Celebrating Nurses Week at Highlands Cashiers Hospital

With May 6-12 being National Nurses’ Week, Highlands Cashiers Hospital’s CEO Tom Neal said nurses are the backbone of the facility.

With Neal being a nurse himself, he said nurses are the caregivers at the hospital.

“They make sure our patients get the care they need and compassion,” Neal said. “We really focus on nurses not just being the people that get the meds and treatments. It’s about giving our patients comfort and reassurance for the families.”

Neal told a story about a situation that happened in the hospital where a six-year-old was brought to the emergency room and a nurse went above and beyond her duty to make sure the family of the child was reassured they were OK.

“A six-year-old had fallen off of a motorized car,” Neal said. “He had only received some mild lacerations, but the family was really worried that something more had happened. The two nurses on staff took time with the patient, but also took some time with the parents to reassure them and make them feel better. During COVID, we were really challenged, because a smile or a touch of the hand goes a long way. We were really limited with our ability to do that. You don’t know how much of an impact the masking was, but we found a way to still show how much we care.”

With a national nursing shortage, Neal offered some advice for students who may be thinking about entering the profession.

“There is no more rewarding career to choose,” Neal said. “The hard days are hard, but when you choose to make a difference in somebody’s life, I don’t know another place you can serve where you can make such an impact.”

Highlands School alumna Jessica Brooks said she knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was in sixth grade, but that changed over time.

“I knew that I wanted to be a nurse because I knew that I wanted to take care of people,” Brooks said. “I was always taking care of animals or taking care of something. I said I wanted to be a nurse and here I am 12 years later.”

Whenever everything works out perfectly is what Brooks said is the best part of her job.

“When we can get a patient where they need to be, what they need and everything comes together is the best part of my job,” Brooks said. “Especially in trauma situations when everything is hectic, but you work with your team, and everything comes together.”

Though the Highlands-Cashiers community did not receive a bulk of the COVID patients during the pandemic, Brooks said there were still challenges she faced in that time.

“Since we are so limited here, that caused a lot of anxiety for me,” Brooks said. “There was a lot of fear of the unknown. Since we have to transfer patients to larger Mission hospitals, there were a lot of times when we were backed up because of the amount of patients we had. I remember having a few bad shifts, but I’m sure at Mission there are nurses there that are much more traumatized than I was. In the beginning, I would have to watch Disney movies just to fall asleep, but once we started seeing more patients, it got better. I think COVID definitely had an impact on the healthcare industry. It showed nurses our worth and our value. I feel like we are the backbone of the hospital.”

Transitioning out of the pandemic, Brooks said she is focused on working as a team.

“If I learned anything from the COVID pandemic is that it made us appreciate our team,” Brooks said. “We were all in it together. We didn’t get to stay home. Everybody else was in lockdown and in doors, safe and here we were in the unknown. You really had to rely on your coworkers.”

Brooks agreed with Neal saying that nursing is the best profession.

“This profession is so rewarding,” Brooks said. “It can be so stressful, you get beat up, but we get comments from our patients, and it means a lot. It is the most rewarding profession.”

For Brooks, being a 2008 graduate of Highlands School, she said working in Highlands is more than a job.

“This is a way of giving back to my community,” Brooks said. “I feel like people who come in here, whether they are from Highlands, Cashiers or Scaly Mountain, I feel like they are my neighbor. They may literally be friends or family, or they know my in-laws, whatever it is I have that connection. I like being able to give back and I try to do the best that I can.”

Susan Kaminsky is a registered nurse that has worked in Highlands for the past 14 years.

She has had multiple careers before deciding to be a nurse when she was in her 50s.

“As I got older, I wanted to find fulfilment,” Kaminsky said. “Definitely nursing is the profession for that. In helping others, I find satisfaction.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaminsky helped several patients after they were diagnosed with the virus.

“By strengthening post-COVID patients, I was glad to be of assistance,” Kaminsky said. “I helped them get strong enough to get back on their feet.”

The nice thing about nursing according to Kaminsky is the flexibility.

“I have had four or five occupations in my life because I get bored pretty easily,” Kaminsky said. “But with nursing, you can go in so many different directions. There are so many different facets where you can build on that career without being stagnant.”

Kaminsky said the weather is what drew her to Highlands.

“Fourteen years ago, I owned a boat rental company,” Kaminsky said. “I would sit out on the dock and rent my boats out. I would rent out sail boats, cruises, power boat charters and it was hotter than heck. So, I would close shop every winter and all of my customers would come to Highlands, and we followed them. With that, my whole family moved too. The weather brought us, and we stayed.”

Since high school, Eckerd Living Center nurse Kelli Randall said she wanted to become a nurse.

“In high school, I knew that I wanted to make a difference in somebody else’s life,” Randall said. “I knew that I could do that being a nurse and here I am.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Randall was an E.R. nurse and left for Texas for a month to be a part of a COVID unit.

“It was a lot of hard hours,” Randall said. “My experience in Texas was a lot different than here. I would say that our COVID was worse. Moving forward, I think we are all going to be more cautious and aware for the safety of our patients.”

The best part of her job, Randall said, is working with elderly patients.

“Just getting to see them and interact with them is really rewarding,” Randall said. “I get to form a relationship with them and working in the E.R. I never got to do that.”

For Eckerd Living Center director Emily Bowers, nursing is the core of the center.

“We encompass all of nursing at the center,” Bowers said. “We have everybody from housekeepers, unit coordinators, CNAs, nurses, leadership and everybody has a piece in the whole picture of care. Everybody is important.”

At the center, Bowers said COVID quickly made them learn how to be everything for their residents.

“We went from being sole caregivers to being chaplains, family members, hair stylists, manicurists and just a friend,” Bowers said. “We were cut off from the outside world. We became everything for them quickly. One of the things it taught me was to find joy in the little moments because it was very hard. We found that the mental health aspects of COVID were much worse for us than actual COVID, but finding joy in the little things, even when we were gloved or gowned, the simple hand touch was special. We learned how to smile behind a mask. We had to make sure that our residents knew that we were smiling, that we loved them and that we were there. It was challenging but there were a lot of growth opportunities. We learned how to be more than nurses, but a light amidst the darkness.”

Bowers said she would tell students considering nursing that it is the most rewarding profession.

“A lot of times our residents will tell us that we are a blessing, but it is actually the other way around,” Bowers said. “They bless us daily. It is such a selfless profession. We don’t go into it expecting anything, but what happens to me often times, at the end of the day they have served me in some form or fashion. That is part of the reason why I got into geriatrics. I took care of my grandparents and they had so much to offer. I knew from the moment that I became a nurse that I wanted to work with the elderly.”

National Nurses’ Week is an annual celebration of nurses worldwide for the work they do for others. The week allows people the chance to acknowledge the nurses in their lives. It also provides an opportunity to thank nurses within the industry as a whole for the work they’ve done.

- By Christopher Lugo