Sr Joycie, as she is affectionately known, retired on 31st August 2005 from her position as Assistant Director & Zonal Matron at Port Elizabeth’s Dora Nginza Hospital, where her speciality, amongst other things, was staff development. Her bubbly disposition and attention to detail ensured enthusiastic training and effective mentorship of her subordinates, an abundant skill which she was destined to bring to Hospice in the years ahead.
After a ‘gap year’, she joined St Francis Hospice as a Locum Home Care Sister to assist when permanent incumbents were on leave or otherwise indisposed.18 months later she earned the nod to a full time position which she held with distinction until her second retirement at the end of 2010. However, there was no way she was ready to ‘lie down’ and again, in early 2011, returned to locum and subsequently, in June 2012, as a part-time professional. When the financial crisis at Hospice first nibbled in June 2013, she was unfortunately amongst those in the initial group of retrenchees.
However, again, ‘one cannot keep an old dog down’ and in 2014 she answered the call to coordinate the nine staff who make up the USAID-funded MDRTB Project, a task she carries out with seemingly limitless energy, excellent people-management skills and meticulous commitment to the tasks at hand. The smile on her face hardly ever fades, but her team knows that she is also not one with which to tango if performance & outcomes are not up to the mark!!
Joyce is an active member of the Presbyterian Church and has attended world alliances in Australia, Lesotho & Kenya. She enjoys classical & religious music and regularly initiates and leads, with gusto, the singing at Hospice’s weekly prayer meetings and other gatherings.
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