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Sanford respiratory therapist retires after 42 years on the job

Subhead
Julia Silvrance built the respiratory therapy department at local hospital
By
Lori Sorenson

When respiratory therapist Julia Silvrants began her career 42 years ago she was planning to be in Luverne for only a year.
She retired last week with a farewell gathering of Sanford colleagues who reflected fondly on the past several decades.
“Now who are we going to ask when we have questions?” said Sanford Registered Nurse Lois Leenderts, who gave Silvrants a big hug at the Jan. 23 retirement party.
Silvrants was 22 years old, fresh out of Sioux Valley Hospital’s School of Respiratory Therapy in 1977 when she began working that fall in the Luverne Community Hospital.
“I was going to stay for one year, but after a year when I told Dr. Sybesma I was leaving, he took his pipe out of his mouth and said, ‘Sit down and let’s talk about this,’” Silvrants recalled. “Every doctor I’d ask for a reference would talk me out of leaving.”
And so she stayed.
 
From the ground up
And the longer she stayed the more she learned … and the more she learned the better the respiratory therapy program became at the hospital.
In fact, she built the program in Luverne.
Her early employment was through Inhalation Therapy Services Inc., which contracted services to the Luverne hospital.
Silvrants soon recognized that Luverne could have its own respiratory therapy department.
“I said, ‘This is ridiculous. We can do this here.’”
She eventually built Luverne’s respiratory therapy department, which now has a staff of three, and then went on to repeat the process when the new hospital was built on the city’s north side.
“I never dreamed — No. 1, that I’d be here for 42 years, and No. 2, that would be involved in the process of building a new hospital,” Silvrants said.
She jokes that the radiology department got two feet of her respiratory therapy space after drawings were re-evaluated.
 
Educator at heart
Along the way, Silvrants increasingly took on leadership roles, implementing classes for basic life support, advanced cardiac life support, pediatric advanced life support and the neonatal resuscitation program.
Meanwhile, she was a faculty member for the American Heart Association.  She also volunteered on the Rock County Ambulance for many years.
It’s no surprise, then, that co-workers increasingly turned to her for support.
“Julia knows respiratory care; if you have a question about respiratory, you ask Julia and she knows,” said Leenderts, who worked with Silvrants for over 30 years.
“If Julia came, I knew we didn’t have anything to worry about.”
Leenderts and others at the Thursday gathering talked about the countless times they leaned on Silvrants’ knowledge and experience, whether it was suctioning an infant who struggled to breath, intubating a patient in distress or relieving an asthma attack.
“She was present for a lot of deliveries,” said Sheila Westfield, director of nursing at Sanford Luverne. “She helped everybody in all age groups.”
Silvrants admits teaching comes naturally for her and she’s grateful to have gained wisdom through experience. “Education, to me, has always been a big thing,” she said.
 
Making a difference
In her 42 years of work, Silvrants said she enjoyed helping patients and making a difference in people’s health.
“We can take people with a lot of breathing issues and lead them to do life better,” she said.
For example, she found satisfaction in helping people build strength for daily routines after chronic respiratory conditions had previously kept them sedentary.
She said one of her most challenging responsibilities was connecting patients to a ventilator.
“It always put my tummy in knots,” Silvrants said. “When you’re putting someone on a breathing machine, you’re in charge of their life … making sure to set things up for the best care of the patient.”
One of her worst professional experiences was in 1995 when Legionnaires disease broke out in Luverne.
“That was a nightmare,” Silvrants said.
The highly contagious pneumonia-like respiratory disease affected 24 people locally and attracted national attention with CDC response.
 
Smoking cessation, anti-vaping efforts continue
One of Silvrants’s greatest contributions to Sanford and the community was her work on smoking cessation programs and more recently with efforts to curb vaping addiction.
“When e-cigarettes first came out, I knew they were a bad idea,” Silvrants said. “Now vaping is rampant in schools.”
She’ll continue with these education efforts in the community after her retirement, as well as her support for Tracy Area Animal Rescue.
 “I’ll be glad to not be answering phones and having more time to myself,” she said. “I know I’m leaving my department in good hands … I work with some really wonderful people.”
Jana Lovrien will be the lead therapist in the respiratory department and said she had a good role model in Silvrants, whom she described as a good leader.
“Julia is dedicated, compassionate, generous and hardworking,” Lovrien said. “She is knowledgeable and a great resource for our whole hospital's staff. … She spends a lot of time getting to know our patients and spends time visiting with them and making them comfortable. I will miss her dearly as a manager and friend.”
Silvrants said Friday that she had mixed emotions about leaving. “I look forward to not coming in, but I’m really going to miss everyone here.”
Her last day of work at Sanford Luverne will be Feb. 2.

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