Nurse in white cap marks 50 years at Mon Valley Hospital
Susan Manges
Mon Valley Hospital nurse Susan Manges, of Monongahela, stands beside a photo of the old Monongahela Hospital, where she began her career 50 years ago.
MONONGAHELA – A résumé was not a prerequisite to finding a job after Susan Manges graduated from nursing school five decades ago.
An administrator at Monongahela Hospital called her into an office, asked her a few questions and told her to start working there the next day, said Manges, of Monongahela, who still wears the traditional white nurse’s cap to work every day. The job offer came two days after she graduated from Washington Hospital School of Nursing.
“Everything has changed,” Manges said.
She wears the white cap to honor her father, who died unexpectedly at age 48 before she graduated nursing school.
“He was very special to me,” said Manges, 71. “He was there for my capping six months into nursing school. My daughter buys me new caps online every Christmas.”
When she began her career, nurses had to be in the full uniform of a starched white dress and cap before they set foot in the hospital. Over the years, the rules were relaxed to the point many hospital caregivers now wear scrubs to work, she said.
The cap she still wears is helpful to patients in order for them to know the nurse from their assistants.
“The patients love it, absolutely love it,” said Manges, an oncology nurse at Mon Valley Hospital.
She has never worked as a nurse anywhere but Monongahela Hospital, which went on to merge in July 1972 with a hospital in Charleroi and become Monongahela Valley Hospital.
Her first job as a teen was as a tray girl at Monongahela Hospital, whose nursing club gave her a $250 scholarship to attend nursing school. If she was lucky as a tray girl, the hospital would ask her to work weekends and pay her $7 a day to wash pots and pans for the entire shift.
“The cost of schooling now is astounding,” Manges said, adding her balance due for her three years of nursing school was $200, which included the cost of books and housing.
“The first starting pay was terrible,” she said about the $305 a month she grossed her first year at Monongahela Hospital.
Her husband earned $1.25 an hour then working in construction. The two celebrated 50 years of marriage July 8, and, she said, she credits their partnership for allowing her to enjoy her career while they raised four children. Manges said she has no immediate plans for her retirement.
“We worked as a team working opposite shifts. If I had to work weekends, I’d pack them up and they went camping when the kids were even in diapers.”
Technology has added a lot of convenience to today’s nursing jobs, she said.
Physicians can monitor their patients’ progress off-site with computers, and mistakes in medications have been virtually eliminated through digital record-keeping.
“Before, if you needed a Tylenol, I just went and got one. Now it’s a procedure. To give you a pill I have to scan your bracelet.”
Manges is an outstanding asset who has made a difference in her career at Mon Valley, said Mary Lou Murt, the hospital’s senior vice president of nursing.
“Here is someone special who started when we had four-bed wards and now she is mentoring other nurses, and patients ask for her,” Murt said.