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Celebrating National
Nurses Week
By
Joan Wright |
 Norwell
- It’s funny how your mother’s words always come back to
be true. “Nursing is a wonderful field,” she would tell me
as I debated my college major. But I chose instead pre-med
to be a doctor. One semester and several all night games of
kitty whist later, I decided perhaps liberal arts were a
better fit. But I continued to study alongside nursing
majors who put every minute they had into books and lab work
and long discussions about their field. Their dedication,
perseverance and passion for learning were inspirational.
Many years later, I chose to put my communication skills to
work for a non-profit visiting nurse association. Once again
I learned from nurses. Home care and community health is an
area of practice that is often hidden in the background of
healthcare. But I found that it is more correctly, the
backbone of healthcare. While so many people didn’t know
about it, misunderstood it, and sometimes dismissed it as
“just doing blood pressures,” I saw firsthand it was
anything but that. Sure there were community events where
our VNA nurses offered blood pressure (BP) screenings, but
fortunately they offered an entry into someone’s healthcare
situation or crisis. The “read” often turned into a
discussion about medications, symptoms and counsel about
self care. Direction to resources and recommendations to
follow up with doctors more often than not were dispensed
with that BP reading. And, often the nurse would follow up
with those people and/or doctors days later to ensure
attention was given to the respective issue.
Home care is far more than a stop in to check on the
patient. These nurses are singular practitioners working out
in the homes of patients with no professional colleagues
just down the corridor to consult with or jump in to help.
They need knowledge at their fingertips as they administer
care. They need to be current in best practices for a myriad
of conditions that include respiratory issues, heart
disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, and wound care. They
need to know current trends in pain and symptom management
and medication review. They’re charged with keeping the
patient safe at home, working towards positive outcomes, and
as best as possible, avoiding repeat trips to the hospital.
As such, their care must extend well beyond the patient into
the patient’s home, environment, family, support team and
caregivers.
I left homecare in 1998 and returned in 2007. While the
philosophy remained the same, the challenges for homecare
nurses had grown beyond the walls of homes. Now, shorter
hospital stays send patients home far sicker and with more
complex issues than before. Rising costs of long-term care
stress many people to remain at home with more complicated
issues. What was once acute care in the hospitals is now
typical care at home.
As I work alongside these nurses, witness their dedication
to their patients through in-depth case conferences,
persistent phone calls to physicians and other healthcare
practitioners, and outreach to support and resources as
patients are discharged, I am in awe and again, inspired. I
think back to when my father was dying at home and insisted
that the only persons he’d trust his care to were his
homecare nurses. He was right. So was my mother. Nursing is
a wonderful field. How fortunate we are to have nurses in
our lives. |
About The Author
Joan Wright,
CMC, a certified geriatric care manager, is a member of
Norwell VNA and Hospice’s Alzheimer’s Care Specialty Team
and geriatric care management team. She co-facilitates NVNA
and Hospice’s support groups for caregivers of early, mid
and late stage Alzheimer’s. For more information on NVNA and
Hospice and all of its programs, you may call (781)659-2342
or visit the agency’s web site at www.nvna.org.
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