A Visiting Nurse's Prescription for Wellness
The Hartford Courant, by Joy Savulak
For Nightingale honoree Sharyn Sweeney, being a visiting nurse is more than her title. It’s her passion.
Every day the VNA HealthCare nurse uses her superior clinical skills to assess and care for patients in their own homes. Her goal, she explained, is simple: Treat each individual with dignity, teach them how to better manage their own condition, and improve their quality of life to the fullest extent. Sharyn is keenly aware that for many of her patients, she is their sole advocate, their main caregiver, and a friend – roles she embraces wholeheartedly.
Sharyn also knows that sometimes, the best medicine comes in the simplest of forms. Alongside her nursing bag, stethoscope and laptop computer, you’ll often find her toting little extras that can have an enormous impact on a patient’s spirit – and their quality of life.
Often, it’s a container of homemade chicken soup to tempt a patient’s poor appetite. Frequently, it’s a week’s worth of groceries for someone with little resources. Sometimes it’s simply a muffin to satisfy a homebound patient’s craving.
Her supervisor, Pat Bousaada, said that going above and beyond for her patients has characterized the essence of Sharyn’s practice throughout her 20 years at VNA HealthCare.
“If someone is in need, she’ll do whatever it takes to make their situation better,” she explained.
Bousaada recalled how Sharyn helped one elderly man who lived alone. Limited mobility impeded him from dining out as was his custom. The lack of a refrigerator and stove meant that he could not prepare his own meals. Frustrated with his declining health, the man angrily refused assistance, even though his ability to remain living independently was in jeopardy.
“Sharyn was the only one able to gain his trust,” Bousaada recounted. “She helped secure a refrigerator and convinced him to accept Meals on Wheels. She truly went the extra mile to keep him home, where he wanted to be. Her efforts ultimately kept him alive.”
Despite being lauded as a Nightingale honoree, Sharyn remains humble about the enormous impact she’s had on her peers’ and patients’ lives.
“I don’t think any nurse thinks about going above and beyond,” she said. “We come to work every day to try to make a difference.”
Melanie, Sharyn’s patient over a span of six years, agrees that while all nurses are devoted to their patients, Sharyn is “one in a million.”
Melanie remembered how Sharyn first came to her home after she was discharged from a lengthy hospital stay. During that initial visit, Sharyn’s sharp assessment skills detected an emerging problem that required immediate intervention at the emergency room. Melanie was dismayed. Without local family to drive her, she had no way of getting to the ER. She was shocked, she recalled, when Sharyn offered to bring her on her own personal time.
Sharyn stayed by Melanie’s side for hours, explaining her well-founded concerns to ER staff, and advocating for her patient as if she were a relative. She returned Melanie to her home with a promise to return the following day.
“I was stunned,” Melanie recalled. “I thought, ‘This woman barely knows me, yet she treats me like family?”
“Sharyn makes you believe in humanity,” she continued. “She emulates what we should be to each other. There simply isn’t anyone more deserving of this award.”
