In honor of National Nurses Month (May) and National Nurses Week (May 6-12), we asked our community just what makes our nurses so special. Dan Zimmerman, Care Manager in Northampton sent in the following thoughtful appreciation for Nonotuck’s nurses.
National Nurses Month Statement Dan Zimmerman, Care Manager, May 3, 2022:
Our Nonotuck nurses do so much for us on an ongoing basis that it’s scarcely possible to imagine doing our day-to-day work without this wonderful team of people! There is hardly a week (or day!) that goes by where we don’t enlist their help in some kind of advisory capacity, to seek out their guidance and input regarding our ideas…or to come to them when our own ideas for solutions and support just aren’t flowing. And we’re seldom met with disappointment! The amazing skills and insights from our nurses are often the catalysts for creating truly effective solutions for those we support and their households.
Aside from the benefit of these collaborations with our nurses, there are other more subtle ones of incredible value. In my experience, the nurses that I work with have naturally nurturing and caring spirits that have been coupled with years of training and experience that amount to a potent combination of personal character and professional knowledge. I work with a team of people whose values inspire me as much as their technical knowledge of medicine and health care.
Commitment. Courage. Conviction. Resilience. Persistence. Compassion. Empathy. Talent. Knowledge. Insight. Resourcefulness. Interest and curiosity. All of these characteristics merge within the minds and hearts of the nurses that I work with here at Nonotuck. Cathy. Julie. Wynde. Emily. Kitty. Each is a leader, a source of inspiration, a collaborator of the highest order and someone one can talk to about darn near anything (a prerequisite when it comes to the often intimate physical or emotional needs of those we support…and of those Caregivers who share their homes, lives and hearts with them).
We’re honored to have people made of such stuff here at Nonotuck…as collaborators, as mentors and as friends. A week doesn’t go by wherein I don’t ask myself “what would I have done without Cathy (or Julie or any of the other nurses here who give of themselves so generously and so lovingly!). If an agency has aspects of it that are its mind and its spirit, then you all comprise the heart of Nonotuck. To you all, I say from my heart as earnestly and as I can: “Thank you!”
Learn how Nonotuck developed a love-based ideology of care. We started our shared living program as an alternative to group homes for people with disabilities. Instead, Shared Living creates genuine life transformation for people with disabilities, as well as families and communities. The true power of caregiving is found through hospitality, authenticity, and love.
