Article originally published Spring 2025 in The Monitor publication.
Community Education with Resa Tobin
Why has Resa Tobin remained loyal to FMC for 44 years? Well, for starters, she was born at Fairfield Medical Center – both literally and professionally. Second, for the past 25 years, she has been living out her passion and purpose as a community educator.
From CPR to first aid to baby-sitting and child safety, Resa has offered a variety of community classes over the years, helping hundreds of residents earn certifications or learn new skills. Her classes also fulfill the need for clinical education via the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), which strives to identify and improve health needs in the community. In 2024 alone, Resa taught more than 150 classes and participated in 30 events, all while being an active member of 15 community initiative groups.
“I love spending time investing in others and giving them purpose to learning,” Resa said. “No time spent teaching is ever lost! We are all teachers in some way. I, among others, have the cherished opportunity to encourage others to be the difference in someone’s story.”
Hired as a medical laboratory technician intern in 1981, Resa served in many roles at FMC before finding her niche as a community educator in 2000. While she works out of the Marketing & Community Services Department, you will rarely find Resa in her office. Instead, her time is spent in classrooms or civic meetings, always with a few CPR mannequins and AED units in hand. What makes Resa’s classes unique, according to those who know her and work with her, is her energetic personality and her ability to create a safe space for her students to share their past experiences, ask questions and make mistakes.
“It’s important to make time to provide answers and speak about actual issues so participants can truly become confident and prepared for when an emergency crashes into reality,” Resa said. “Feedback is critical for improvement.”
Over the years, Resa has received hundreds of cards from grateful students. “I heard remarkable things about how well you conducted the training and how upbeat you are. Thank you so much,” wrote Mark Rager, marketing and community relationship coordinator at Buckeye Toyota. Amanda Pell, a fourth-grade teacher at Fairfield Christian Academy, wrote this about Resa’s CPR class: “Thank you so much for taking the time to teach my fourth-grade classes CPR. What an amazing experience for them. Your time and expertise are very much appreciated.”
CPR is one skill in particular that Resa says she is very passionate about teaching in the community. Every minute a cardiac arrest victim is unattended, their chance of surviving decreases by 10 percent. CPR training empowers bystanders to be helpful and make a significant impact until medical professionals arrive on the scene. In 2011, Resa was among several FMC staff members who helped launch Community Heart Watch, which strives to improve survival from cardiac arrest in Fairfield, Hocking and Perry counties. In the past decade, Community Heart Watch has trained more than 20,000 people in CPR, placed more than 550 AEDs in the community and accredited 60 schools and businesses as Heart Safe.
In addition, the committee created a mobile CPR training unit that attends various community events and has trained more than 4,000 residents in hands-only CPR and AED use. Resa said she is grateful to be a part of such a dynamic group of experienced clinical experts, donors and enthusiastic leaders who volunteer countless hours toward enhancing victim recovery outcomes.
Resa said that “creating a heart-safe community involves many hands working together with intentionality and purpose.”
In all of her experiences at FMC, Resa said she has not only discovered a sense of purpose and fulfillment in serving the region to help save lives, but has also found love, expanded her family and made long-lasting friendships. She met her husband, Mike, in the Laboratory, gave birth to her two sons in Maternity, and witnessed what she considers top-notch care from FMC’s staff and physicians when Mike had a hip replacement and open-heart valve replacement.
“As the years progressed and peers would come and go, I stayed, and I have no regrets,” Resa said. “No matter what my family and I were going through, FMC was here for me. I want to continue to build the bridges and connections that make FMC services uniquely bonded to the everyday lives of those in our communities for as long as I can.”
