Last night on 3W, I was able to witness what I felt was incredibly compassionate nursing care. We have a patient on who is an inmate from Franklin County Jail. The patient was assigned to Lucinda Beska.
Lucinda always takes exceptional care of her patients but what I love the most about her is that she takes that extra moment, and sometimes many extra moments, to make her patients feel special and well taken care of. She does this even when her shift is not going in a way that affords her a lot of extra moments, but she never cuts corners when it comes to compassion.
I was sitting at the nurses' station last night and heard Lucinda in the room with the inmate. She was doing her assessment or giving him his meds, and they were talking and talking as Lucinda often does. She is upbeat and genuine, and the man was very animated, and it was easy to tell that he appreciated having someone to talk to.
Lucinda stayed in his room for nearly 40 minutes just talking with this man who I would assume has a life that has not gone completely to plan. She carried on the most wonderful conversation with him, showing interest, asking him questions, singling him out and making him feel special. When she finally came out of the room, I mentioned that she had been in there for quite a while. She just happily mentioned, "Yeah, he is really a talker, but you know what, I bet he is pretty lonely, so I didn't mind."
Lucinda knows what it means to show true compassion and care and love towards her patients and for her it's not forced. It's something that comes naturally to her and makes her a nurse that I am proud to have working here at Chambersburg Hospital.