News Releases

May 29, 2010

Maybaskets for MDNA patients

 

With the assistance of Rebecca Heniser and Paula Moody, teachers at Mount Desert Elementary School, second and third grade students designed and made over 50 May baskets for patients being visited by the nurses from the Mount Desert Nursing Association.

 

The students were careful to fill the baskets with sugar-free candy so all patients could enjoy the contents. They delivered the brightly colored baskets to the MDNA offices where the nurses took them to patients on their next visits.

 

Our patients were so pleased to be remembered, and told the nurses about their memories of delivering Maybaskets themselves when they were children--making baskets of folded paper, filling them with sweets and wildflowers, hanging them on a doorknob, then ringing the doorbell and running away, leaving the recipient to guess who had left the Maybasket. Pictured with the students in the last picture is Wanda Fernald, MDNA school nurse, who is also President of the MDNA Board of Directors.

 

 

 

 

 

April 20, 2010

 

Mount Desert Nursing Service is a town treasure

By Nan Lincoln
(Photo by: Nan Lincoln) Nurse Emma Lansing, right, checks patient Shirley McGarr's heartbeat, one of the many functions the Mount Desert Nursing Association offer its patients.

 

Mount Desert — The town of Northeast Harbor has many treasures. There are the scenic ones that are revealed the moment one crests the notch on Route 198, between Sargent and Norumbega mountains, and sees the harbor and the Western Way stretched out below. The town also has a rich history that encompasses hard-working farming and fishing families as well as some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.

 

It has a charming Main Street that has remained essentially unchanged for 100 years and a deep pocket of a harbor where yachts from all over the world find shelter, and fishing boats flock to when a nor'easter is brewing.

 

But one of its biggest and perhaps least known treasures is based in a cozy little white house on the corner of Summit Road and Maple Lane. The Mount Desert Nursing Association operates out of this little building, and like a warm wood stove on a cold day, it radiates its good works throughout the entire community. All the residents of the extended town likely benefit in one way or another from this radiated "warmth," but many probably do not know exactly where that warmth is coming from.

 

Shirley McGarr knows, though. And every Friday she is reminded how important the Nursing Association is in her life.

 

Take this Friday, for instance. It's a chilly gray morning, and MDNA staff nurse Emma Lansing is making her rounds. One of her regular stops is the McGarr home on Cove End Road.

It's a friendly-looking bungalow style home with a neatly kept yard, and it is one of the last homes on this little lane owned by a year-round resident — something that Shirley regrets. The lack of neighbors is just one reason why the Nursing Service is so important to her.

At age 84, Shirley is a perky, pretty lady with a lot of interests and energy. But she also has some medical conditions, such as diabetes, that need consistent monitoring, and she has some limitations as well. She no longer drives and while she enjoys walking with her little poodle, Heidi, down to Gilpatrick Cove and other favorite spots in the immediate neighborhood, a trip into town is too much for her.

 

What Shirley seems to love most of all is living in and managing the home she and her husband shared most of their adult life and where she raised her two boys. One can immediately see why she is reluctant to leave this home and move into an assisted living facility. It is filled with photographs, art and the cherished items she has gathered over a lifetime.

 

"This wouldn't be possible for me without these wonderful people," Shirley says, as Emma Lansing wraps a pliable cuff around her arm to take her blood pressure. "They look out for me and they have also become my friends."

 

In addition to the services Lansing and the other five full and part time staff nurses provide, such as managing her medications and pill box, checking her refrigerator, checking her feet for any signs of trouble (especially important with a diabetic) — they have also taught Shirley how to do some things for herself, including checking her blood sugar.

 

"Oh, I don't think I really want to do it myself today," Shirley tells Lansing, perhaps nervous to have a visitor watching. And yet with just a little help preparing her kit, she does do it, crying "yippee!" when on the second try she produces the desired drop of blood.

 

Next she steps on a scale, "this will make a grown woman cry," she quips, but is pleased to learn she has lost two pounds since last week. Lansing checks the packet of medical information that is attached to Shirley's refrigerator, which an ambulance crew could refer to in case of an emergency call to her home. Shirley keeps a similar packet in her purse.

 

The MDNA has also connected Shirley, and many of the other 50 or so patients they regularly see, with the Meals on Wheels program that delivers lunch to her door every weekday. Island Connection's volunteer drivers get her to her doctor's appointments and she also has a Lifeline — Shirley displays the emergency bracelet she wears that she can activate and alert the local dispatchers if she has fallen or has some other medical emergency.

 

One gets the impression that Shirley's needs are well taken of by the nursing service and related agencies, and that not only do they make it possible for her to live at home, they make her feel safe there as well.

 

While the majority of the MDNA clients are senior citizens like Shirley —  Hancock County has the fastest aging population in the state —  the staff also provides vital services to people in every stage of the life cycle, making home visits to new parents; checking up on people who have just had an operation or are recovering from an illness; organizing flu shot, prostate exam, breast exam and other medical clinics; and managing a "loan closet" full of walkers, crutches, canes and other equipment people can borrow as needed rather than spending hundreds of dollars on new ones. They are also in contact with the local police department, making sure that in cases of power outages or real disasters, someone is checking on known housebound residents. They are also there to ease the transition at the end of life, making it possible for many people to die, as they wish, in their own homes and in their own beds.

 

In fact, in the past 61 years, the Mount Desert Island Nursing Association, a private organization that is funded primarily through donations, has made more than 86,000 home visits, and in more recent years has been making around 2,000 visits a year to the residents of Mount Desert.

 

While they do not accept insurance — and therefore relieve themselves of the reams of paperwork it involves —  no one is turned away because they cannot pay.

"Because we don't have to deal with a third party payer, such as Medicare, we have more time to talk with our patients and their loved ones," said Lansing. "We have time to provide emotional support and more time for preventative care. We also are able to keep up with all the new information that is out there."

 

Lansing said she has attended more in-service learning events in her past five years at MDNA than in practically her entire career as a nurse.

 

Overseeing all of this learning, teaching and nursing activity is MDNA Director Dr. Anne Napier, a licensed registered nurse with a doctorate in psychology as well.

 

Talking with her, Napier is clearly proud of her organization, which has become a model for other services like it throughout the state and the country. She said she would like to see a service like MDNA in every small town on Mount Desert Island, and Maine too, for that matter.

"We save lives here," she said. "We keep people healthy and out of the hospital, or if we spot a problem, such as an infected toe on a patient with diabetes, we get them to a hospital or their doctor to get it treated before that toe or even a foot is lost." She relates another recent case in which a visiting nurse determined that her patient was having a stroke and got him to the hospital in time, and just this afternoon, she says, they discovered after a blood sample was analyzed that a patient's potassium levels were so high, he was at risk for cardiac problems, perhaps even a heart attack and they took steps to prevent that by immediately notifying the patient's physician.

While she can and does from time to time make house calls herself, mostly she works out of the office - a corner of a large comfy looking living room where residents are welcome to drop in. Sometimes children from the nearby grammar school are sent over if they are not feeling well, and the school nurse is away.

Napier is the one who keeps careful track of every patient's progress or conversely their decline and, when patient problems or concerns are identified in patient conferences with her staff, facilitates staff notification of doctors and referrals to other resources. As a cane user herself, she also give clinics on the proper use of a cane, something that is not so straightforward as one might think.

 

And sometime it is not a cane, or a pill or a blood workup that is needed. Sometimes it is just someone to talk to about fears and concerns at the end of life, the start of a new family or following a traumatic experience.

 

"In the aging process in particular there are a lot of losses," said Napier. "If we can teach people to value themselves in the world, whatever stage they are in, well, that is a good thing."

 

For more information about or to donate to the Mount Desert Nursing Association, call 276-5184, write P.O. Box 397, Northeast Harbor, ME 04662 or go to mountdesertnursing.org.

 

December 2008

"Good-bye and Hello"

GOOD-BYE—After 11 years at Mount Desert Nursing Association, first as a part-time Registered Nurse/Community Health Nurse providing visits and nursing care to residents of Mount Desert, and later assuming the position of full-time Community Health Nurse and Nurse Director of the Association, the Board of Directors of the Nursing Association has regretfully accepted the resignation and retirement of Dianne McMullan. Dianne’s expert nursing care and the caring she offered her patients, her many contributions to the Mount Desert Nursing Association, and her generous giving of herself and her time to many health-oriented and non-profit organizations on Mount Desert Island, will be long remembered.

 

A few of Dianne's comments as she said good-bye: "In the words of Lillian Wald, founder of the Visiting Nurse Service (in the United States) 'Nursing is love in action, and there is no finer manifestation of it than the care of the aged and disabled in their own homes.' Thank you to the Board of Directors and the Town of Mt. Desert for the honor of serving as your " 'town nurse'."

 

HELLO—The Mount Desert Nursing Association has added two new registered nurses to its staff. Theo Hinckley brings her fine skills and varied experiences as a registered nurse to the Association, and joins Emma Lansing, who has been an excellent regististered nurse with the Association for over four years. Both are experienced community health nurses and both will be responsible for providing direct care in home visits. Both Emma and Theo work full-time, which allows the Association to provide more hours of patient care, and to accept additional patient referrals.

 

Another new face at the Mount Desert Nursing Association is Anne Napier, also a registered nurse, who has accepted the newly created position of Executive Nurse Director. Anne is responsible for administration of services, over-sight of care, fund-raising and community outreach. Anne, Theo and Emma join Patti Billings, the Adminstrative Assistant, whose pleasant voice you hear when you call the office, and several other talented RNs, who fill in when needed, to provide care to Mount Desert residents.

 

Although the Visiting Nurse model has been in existence for over a hundred years, and community health nursing has evolved and grown in numbers, Mount Desert Nursing Association is unique in being autonomous and non-profit, with a focus on patients and the community, rather than being driven primarily by the bottom line. The guiding philosophy of the Nursing Association is that caring for the patient, their families, and the community is their top priority. Fees are on a sliding scale, and no patient is denied services based on financial constraints. The Town of Mont Desert contributes some funding annually to the Nursing Association, but almost the entire financial support for the work of the Association comes from the thoughtfulness, caring and generosity of Mt. Desert residents and businesses whose donations and contributions support the visits by registered nurses to their friends, neighbors and family members.

 

In addition to providing nursing services for all ages; from visits to newborns and new moms through the entire age spectrum to caring for, and helping maintain the independence of our more elderly and vulnerable seniors, the Mount Desert Nursing Association has a Loan Closet of durable medical equipment, i.e. canes, crutches, commodes, bath seats, raised toilet seats, to name a few items. These are available for loan to persons needing such equipment.

 

For more information about Nursing Association services available to residents of Mount Desert, or to make a self referral or referral of a family member or friend, please call 207-276-5184.

 

Contributions in honor of Dianne McMullan may be sent in care of: Mount Desert Nursing Association, P.O. Box 397, Mount Desert, ME 04662. The Mount Desert Nursing Association is a non-profit corporation, and donations and contributions are tax-deductible.