Wendy Gaudet was in college studying organic chemistry and fell in love with the subject. When a professor told her she should consider going into pharmacy, she looked into it and realized it was the perfect way to merge her passions for medicine and science.
“It feels so good to be able to help somebody get the care they need,” Gaudet, now director of pharmacy at Our Lady of The Lake Regional Medical Center, says of her field. “We are always working to make the impossible possible when it comes to patient care and looking for avenues to help people get what they need without making their burdens higher.”
After graduating with her degree in biology, Gaudet started working for a retail pharmacy. She then went to pharmacy school at UL Monroe and started working in the hospital setting. She worked for Lake Charles Medical Center and then moved on to Baton Rouge General before she started at OLOL almost eight years ago. She serves as the director of pharmacy for the LSU Health Baton Rouge, OLOL Livingston and OLOL Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center pharmacies.
“When I was first into management, my leader and mentor at the time told me, ‘You can never put a red bow on everything at the end of the day,’” says Gaudet, who was one of Business Report’s Forty Under 40 honorees in 2018. “I think when I first got started, I was really ambitions about making sure that I completed everything by the end of the day.”
Gaudet says she would sometimes work so hard she hit a wall, unable to fully see the resources she had. In hospital pharmacy, the department has to deal with government regulations, individual patient needs and managing medicine for the entire hospital.
“She helped me see that things will be there the next day for me to come back to and continue to keep working on.”
Her best advice for younger professionals is to keep showing up for the job at hand, even when you are uncertain or afraid, and to surround yourself with good people. “Beleive in your ability. Show up, be present and ask questions.”
In the past several months, as OLOL has grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, treating coronavirus patients and testing, Gaudet says her team deals with the onslaught of challenges by working with their individual gifts and praying together.
“I think some of the greatest things we’ve been able to accomplish in the past five months are because we rely on each other and use each other’s strengths and skill sets,” Gaudet says. “There are moments of despair when we aren’t sure how we will get to tomorrow, and that’s when we rally around each other.”
On top of the pandemic, Gaudet has taken on a new role as an administrator at Assumption Community Hospital in Napoleonville.
“I think one of the reasons why I continue to move forward in our administration is because I show up,” Gaudet says. “I have four little kids at home, and I think it’s super important for me to let them see that you can be successful and have a great family. Through working hard and that brings to the table, especially being a woman in leadership, I want to show my daughters and my son that its OK to be wife, a mom and a leader.”
Reach Wendy Gaudet on LinkedIn here.
