still alive today.
Her concerns for young people are about many of them using and abusing drugs. Her advice: “Live life one day at a time. Stay away from drugs; I am at an institution where I see them coming here on a daily basis. I see how destructive drugs can be to their lives and I am advising them to stay away. Pray daily to God and ask for his directions, ask that he give them the wisdom, understanding and patience, because some of them are into this thing [drug abuse] because they want quick money. Things will come their way, but they’ve got to talk to God. He doesn’t want big, fancy words, but always keep talking to him. Keep God in your life and things will work out.