“I work with great teams of people. It’s a very supportive environment.”

Licensed clinical social worker Terry Galen has been an employee of Moab’s home-town hospital for 10 ½ years; Moab Regional sits at the heart of a burgeoning cluster of edifices on Williams Way.

It started, at least in part, with her love of horses: Galen initially moved to Moab in 1987, drawn to the place by an article in a Denver magazine that highlighted riding in the La Sal mountains. Following 27 years working as a therapist at Four Corners Community Behavioral Health center, she joined the hospital staff as its first full-time social worker in 2015. Since then, she says, the hospital has spread its wings to grow even more, notably in the area in which she works.

Termed “a level 4 critical access hospital”, Moab Regional Hospital (MRH) is a small rural facility focused on stabilizing trauma patients with basic emergency care and built to ensure access to that care, e.g., there are 17 hospital beds, as well as emergency services around the clock so local residents and visitors alike can receive emergency care and stay at the hospital if they need to.

She ticks off some of the basics: emergency care, primary care, obstetrics, surgery, rehabilitation, a remarkable number of specialists, and tests like MRI’s and mammograms, for starters.

Recently, Moab Regional Hospital added a new in-house pharmacy -
And the softer side has dramatically grown since 2015: Galen’s job, which she shares with Natalie Olsen, another licensed clinical social worker, helps strategize patients’ hospital stays and supports both patients and staff. Along with many other services, the hospital offers access to prenatal classes, connections to hospice - including family support - addiction medicine via the Recovery Center, a group of skilled mental health therapists offering clinical and outpatient counseling, and more.

“None of this was here when I started.”
At Moab Regional Hospital it’s the social worker who often does an assessment and strategizes a patient’s time frame, helping them stabilize their plans and foresee additional care that will be needed after they leave.

Galen started out part-time, grew to full time, and is now back to working a few days a week. Hers is a job that’s turned out to be hard to leave: “I threw myself a retirement party and never left.”

I tell her this story is slated for the February issue as a Valentine to the hospital. She gasps and displays her key ring; on it is a small silver tab with the MRH birthdate: 2/14/2011. Christy Calvin, the hospital’s marketing and public relations manager, confirmed that MRH was indeed founded on Valentine’s Day. Calvin also told me that MRH is a traditional nonprofit and, nice to know in these tricky times, much-needed donations are tax deductible. Email marketing@mrhmoab.org or call the main desk at 435-719-3500 to contact by phone.

So here’s to MRH and my favorite saint. And ave atque vale from this nonprofit writer. I have enjoyed researching and scribbling this column for the past three years, getting to know a sizeable swath of the movers and shakers who make Moab the warm-hearted space we all know and love. But it’s time to move on. Thanks for the steady leadership of the inimitable Theresa King, her hard-working support staff, and all that Canyonlands Copy has to offer -
Nancy