Executive Session with Linda Lemon-Steiner

Executive Session with Linda Lemon-Steiner

Chief Operating Officer, Doctors Hospital of Sarasota

PERSONAL

Age: 52 (born on Christmas Day)

Family: Two daughters and one son and two grandchildren.

Hometown: Bangor, Mich.

Education: Bachelor's degree in health administration from Western Michigan University and a master's degree in public health from the University of South Florida.

HOW DO YOU ESCAPE: "I have traveled all over the world. I just came back from Europe. We went to Venice, Italy, and cruised the Adriatic and Aegean seas, and Turkey, Greece and then came back to Paris. My trip to Kenya was probably the most life changing. It was very moving and connecting to life. Also, this past year, I did two half-marathons, which I had never done before. This happened as a challenge around dinner one night with some friends last year. I completed my first half-marathon in January and my second half-marathon in New Orleans in February, finishing in the Superdome. I've thought a lot about that in the last two weeks. A picture I have coming across the finish line in the Superdome just really haunts me."

HOW DID YOU END UP IN FLORIDA: "My grandmother had five sisters. All of them married and migrated to Florida around or before their retirement because of the weather. I came to visit when I was 16, and in my travels down here to visit them, I really loved it. Around my 30th birthday, I figured out that I didn't have to stay in Michigan and put up with that awful weather. I was also, at the time, raising Arabian horses. Winters in Michigan when you are raising horses are very challenging - just trying to bust through the ice for them to able to have water. It's just not the most pleasant environment."

HOW DID YOU GET INTERESTED IN RAISING HORSES: "As a child, I became interested in horses. My parents thought it was a phase. When I was 9, my father made a deal with me about grades. I got dollars for A's and more dollars for being on the Honor Roll. That would double every grading period. I had him keep the money aside. By the end of the year, he owed me $150. At that time, $150 bought me my first horse. I actually bought my first horse (Bob) when I was 10. We built a barn and later on I built my own trailer and just got further and further into the business. Everything that I do, I do with a lot of passion."

PROFESSSIONAL

Time with company: Since 2001.

Positions previously held: "I was the chief nursing officer at Doctors Hospital for the last four-and-a-half years. I've been a chief nursing officer and/or a chief operating officer since 1987."

DID YOU START OFF AS A NURSE: "I started out as a nurse in 1973. When I started in the profession, I was primarily a critical-care nurse. I moved into management about a year out of nursing school, with not a lot of formal preparation."

How did you get into NURSING: "Back in those years, I had originally decided I would become an educator. I had a full scholarship to go to Central Michigan University, where I intended to earn a teaching degree. My plan was to earn a teaching degree and open an equestrian center. About six months before I was going to start school, I began thinking, 'I really love people, I really love biology and chemistry, the sciences.' I saw a nursing program and thought, 'I'm going to switch.' So about six months before I started college, I switched to nursing school and completed that at a community college. I then went back to school in 1979 and started my bachelor's degree in health administration at Western Michigan University.

"After I completed my bachelor's, I packed up my family and moved to Crystal River, about 90 miles north of Tampa. About a year later, I started my master's degree. A year later, I moved to Tampa with HCA to open the USF Psychiatry Center, which was my first venture into the psychiatric hospital side of the business. Seven months later, they asked me to take the chief nursing officer job. I started my first CNO job while I was still in school full time and had two preschoolers at home. It was a great adventure professionally, and I stayed there seven years.

COMPANY AND THE POSITION

IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES OF NEW POSITION: "To determine what can we do in each and every department in this hospital to make sure that patient care is optimized at the bedside. Also, doing my job to connect with the community through Doctors Hospital is going to be very important, as well as ensuring what is important to physicians in their responsibility to patients."

What's ahead: "I'm looking forward to several more years right here at this hospital and just ensuring our growth as the community grows that we're prepared with technology and with that human touch to take care of the community as it continues to grow and change."

- David Wexler