St. Joseph's Hospital-South's Jack Diemer Is BayCare's 2021 Transporter of the Year

Lorraine Sargent, BayCare’s East Region Imaging Director and director of the Transport Collaborative, explains the history behind the transporter awards. Imaging Services takes the lead on the awards since they do the bulk of the transporting.

“We realized how important transporters were to facilities,” Lorraine said. “They are the people every patient sees. They are the ones that bring them to places when they’re scared. They are the ones who calm their nerves. We felt they weren’t getting enough recognition for what they do.” 

At the Transporter of the Year presentation held at St. Joseph’s Hospital-South, Jack’s supervisor, Vikki O’Neal, St. Joseph’s Hospital-South’s Imaging Manager, noted that Jack has performed 18,263 transports since starting at the hospital in May 2017. Since then, he’s also averaged 3.42 transports per hour. Jack’s average of 3.42 transports per hour far exceeds the standard of 2.6 per hour. To illustrate the amount of walking a transporter does, consider this: Jack tracks his steps and he walks more than 18,000 steps, approximately 10 miles, in an average 12-hour shift. On some days, his steps have reached 20,000 to 22,000, the equivalent of a half-marathon, 13.1 miles. 

Statistics aside, both Lorraine and Vikki said it’s Jack’s  interpersonal skills that make him superlative. He has great interaction and engagement with patients and peers. 

“He does his job with love,” Lorraine said.

Jack is an outstanding trainer of new transporters. Jack’s trainees take on and develop his exemplary work ethic and habits. He’s so good at it that he travels to other BayCare hospitals to train.

“He’s an incredible mentor to new transporters,” Vikki said. “He takes a lot of pride in making sure they are doing things right.”

Vikki also noted that Jack has the important role at St. Joseph’s Hospital-South as the liaison between nursing and transport.