...just had one of our members collapse and die on the 18th fairway. He was a good guy and will be missed. Go home and kiss your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, or child and tell them you love them. I had to call his wife. Man, I never want to do that again.
All the deaths that I've been to have been somewhat unpleasant. However, one death stands out in my mind. The guy was dead in bed when his wife found him. Upon my arrival, he had a look of peace on his face and a big cross around his neck. His look of peace still rings in my memory. I've never seen that look of peace on a dead person since then. I'm glad there is more to look forward to, other then this short mortal life.
Uncle, I am conducting an incident investigation to see how we responded to the situation. For example, we have AED's at the club and one was taken to the scene, but I still don't know if it was used or how effective it or the operator was in using it. Since I have just gotten to work, I don't know yet if he is alive or dead, but he clearly wasn't breathing when he left. Re: the details and papers. How do you mean that? Is this something that I can include in my very distant, but upcoming dissertation? If so, since I have no knowledge of how to write one, what information or approach should I concentrate on?
John, just guessing here, but U.J is right, try to use every bit of career and work related situations in your up and coming MBA in Golf. This would make a good MBA dissertation and research project. This particular but sad occurance has many facits to it, from health care, trained staff, legal, business/Marketing (dont tell people that your club has a high incident of deaths), financial and of course the managerial aspects. Its a good topic for a paper for your MBA, and do you know how your industry reacts now to these situations, how often it occurs, was there a detremental effect of the employees, the club and were the staff trained to be able to save the members life, as well as total financial gain/loss to the club..what is the clubs financial and legal responsibilities (and all other clubs). Yes, you still have to deal with the sensitive issue of the family. BTW, are you trained to handle this, have you done it before and did you need clergy representation when you did this? Just added my bit..its like any other business where this could have happened, its an industrial accident of sort where the public got injured, and could, as it has happened in many other businesses, either bankrupted or severely harmed the business. J.R(ic)
John, thanks for the advice re: the dissertation. I am still trying to gather all the facts to see where the club lies in relation to legal, ethical, human resources, etc. etc. issues. It seems that club employees went above and beyond in their response, so I am not worried about legal - but I will still cover this area, just in case. Right now, I am mainly dealing with involved staff members' feelings as one of them is a high school kid with CPR training. I am, of course, offering employee assistance with counseling. Re: notification; I felt it best to leave that to trained professionals, ie: the doctors, clergy, and funeral director, all of which are members of the club. We tried to contact his wife when he was transported, but were unsuccessful. His golf partner went to the house, but by then, she had already been notified that he had 'collapsed'. Anyway, we are dealing with the situation as best as we can. No, I have not been trained in this (great idea though, I will pass this on), except for the actual life-saving techniques. The sad thing is, I am sure to encounter this again considering the age (and aging) of our members.
As a suggestion, your MBA (depepending on what your interests are), could be on exactly this recent topic and suggest you formulate an industry survey for this paricular problem (now you will need the Maths/Statistics) and throughout the thesis try to use your methodology on the aspects of running the club membership give the aging population and how preventitive training of the club members from a health standpoint could relieve insurance payments and other costs for the club. You will need to the industry wide survey and use this against other recreational clubs. The other topic could be membership services what you offer, Vs the cost of running the club and how profitability could be increased without forfeiting quality of services. You would have to get into comparisons of other clubs within the industry, and deal with your clubs management teams expertise, what they have, what they dont have and how they manage, what improvements or additional skill sets that the club needs to increase revenues. You would also have to deal with population, money spent on recreation, tayloring the needs to your members needs, new products and services etc. I'm going on a bit, but again suggestions. Send me a private email if you need any help anlong the way with your MBA J.R(ic)
John, thanks again. You have been very helpful through this whole process. I will take you up on the offer of assistance when the need arises. Funny that you mention stats. I spoke with an advisor at Excelsior yesterday re: my math situation (I was trying to get him to accept my 'd' score on the clep!) and he said I may be better suited towards the stats as it is more business-related and I have already passes research methods in psychology. Also, I am thinking that I may have a greater need for this skill later in the mba program. What are your thoughts? Do you consider stats 'easier' for someone with a business background? Totally unrelated to the thread, but while you are still here......
For Business school, basic college algebra is OK, so is a good calculator and the fact that you can +,-,x, , and divide is enevitable but stats are critical, since you will be doing spreadsheets, statistical analysis, graphs and charts, producing your own statistics on various things that you do, trends and analysis etc. If you were to ask me then for my first career in engineering, I needed lots of Calculus, FFT, Laplace transforms etc, (jibberish I know), but in your case Stats is a good thing. BTW, easier means nothing, its the understanding and application of what you will need the maths for. I would bet, that you personally would be 10 times better at stats than Algebra, since you probably use this style of maths right now in your daily duties? Just for a moment if you had to tell a trainee accountant which maths they had to do..what would you advise?..Go ask another business school grad which maths were more applicable to them. J.R(ic)
Thanks again for your input. I think that stats has much more application to business and is more in line with my experience. I was afraid of the more advanced stuff (calculations) that may be on the test. Truthfully, I have not looked at the test closely enough and I may do better on this than algebra. Once again, I will certainly use it in the mba program, so might as well start now.
Yes. Use anything interesting as case study material. Why not?? I'm unfamiliar with your academic/professional field, so I can't give any specific advice on how to use this event in a paper, but keep some fairly detailed notes on what happened and on your own and others' responses, actions, feelings, follow-ups, training for emergencies, etc. I suspect that a paper on handling deaths in a hospitality setting would be sufficiently unusual as to get quite friendly attention from an academic reader. BTW, even for those of us who are supposedly professionally trained to deal with this sort of thing, it's not easy. Sounds like you handled the incident (and yourself) very well, under the circumstances.
Uncle Janko, thank you for the kind words. Yes, I am keeping detailed notes re: the incident. I would never have thought of this for a paper, so thank you to everyone who suggested it and to those who gave me some insight into what should be included.
