Podcast | Episode 20: Helen’s House with Ken Rudd

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Podcast Transcript

Tracy Davis:
Welcome to the Brooks Rehabilitation Podcast. My name is Tracy Davis. This is actually episode number 20 and I am happy to have on Ken Rudd, who is the manager of Helen’s House. If you don’t know what Helen’s House is you’re about to find out. It’s one of the most special things that we have here at Brooks and it helps a lot of people out so I’m excited for you to hear it. Before we get into the episode don’t forget to go to Brooks rehab.org to find out more about all the amazing things that we have going on throughout our entire system at Brooks Rehabilitation, including Helen’s House. And also check us out on social media. Just look for @Brooksrehab on all of the platforms. We have a TikTok now that’s a new thing for us here at Brooks so we’ve got that. We’ve got Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook so just check us out and we look forward to connecting with you on social media. With that let’s get right into the episode with Ken Rudd manager of Helen’s House.

Tracy Davis:
Ken, thanks for coming on the Brooks Rehabilitation podcast. Before we get too far into it I want to hear a little bit about your backstory as well but let’s let people know who don’t know what Helen’s House is. What is Helen’s House?

Ken Rudd:
Helen’s House is Brooks Rehabilitation answer to Ronald McDonald House, Gabriel House, The Hope House and the Fisher House, which is the VA’s version of a Ronald McDonald House. All of them are based on that model. It’s designed to take people that might be in the area that are getting medical care, that would have to pay a lot of money to stay in a hotel or a motel and gives them a break. It’s subsidized hospitality housing but it becomes more than that. It really becomes friends and family and networking and culture of care that Brooks is. It gets into so much more than just a nice hot shower and a cool set of sheets and a good bed.

Tracy Davis:
Exactly. And I’ll ask you… We’ll get into a little bit more about who Helen is in a second but let’s go back to you. How did you start your career in healthcare?

Ken Rudd:
Oh goodness. That would be 1977, got out of college or got out of high school. Got out of high school and went offshore and worked on a drilling rig for a while and decided I didn’t want to be a roughneck or a roust about. There was things going on, Vietnam war was coming to a close and decided I wanted to go into the Navy, went in the Navy, wanted to learn a trade. I thought I was going to be a nuclear engineer on a submarine. They said, “No, you scored pretty high in the medical stuff.” And so ended up being a hospitalman or a corpsman in the Navy. And then after a while I had the opportunity to switch over to be with the Marines, the field medical force. And so I challenged that exam, which was both written and physical and passed it and became a Marine corpsman.

Tracy Davis:
Does that mean… Does that make you a Marine?

Ken Rudd:
I was a Marine. I was as a Marine as you can but the funny thing about that is I got to defend my Navy brethren. The Navy owns the Marines.

Tracy Davis:
Right, right. Okay. Right. Yeah. I was just thinking with basic training and that kind of stuff. Did you have to go through that for Marines too or no?

Ken Rudd:
Nope. We don’t have to go through camp Lejeune. Went to Great Lakes Naval Training Center and then San Diego to Miramar Naval Training Center, which is actually marine base and finished up the training. And it was interesting, there was no war going on at that time so my first duty station was Corona Island in San Diego and then Oceanside in San Diego basically. And before I knew what I was time to get out or re-up and I got out. I spent my entire Navy career after school in Southern California.

Tracy Davis:
It’d be hard to leave Southern San Diego. I love San Diego.

Ken Rudd:
Tough duty. Beautiful place.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t been to Corona but I’ve seen it from across the way.

Ken Rudd:
The Coronado bridge is a trip because you get to see the whole Embarcadero and the Harbor and San Diego’s just beautiful. They have signs everywhere that tell you, “This is one of America’s most beautiful cities.” And last time I was there, it still was.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah, absolutely. You pay the weather tax there though, that’s the problem.

Ken Rudd:
That’s putting it mildly.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Yeah. I love every time I’ve been there though it’s always like, “If you want to wear a hoodie, you can, if you don’t want to you’re still okay.” It’s like perfect every time I’m there.

Ken Rudd:
The weather’s awesome.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Well that’s awesome I didn’t know that. Then how did you get into Brooks?

Ken Rudd:
Oh, that’s another wonderful story. Got out of the Navy, family owned and electrical contracting company went to work as an electrical contractor for a number of years, sold that business. Some friends of mine worked for Hanger, orthotics and prosthetics. They invited me to come by and said, “Hey, what are you going to do? You were a corpsman now you were a mechanic, an electrician. What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t have a clue.” And they said, “Come spend a month with us and let us show you how you can combine all your medical training and all your biomechanical training and all your knowledge of engineering into something.” And so I became a prosthetic tech and then a Pedorthist and then challenged the Orthotist license and did that for Hanger for a number of years over in Fort Walton Beach so…

Tracy Davis:
They’re here too aren’t they?

Ken Rudd:
They’re everywhere.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Because I was going to say I’ve gone to Hangar to do photography for something at some point.

Ken Rudd:
If you can’t find someplace Hangar isn’t yet, if you find someplace they’re not, they’ll be there next week. Their goal is to be global and they do a good job and they’re very philanthropy oriented, they’re very community oriented so it lit a spark in me in doing things in the neighborhood and things for others, not just at work or not for getting paid but that philanthropy, that community involvement. I was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006.

Tracy Davis:
Really?

Ken Rudd:
Yes. And so at that time I could no longer fulfill my contract with Hangar and they let me go with an option to rehire. At that time Mike Harris, who’s now the Traumatologist next door at Memorial Hospital was the Chief Traumatologist downtown at Shans. And Mike says to me, “What are you going to do?” And I said, “I think I’m going to get back into nursing.” And so when I got done with cancer, that was what I did for me.

Ken Rudd:
I got back into nursing and actually got hired at UF&Chans. Was able to re-up another couple of licenses, surgical tech, surgical first assist and my LPN license, which that as a military nurse that’s all that translates is an LPN. And I still had to take some classes at FSCJ to be able to sit for NCLEX. When all that was done and cancer was behind us, I went to work at UF&Chans in the bone and joint center with Dr. HUD Berry. When Dr. HUD Barry retired, he called Dr. Weiss and said, “I’m retiring. I don’t have a job here at UF for my floor nurse, my surgical nurse. What would you like to help me do with him? Would you guys be interested in taking him in over at Brooks?” And Dr. Weiss very graciously met with me, introduced me to Lenny Pascone and to Melissa Douglas and they had me go downstairs and talk to Chandra and…

Tracy Davis:
In HR?

Ken Rudd:
In HR and there was no jobs available in nursing. Can you imagine that? We had no openings in nursing and so…

Tracy Davis:
Different times.

Ken Rudd:
Yeah. Amen. Chandra says, “Listen, I have an opening as a therapy tech, you qualify for that. Would you be interested in it? It’s PRN. Granted it doesn’t pay what a nurse does but it’ll help you get your foot in the door.” I did that for about 90 days and got caught up on all my honey dos around the house and was on the floor one day and Melissa Douglas said, “Aren’t you a nurse?” And I said, “Yes ma’am.” She said, “We just had three call outs. Are you ready for a nursing position?” Isn’t that crazy? And Melissa and Lenny both helped me get in the door.

Tracy Davis:
And what time, what year was this?

Ken Rudd:
This was 2011.

Tracy Davis:
Oh wow, that long ago. Okay.

Ken Rudd:
Well what’s that 13 years?

Tracy Davis:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Ken Rudd:
13 years ago. And so I trans… And the 90 days that I spent as a therapy tech was great. I think hint, hint, Joanne, all nurses should spend 30 days with all the therapist. The things that I learned about transferring patients and precautions and using things like a Sit to Stand Hoyer and just learning the Brooks culture from seeing it every day was huge. When I hit the floor as a new floor nurse, I should have taken 10 or 12 weeks of being precepted. And instead within six weeks, Lenny was giving me a full caseload of six patients on the spinal cord floor so that was huge. And then Brian Murphy are now Vice President of the Bartram Hospital was the nurse that precepted me on the fourth floor. Yeah he and Gary Barroso.

Tracy Davis:
Wow. Wow. That’s awesome. I guess I didn’t realize actually I think that was 11 years ago. I can’t believe how… I didn’t realize you’ve been here that long.

Ken Rudd:
Yeah, 11 years, whatever your two… 11 from 22 would be 11.

Tracy Davis:
I’m not good at math.

Ken Rudd:
Let me look on the back of my badge. Yep 11 years.

Tracy Davis:
Is that what it says? Yep. Wow that’s amazing. Okay. Now let’s get into Helen’s House. Before we get into how you got into Helen’s House, Helen’s House came about as a crowdsourcing project at Brooks. We’ve talked about on the Podcast a few times, crowdsourcing is where any employee can come, we have an event at our leadership conference every other year. Leading up to that leadership conference they put it out that anybody that has an idea pitch it. And then they choose it’s usually somewhere around seven or something like that and they get to come and pitch it to all of the leadership of Brooks at this event. And then usually two or three are chosen. And Helen’s House was when?

Ken Rudd:
Submitted in 2015, opened in October of 2017. And along the lines of your Podcast plug, the first year that they had it, I put in a suggestion that they standardize all the furniture in the rooms and come up with a way to either turn off the lights which now if you look in all the Brooks buildings, we have motion sensors that turn the lights off and won that year as one of many who won a smaller acknowledgement or cash prize. But there’s money to be had for coming up with great ideas so don’t be afraid to put something in the box, even if it sounds crazy. I put in standardizing the room furniture and coming up with a way to turn the lights off.

Tracy Davis:
You never know what gets moved around. “Hey, that’s a good idea.” Even some of them that don’t win the crowdsourcing, the idea still gets used in some way.

Ken Rudd:
They still embrace it yeah.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. And so people know too, the crowdsourcing, they get money, not for their pockets but for them to then seek that idea out further, whether that’s go travel to other places around the country to see how they’re doing it, like the Aphasia Center I know they did that whenever they won. You get to use that money however, to help you see the idea through. And then some of them, whether it’s a program that wins or it’s an actual physical building that has to be land cleared out in a building constructed like Helen’s House. I guess I didn’t realize it was already 2017 since that’s been around.

Ken Rudd:
Yeah. Yep. October 2017 is when they cut the ribbon.

Tracy Davis:
When did you start getting involved at Helen’s House? When did you move over from the hospital over there?

Ken Rudd:
Well, I got involved in Helen’s House even as a nurse on two east, as we watched it being constructed and asked what is it? And we heard that it was a place basically where family members that were just stressed out could go and have a nice bed and a nice hot shower and get a break. And especially when you’re dealing with BI patients, traumatic brain injury patients where the families been in the hospital for 30, 45 days, they need a break. As soon as it opened, I started sending people over there and went over and took a tour. And it was interesting, I jokingly said to myself on the way out the door one day, if the manager’s job ever comes up over here I’m going to apply. And literally just was talking smack.

Tracy Davis:
I said that whenever I used to work at Healthcare Plaza about this corporate building.

Ken Rudd:
Same thing.

Tracy Davis:
I’ve been working in the corporate building for 10 years.

Ken Rudd:
Because Brooks is amazing, it has an attraction. Dr. Noe approached me one day and he said, “We’re looking for a manager for Helen’s House.” And I said, “Well, really? I didn’t know.” I lied a little bit. I had seen the position but it was just interesting that he said that and I started going around and asking all of my managers, “Hey, I’m curious, do you think this would be a good fit for me?” And I went and sat in Karen’s office and said, “Hey, do you think this would be a good fit for me? I’ve never been a manager before. I manage my household and I know how to manage my patients.” And she said, “Well, based on that if you take all the things that you’ve displayed since you came to work at Brooks and everything that we’ve taught you, yes I believe you could manage Helen’s House and we’ll set you up with all the tools you need to do it.” Everybody that’s in our leadership at one point or another came and said, “Hey, so we hear you’re going to do this. Please make sure you do this or do that.” Dr. Noe said, “Build a bridge, build a bridge from that side of the street to this side of the street because the people that were managing it previously, there was no connection between the two sides of the street.” And so…

Tracy Davis:
Not a physical bridge but a…

Ken Rudd:
Spiritual of [inaudible 00:13:09] a cultural bridge.

Tracy Davis:
A communication and…

Ken Rudd:
They felt like that was one of the biggest attributes I had was that I knew… Not everybody. I knew a lot of people on this side. I worked as a float nurse for almost a year so I worked with every nurse manager on every program. I worked with all the therapists.

Tracy Davis:
You’re the perfect liaison between this campus and right across the street.

Ken Rudd:
Apparently so and up until I keep asking Victor, “Victor, am I doing okay?” And he says, “I’ll let you know when there’s a problem.”

Tracy Davis:
I guess that’s a good answer.

Ken Rudd:
It’s a good answer. And Melissa told me the job was mine to lose so I’m not going to do anything to lose it.

Tracy Davis:
Well, that’s awesome.

Ken Rudd:
It’s a pleasure. It’s a great place.

Tracy Davis:
Let’s talk a little bit about the day to day over there. Like you said, we’re having people, families come over there and stay that are mostly not from Jacksonville or some of them just made… Because Jacksonville’s huge so even if you live in Jacksonville, some people that’s an hour drive still for them.

Ken Rudd:
In the job description… Not the job description. In the description of what the building was designed for, it was designed to help people who live outside the five county area who were either having family members in the hospital or were in a therapy program at Brooks Rehabilitation on the university campus, that was the goal. And initially it was very short term because we followed in the Gabriel House tradition. They let people stay a maximum of 30 days and then they extended it to 45 and then 60 and then they were 90 and now they’re 120. That’s pretty much where we land we’re at 90 to 120 but I’ll simply say at this point in the conversation that Helen’s House hates to say no and if there’s a reasonable reason to stretch the boundaries of what the house was designed for, we always try to do it.

Tracy Davis:
Things aren’t so hard and fast whenever things make… It’s using common sense for…

Ken Rudd:
Its Brooks [inaudible 00:15:04]. It’s the land of yes, it’s the land of let’s see what we can do. And I only say that to mention that we had one young lady from Austria that was staying with us when COVID hit.

Tracy Davis:
I Remember her.

Ken Rudd:
Susan stayed with us almost two years because she could not go home. They wouldn’t let her back in. When COVID hit, we dropped it down to a census of five rooms and filled it up, cautiously on the backside. And since that time, because we’ve had greater flexibility, we haven’t been slammed full all the time. If somebody was in a program and their therapist felt like they would benefit from another 30 days, we’d extend them another 30 days. And if at the end of that one, their therapist or their doctor called me and said, “We need them to stay another 30 days, can we do that?” We would say yes.

Tracy Davis:
Where it makes sense that’s great.

Ken Rudd:
If it makes sense for Brooks and the patient, then we’re flexible but typically the rule is 90 to 120 days.

Tracy Davis:
And correct me if I’m wrong, is not everybody that’s over there is necessarily coming right here to this campus or some of them go into other parts of Brooks as well?

Ken Rudd:
Yeah. That’s interesting. When I got over there the bus ran twice a day. It ran once in the morning to bring people over and once in the afternoon to pick them up and take them back.

Tracy Davis:
And so people know it’s [inaudible 00:16:12] across from beach Boulevard here in Jacksonville, which is a very busy street so that you don’t want people to be commuting themselves so we have a part of Helen’s House as a bus that will transport people.

Ken Rudd:
Yeah. It’s close enough Tracy could throw me a football right across beach Boulevard. I’d probably drop it but you could throw it.

Ken Rudd:
Anyway. It was interesting how it all evolved. Yeah, we were running once a day we had about 13 families that were staying there. As it started to grow and people started going to different locations we had to hire a bus driver and then we had to have an afternoon bus driver. And then when COVID hit Bubba who’s with adaptive sports now all of a sudden we got two buses and two bus drivers that were hauling people around. To answer your question, depending on what they’re in, they could come here and start at the hospital straight from an acute care hospital into let’s say the fourth floor, spinal cord injury.

Tracy Davis:
I think that’s a lot of people’s first idea is as the, who is staying at Helen’s House but…

Ken Rudd:
Well, it’s TBI traumatic brain injuries, brain injuries and spinal cord injuries is the majority. But we also have people that are stroke oriented as Brooks has expanded its outpatient programs, the census and the population at Helen’s House has grown. We started out bringing people just to the NRC and then we were taking people to the NRC and the Healthcare Plaza and then somebody-

Tracy Davis:
Healthcare Plazas is just a mile down the road from our university hospital.

Ken Rudd:
Gotcha. Yep on the other side of Memorial Hospital. I’m sorry, I forget I shouldn’t use all these acronyms and…

Tracy Davis:
Well, no, you’re fine. I’m just trying to talk on behalf of the audience too because I think we have a lot of employees that listen but not all employees work here on this campus too so…

Ken Rudd:
Gotcha.

Tracy Davis:
That’s good though.

Ken Rudd:
The only place so far that we haven’t been able to figure out how to do is it would take a full hour to make a round trip to Bartram Hospital.

Tracy Davis:
Oh yeah.

Ken Rudd:
That one we’re going to have to scratch our heads on for a little bit but we’re going to end up doing something for those people also.

Tracy Davis:
Sure.

Ken Rudd:
But anyway, so as people would go into the Spinal Cord Injury Day Treatment Program with Bob MacGyver and Cyberdyne, there’re downstairs in the first floor of the hospital and what’s referred to as the Neuro Recovery center. And they say, “Well, your time’s up here, your six weeks, your 12 weeks. But we have another program we really feel like you would benefit from down at the Healthcare Plaza because this person was a traumatic spinal cord injury and a brain injury.” And so now we’re taking them down there for 45 days with Dr. Addio and the Brooks Behavioral Medicine team. Now you’ve got somebody that their family stayed at Helen’s House 30 days. They’ve been there now for 60 to 90 days and they’re going to be there for another 30 days so that’s how that length of stay grows because there’s things that they can get right here at 6207 Beach Boulevard or at 6500, whatever the hospital does but they can’t get it anywhere else.

Tracy Davis:
Well, that’s what I was thinking. As you were saying all that is that it makes sense for Helen’s House to be flexible and all these length of stay and stuff like that because Brooks offer so many things that maybe they start off on one thing and now all of a sudden they’re at another part of Brooks and they still need to stay so it makes sense.

Ken Rudd:
Absolutely. We had, and this is not one person that’s the only one that happened to but we have a young man that’s staying with us right now. He was a student at university of Florida. He stepped out onto the road, got hit by a car, did a flip, went over the car, landed, broke multiple bones and ended up with a traumatic brain injury. Prognosis was not great. Family was even told at one point that he might not make it.

Ken Rudd:
He came to Brooks, he spent 45 days in the hospital. His family stayed at Helen’s House while he was over here. Two sisters, a mom and a dad traded shifts. Somebody was with him 24 hours a day. Young man got better, healed was discharged to the outpatient therapy program, stayed with us 60 days. At the end of the 60 days, they felt like he needed some Brooks Behavioral medicine, stayed another 30 days. At the end of that he went home for 30 days and came back because he was contacted by the Brooks clubhouse, who felt like that a lot of the problems he was having reintegrating back into the workforce and school and society that all that could be overcome so he came back, stayed another 60 days. He went home, stayed 60 days and recently came back. He’s back at the clubhouse and at the healthcare Plaza and he signed up for classes at the same college he was in before doing it all online, is now driving, is autonomous.

Tracy Davis:
It’s amazing.

Ken Rudd:
And probably in 60 days when he leaves Helen’s House this time, he’ll go to an apartment here in Jacksonville. He’s already signed a lease and he’s gone from circle to families your son’s probably not going to make it to aside from walking with a little bit of a limp, he’s back autonomous, independent doing his thing.

Tracy Davis:
That’s an amazing story. And try and help us all understand what it means to have a place to stay like that is so close to the place where you’re getting care and trying to think of the mindset of a family member who’s now trying to take care of whoever our Brooks patient is their loved one and get them ready to come to work to Brooks for their therapy appointment. Maybe they have to drive 30 minutes an hour, two hours or whatever to get here but they can just stay right across the street. What does that change for people?

Ken Rudd:
It’s huge. And I’m going to use real life experiences of families that are currently staying there, without names obviously. One of them told me the other day that when they were driving back and forth, just from the other side of St. Augustine, just outside of St. John’s county…

Tracy Davis:
45 minutes.

Ken Rudd:
Like Palm coast.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay an hour.

Ken Rudd:
Yeah. They were driving an hour that by the time her husband got here, he was so tired and exhausted that he couldn’t participate in therapy and he was so agitated that he wouldn’t participate in therapy. And so they asked, they had stayed there before and we said, “Okay, you stayed there before you were good for the house, the house was good for you. Let’s get a new referral, come on back. All of a sudden he’s in therapy they’re looking at new things to help him with cyber dine day treatment program is for sci is now at healthcare Plaza so he’s both at the hospital and the healthcare Plaza and other people at the dinner table one night in conversation, asked, they ask somebody else that’s staying there. The person we spoke of earlier, the young man that is doing so great, why do you go to the clubhouse every day?

Ken Rudd:
Well, I’m taking this class and this class. And so they called Kathy Martin and now they’re going to the clubhouse. And they noticed that he had some issues with aphasia so they got in touch with the BRAC folks and now he’s going to the aphasia program. There’s just so many things in Jacksonville that don’t exist other places or maybe they just don’t have the success rate that we do.

Ken Rudd:
And so it’s life changing, life saving for the people that are able to come and stay here. When we talk to them sometimes, and I’ve had to go to Victor a couple times with this, we’ve had people that their time was up and some of them, we have to say, “Well, you really can get what we can do for you other places now because we’ve gotten you advanced.” And so those people we progress and we hold them to the limits. But we’ve had people that another 30 days wasn’t going to hurt us but it was going to be the world for them because otherwise they’d have to go find a hotel, a motel or an apartment and between inflation, lack of availability of housing, lack of hotels and motels, it would’ve made it undoable. It would’ve been a hard no, this can’t be done. And yet with us providing them a place to stay, it’s a hard yes. And they get to stay at Brooks and it just becomes a very… They’re so relieved.

Tracy Davis:
And the community that they get over there with other people that are dealing with somewhat similar situations and the environment that you guys create over there, the O of just the welcoming environment. Hotels, some hotels do okay with that but most of the time you’re just a hotel. But what you guys over there are doing is catering specifically to what these people need and you’re taking it only on a case by case basis.

Ken Rudd:
No, we are.

Tracy Davis:
Its a lot to say for that too.

Ken Rudd:
That’s a lot of what you brought out when the team over there won the celebrate the stars award. Is that everybody there, nobody sticks to the script unless it’s appropriate to stick to the script. If you’re dealing with someone who’s having a bad day and they’re having some of the worst days they’ve ever had, we call a timeout and we do whatever’s best for them. Do you want to go get an app? Do you want me to just give you the key to the room and let you check in, you can come back in the morning and pay for the week-

Tracy Davis:
Instead of saying, “No, no, you can’t do anything you got to sign these papers right now. We got to go do this, this and this guys. Some places might do something like that but you guys are…

Ken Rudd:
Lots of places do that.

Tracy Davis:
It is obvious that these people that have had a long day and they need to just go rest.

Ken Rudd:
Well. And our nursing leadership at Brooks, and maybe that’s where I learned a lot of this is it was driven into our heads. You never put patients behind paperwork. You never put paperwork first and then your patients. Yes we all have to chart and do what we got to do to get out of the building but patients come first. If somebody came up with a nursing station and said, “Hey, can I get a pitcher of ice?” I would get up and go get him a picture of ice. That same principle, that same theory and we’re blessed because we have people that work at Helen’s House that also work in the hospital. Robin used to be a dietary aid over here. Cody [inaudible 00:25:42] is a PTA. The same level of wow that’s expected at the hospital, all these employees bring to Helen’s House.

Tracy Davis:
That’s great.

Ken Rudd:
And they do it because they want to, they love it. I think I mentioned that working with them is like working with a bunch of excited kids on Christmas morning.

Tracy Davis:
You said that in a video.

Ken Rudd:
They love to come to work. They love to come and see who are we going to take care of today? What are we going to do? The… I’ll show you sometime when you come over to Tracy. In the filing cabinet, we’ve saved all the checkout critiques from all the patients that have stayed there for the past three and a half years and it’s amazing. And all of them give us tens and 11 and they tell stories and they assign cards and we have plaques on the walls that were authored by different people who stayed there, expressing their appreciation for what Dr. Brown and Helen saw the foresight in doing, having something like Ronald McDonald house, I think is what the occupational therapist that put in the suggestion in the crowdsourcing box called it. Why don’t we have something like that? And we do.

Tracy Davis:
And I ashamed that we got this far without talking about Helen. Can you tell us a little bit about why is it named Helen’s House?

Ken Rudd:
Well, roughly the story that I heard is when they were discussing what the name should be, someone just said, “Well, no, we really need to call it Helen’s House because Helen had this huge reputation, not just in the Jacksonville area, she was involved in her church and her church had lots of outreach programs and hospitality was what she led with more than philanthropy or more than community involvement. She led with hospitality. And I had the privilege of taking care of her. She was on three east in the room that’s right across from the nurses’ station and [inaudible 00:27:28] Brady and I would take care of her. And in the evenings she wanted to talk and so one of us would go in and talk to her and she asked both of us one night, “Do y’all know the meaning of the word or the definition of the word hospitality?”

Ken Rudd:
And I said, “I think I do roughly ma’am but please tell me.” And she said, “It means love of strangers.” She said it’s a Greek word. And my husband loved hospitality and loved entertaining and taking care of people. And then you find out that Dr. Brown and Helen traveled at least all over the Caribbean, if you will. If something happened in Haiti or The Bahamas or Jamaica or one of those islands that they could take a medical crew and go down there and look after the injured people they would do it.

Ken Rudd:
And Helen went with him and much of the artwork that hangs on the walls at Helen’s House is watercolor paintings that she painted while she was with him on these medical missions. And sometimes they did them through their church sometimes they did them independent of that.

Tracy Davis:
That’s awesome.

Ken Rudd:
But it’s just an amazing history that they have. This woman… It’s one thing to say, I love hospitality, Tracy, I’m going to have you over next week. Yeah. I’m going to cook some ribs. I didn’t fly to another country and invite people to come back to Jacksonville to the hospital and the rehabilitation facility that Dr. Brown started and represent. And doctors from UF&Chans, Dr. Berry used to get on the plane and fly with him to Haiti so I knew about this reputation that Brooks had for doing these things. And when you hear about it and you realize what’s involved, it’s just amazing.

Tracy Davis:
And we should say, just in case we didn’t connect that it’s Helen is Dr. Brown, the founder of Brooks’ wife.

Ken Rudd:
Amen. And I apologize if I didn’t say that.

Tracy Davis:
No, I can’t remember if either of us said it but just so that we’re clear on that. And like you said, I’ve always… I never had the pleasure of meeting either of them but her reputation was always that they was hospitality was everything so having it called Helen’s House just makes perfect sense.

Ken Rudd:
That’s the story I heard. I like it so that’s the one I’m sticking with. If anybody else knows a different story, please send me an email.

Tracy Davis:
That’s a great story. No, that’s a great story. And everything seems to just fit. I didn’t know that you had taken care of her too so that’s…

Ken Rudd:
Well not just me alone. Dr. Weiss, I believe was her attending at that.

Tracy Davis:
That’s another connection there for you to be over there. It’s such another part of your bridge over to across the street.

Ken Rudd:
I like it.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. That’s amazing. Well, as we’re wrapping up here, is there anything else that you want people to know about Helen’s house? I’m sure maybe some people are trying to figure out how they can stay at Helen’s house or whatever that. What are the stipulations and stuff like that?

Ken Rudd:
Anyone that’s out there that is coming to Brooks that needs to stay at Helen’s House can get in touch with their physician, their nurse, their case manager, the secretary, the unit secretary on the unit that you’re on, your nurse liaison. That’s where the majority of our referrals come from is our go team, wonderful group of people that facilitate helping people get to Brooks. They’ll send us a referral. We’ll contact you, we’ll go over the house and make sure it’s a good fit for you and explain what we have available and when we can have you come and we’ll get you in.

Tracy Davis:
And it’s for patients that are in the Brooks system, it’s not just anybody that wants to call you guys and say, they need a room. Its for Brooks patients.

Ken Rudd:
Its for Brooks patients. There are some exceptions to that but 99.9% patients we’ve had patients that were coming from other, from Baptist or from sure from Mayo and maybe they’re not quite ready to transfer the patient yet, have your nurse liaison send us a referral when it’s time, we’ll call you we’ll get you in.

Tracy Davis:
The statistic that has got to be out there in some way of how many people have become a Brook’s patient because Helen’s House exists. If Helen’s House wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have had a way to come to Brooks or for whatever reason.

Ken Rudd:
I imagine Dr. Mark could tell us exactly the geo nurse liaison team.

Tracy Davis:
I bet they can.

Ken Rudd:
How many people came here that if we hadn’t had that or Josh [inaudible 00:31:18] with the workman’s comp team because we take care of those folks when they come, their families stay at Helen’s House.

Tracy Davis:
Yeah. That’s amazing. I just thought of that while we were talking. It’s another avenue of helping people out so that they can get our services.

Ken Rudd:
Yep.

Tracy Davis:
Well, that’s amazing. Thank you so much. I learned a lot more. I thought I knew everything about Helen’s House but I definitely learned some more and learned more about you so thanks for coming onto the Podcast.

Ken Rudd:
My pleasure. Thanks for having all the other people. I started listening to them, like I told you, and it’s some good information on there. You learn some things you didn’t know even if you thought you did.

Tracy Davis:
And your episode 20 so this is running my even number. Thank you.

Ken Rudd:
Thanks.