It’s all about community for Kendall Regional’s Peter Jude

Peter Jude marks 20 years at Kendall Regional Medical Center
Peter Jude marks 20 years at Kendall Regional Medical Center

Chances are likely you will see Peter Jude at a major community meeting or event in Kendall or South Miami. For patients at Kendall Regional Medical Center (KRMC), chances are even better that they will meet him in person.

 Jude serves the community as KRMC Marketing and Public Relations director, a position in which he marked 20 years of service to the hospital on Apr. 1.

Beginning as “a kind of administrative assistant” in the Medical Building, his current position “grew out of a number of things that needed handling at the time, from assisting patient families to getting out a press release,” he recalled.

During two decades from 1992 to 2012, Jude saw Kendall Regional Medical Center grow alongside the community, adding a new $110 million West Patient Tower and, in 2011, establish a new Trauma Center.

Today, KRMC’s staff numbers more than 500 physicians and specialists with more than 1,300 employees, affiliated with Hospital Corporation of American (HCA).

“Representing the hospital, inside its walls and outside to the Kendall community are my primary responsibilities,” Jude said, reflecting on two decades of hospital service. “Serving the hospital’s interest also means becoming active in community affairs outside its doors, as well.”

 To say Jude does his part as a community activist is an understatement.

In the City of South Miami, he serves on the Environmental and Preservation Board.

Extremely active in Chamber South, his past service includes chairing the Executive Board and its Education and Business Coalition. He currently serves on its Government Affairs Committee.

Equally active in the newly named Greater Kendall Business Association, he is a volunteer teacher in the Kids and Power of Work (KAPOW) program, a past Cubmaster and Boy Scout Leader, and chairs a Friends of Scouting Committee for Tequesta District. Just recently, Jude was recognized by Kendall Regional Medical Center’s CEO, Scott Cihak, for his volunteerism and dedication to the community.

A career in healthcare further extends his outside activities as a board member of Doral Business Council, chairing its Healthcare Committee while also serving an identical committee for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

He has chaired the Public Relations Committee for South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association, co-chaired the Miami- Dade Community Board of the American Arthritis Association, and is past chair of the Community Board for the American Heart Association’s Florida Advocacy Committee.

At his South Miami town home, he has been president of Rittenhouse Square Condominium Association for nearly 25 years, ever since the community was established. In his church, he has served as a high school youth group leader.

Now, he and his wife, Maria, look forward to the graduation of their son, Peter “John” Jude, 17, from Belen Jesuit Preparatory School later this month, and a future diploma for daughter, Annemarie, 15, attending Lourdes Academy.

A native of Baltimore, MD, Jude is one of seven children of a distinguished surgeon, Dr. James Jude, credited as co-discoverer of the CPR method during a research program at Johns Hopkins University, and Mrs. Sallye Jude.

With two colleagues in 1960, Dr. Jude studied chest compression that led to the new emergency lifesaving procedure, formally endorsed in 1983 by the American Heart Association as “cardiopulmonary resuscitation” which has saved “millions of lives over the last 30 years,” Peter Jude reflected proudly.

Moving his family to Miami four years after Peter’s birth, Dr. Jude became a tenured professor of surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine, later to serve as Cardiovascular Surgeon-in-Chief at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“While having a medical career was always in the back of my mind, I wasn’t necessarily interested in practicing medicine,” said the younger Jude who grew up in Coral Gables and attended Ransom-Everglades School.

In 1983, he graduated from Winchester College in Fulton, MO, a school steeped in history — from the “Iron Curtain” designation speech of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill there in 1946 to Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev declaring an end of the Cold War in a second address in 1992.

 His majors in economics, business administration and psychology “turned out to be a perfect combination for my KRMC responsibilities today,” added Jude who makes a special mission of listening to patients and families to better hospital services daily.

Such devotion to the hospital’s welfare was the underlying motivation to extend his activities throughout Kendall and neighboring communities.

“There’s a saying that just because you don’t take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean that politics won’t take an interest in you,” he summarized. “That philosophy really translates into each person becoming involved in the community’s life.”


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