Matt Landers
Hospital Porter, Entertainer, Connector, Husband, Father, Human
“My Name is Matt, I’ll be your chauffeur today.” I always try to break down the walls a little bit when I’m transporting a patient. In my previous roles working as a long-term care-aid or Salvation Army youth director, I got to know people for years at a time, build a relationship, meet their family. Now as a patient porter, I know them for minutes. Nobody wants to be here in the hospital, so in that time, my purpose is just to try and put a smile on their face and ease their minds amidst the stress of their health journey.
To me, being a porter is so much more than pushing stretchers around—though my 24,000 steps a day will tell you that there is a lot of that—it’s being a part of the emotional side of the hospital. It’s being sensitive to how a patient is feeling going into a procedure. It’s forging relationships across the hospital with my fellow caregivers. It’s connecting with people, and connecting people with people. I call it the best job in the hospital.
“To me, being a porter is so much more than pushing stretchers around.”
An episode of Uncle Matt’s Bedtime Story
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Riddle Of Master Lu, featuring Matt as “Kung”
Both my daughters work in our hospitals as well, though they haven’t followed in my 24,000 porting footsteps. My eldest is a protection services officer and my youngest just graduated as a registered nurse. It’s fun to have those shared ties.
I’m an only child, and my wife has just one brother, so we are a tight-knit family. When the pandemic hit, my only nephew, Roddy, was six years old. Before lockdown, whenever we visited, Roddy would always ask me to tell him a story. With the world shut down and a lot more time on my hands, I figured we should keep up the tradition. I started sending him daily “Uncle Matt’s Bedtime Story” videos over YouTube; a practice we kept up for over three years. To be honest, it was just as much for my mental health as for my nephew. I’ve always loved creative projects and acting (one of my first jobs was as an actor in the MS-DOS game Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Riddle of Master Lu. Google it.) so I appreciated that outlet during those years. Over those years, other families started following along as well. It was nice to provide hope and cheer for those folks too, just like with my porting.
“I’ve always loved creative projects and acting”
As a porter, and just as a person, it’s really not that much effort to make a connection with someone. You can choose to just focus on doing what you need to do, getting from A to B; but you might as well try and engage with people along the way. In my mind, to be human is to be able to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes. When I’m going about my day, wiping down a stretcher or something, I have to think I want to make sure this is as clean as if I myself, or my grandmother, was going to be on it. It’s trying to treat each patient as if they were a member of your own family; just showing that you care.
For us at Island Health, care is intrinsic to what we do. It’s even written on our lanyards. We are blessed that we get the opportunity to serve people this way every day. But care is not just a job, it’s something we all need to do. When we come together in care, think of all the walls we can break down.
“Care is not just a job, it’s something we all need to do”
They are humans first, who put other humans first.
More than 8,900 caregivers and staff work around the clock in our Victoria Hospitals
#HumansFirst is dedicated to sharing the stories from behind our hospitals’ frontlines. These stories remind us that those who provide care and keep the lights on in our hospitals also have lives outside of them. They have family and friends, they enjoy hobbies and interests, and they have all lived through their own personal triumphs and heartbreaks. Like all of us, they are human, and they have a story to tell.
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