Gleaner Online: Adventist Health - Real People Serving Real People with Real Needs

Real People Serving Real People with Real Needs

You walk through the doors of the hospital’s imaging department filled with anxiety. You’re understandably worried about your tests, and what they might reveal. You need someone who understands your fears, someone who will carefully explain the procedures and offer some well-timed reassurance. At this stressful, difficult moment, one thing is virtually guaranteed: you’ll be glad to meet Clint Watson.

Clint has served as a Walla Walla General Hospital (WWGH) radiographer for four years. He is known and respected by patients and co-workers alike for his compassion, empathy and professionalism.

“When people come in to see me, their apprehension is extremely high,” he says. “It’s not my job to say everything will be fine, because sometimes it won’t be. But I can be a comforter and put them at ease for their exam.”

He might interact with upwards of 40 patients on any given day, and if anyone could be tempted to view them simply as faceless names on a never-ending appointment list, it would be Clint. But he says it’s the hospital mission that helps keep his work in constant focus.

“This isn’t an assembly line—these are real people with real needs,” he says. “I’m constantly asking myself, ‘Am I treating this person with respect? Am I trying to restore his physical, mental and spiritual well-being?’”

He sees Christ as the perfect example of selfless service, a source of inspiration upon which he’s built his entire life. “When I keep that in focus, everything else falls into place,” he says.

Clint credits that deep sense of spirituality to an experience he wouldn’t wish on anyone—eight months in Desert Storm. Undecided on a career path after high school, he chose to join the army, serving with the 82nd Airborne. More than four years later, he returned from active duty changed forever, and determined to renew his connection with Christ.

“When you take a walk on the dark side, you respect the light that much more,” he says. “The Lord definitely preserved me, and now there’s nothing that could shake me from my relationship with God. It means everything to me.”

Since then, he’s married Becky, his high school sweetheart, embarked on a radiography career, had two children—Sarah and Benjamin—and worked at four hospitals. But at WWGH he’s finally found a sense of purpose that truly intersects with his own.

“We’re actually living the mission here,” Clint says. “We aren’t looking at patients and thinking, ‘What are you bothering me for?’ We know they’re here because they’re sick or in pain, not to support our livelihoods. We’re here for them.”

Clint has a favorite phrase, one he often repeats to himself: “Be a servant to all, but serve only God.” It’s a motto that shapes his every interaction, every day. “My job is to help bring people to total health,” he says. “If I can just say the right things, or hold the right hand at the right time, I’m serving as Christ did—and living out the mission.”