VIDEO: The Value Of Skilled Nurses

VERNON, Ala. (WCBI) – Nurses are an important part of the health care system. They work around the clock to prevent illness and promote health.

The more severe a patient’s condition, the more care they will need.

“You have to be able to treat that person psychologically, spiritually, and physically. To have the pie, you have to have all the pieces and a good skilled nurse has those pieces,” said Generations Of Vernon Registered Nurse Abby Hankins.

Hankins has been in the nursing field for nearly four decades now.

She currently works at Generations of Vernon and says the care they provide is unlike any other health care facility.

“We take them from an acute setting in the hospital for whatever it may be. A disease, an accident and we try to rehab them up to their highest potential, put them back out into the community,” said Hankins.

Generations Marketing Director Carrie Stanford says many people believe skilled nursing facilities are just for the aging but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

“Bad things can happen to anybody. We have had younger people in our facility who have had strokes at an early age, maybe a car accident, overdose on medication. Of course they have the after effects of all of that and you know we have helped to rehabilitate and watch them go home. It’s not just for old. It’s not just for young it’s for who needs the help,” said Stanford.

Skilled nurses address needs like; rehabilitation, tube feeding and wound dressing. Hankins says the most important need they address is education.

“If you can educate the families, because they don’t get that type of education in a hospital. Some times it’s for life long things; diabetes, having to give daily injections, pattern blood sugar wound care. There are things you’re not going to do like you did and if we can educate as many of the family as we can, that person has a better chance of making it back out into the community,” said Hankins.

Hankins says there’s one thing that sets a skilled nurse apart from the rest.

“Nursing has to come not only from the knowledge, it has to come from the heart. When you have compassion and you look at your residents, whether their here for 20 days, whether there here for 100 days, whether their here for the remainder of their life, their apart of us,” said Hankins.