By Brian Koeller, The Bryan Times
Cheryl Lemmon, RN, with CHP Home Care & Hospice, checks on a patient during a home health nursing visit. – Brian Koeller, The Bryan Times
Cheryl Lemmon has been a nurse since 2004, serving in various units, but as soon as she tried home health care she knew that was where she belonged.
“I have a bachelor’s in social work, and the whole thing about social work, the reason it’s different from psychology, is because you look at the whole picture,” Lemmon said. “You’re looking at their family, their home, their surrounding, their upbringing, their culture, and you don’t get that in the hospital.
The big picture
“I like the big picture,” she added.
Since 2018, Lemmon has bee working for CHP Home Care & Hospice of Bryan as a home health and hospice nurse.
She said while an illness in a hospital has to be treated quickly and efficiently, she likes being able to form relationships with the home patient and their family.
“I think you can make more intelligent decisions about how to teach them, how to treat them, things that even the doctors can’t see because they don’t realize what’s going on at home,” Lemmon said. “And we can see that, and we can develop relationships with the people that you don’t get in a hospital.”
Ride-along
During a recent ride-along in which Lemmon visited two patients, those relationships were on display.
One was a 97-year-old male who is homebound and originally had a respiratory illness. He has overcome that but now stays on home health due to a malnutrition diagnosis because he has lost weight.
Lemmon talked about Ohio State Buckeyes football, the recent presidential debate – which he watched because he has always been a follower of politics – and his love of sausage sandwiches from the Williams County Fair.
With the other, a 93-year-old who was living with her daughter and recently suffered a stroke, she talked to her and with her daughter about their love of gardening and how nice the yard looked, as well as having someone come in to wash her hair and style it.
Applying nursing strengths
Lemmon said home health also applies more to her strengths as a nurse.
“I get that drive time, and that’s when I get to think,” Lemmon said. “I think about the last person I saw, was there something I should have done differently, or wanted to do differently the next time?”
“And then I think about the next person, and I have time to actually get all those pieces together so I can do it better,” she said.
Fulfillment in hospice
Lemmon said she avoided working hospice care for the first several years she was a home health nurse for other agencies, but when she thought about working for CHP she knew hospice care would be necessary.
She’s also found even more satisfaction in her job through it. Now, she’s the CHP Bryan office hospice coordinator.
“As I kept doing more of it, I got more and more gratification and better at communicating with the patients and their families on hospice,” Lemmon said.
During the recent visit with the stoke victim, she discussed scheduling a home health aide to come help the daughter with turning her mother periodically and other assistance, as well as possible life expectancy based on her current condition.
Different approaches
Skilled, non-hospice, nursing and hospice care require different ways of thinking for treatment, she said.
“When you’re going in to see skilled people, you’re like, we need to address the blood pressure, we need to address this new wound, and call the doctor, get orders, order medications, it’s all geared toward treatment and cure, or at least management.
“With hospice, you kind of stop worrying about all that stuff as much and every single decision you make is based on, ‘Is this going to make them comfortable?” she said. “And if it’s not, let’s talk about whether we want to do it or not, because it’s very patient centered.”
Locally-focused
Originally from Montpelier and having lived for years in the Edon area, Lemmon said she likes that CHP is locally focused.
“All of our nurses live in Williams County, they’re from here,” Lemmon said. “So, you just can’t beat the response time we can provide if a patient or family is in need and the ability to understand the culture, I think that’s huge.”
She added the largely German culture of Williams County is typically stoic in that many, especially men, do not want to be a bother to anyone.
“They want to take care of themselves, and they feel like they don’t need help as much, so you just have to kind of have that thought in the back of your mind when you’re educating and trying to help them,” Lemmon said.
A home health nurse’s schedule can be somewhat fluid, she said, and there are times local nurses may be requried to help out a CHP office in another county if they are short-handed. For those who like variety in their day, like her, Lemmon said that can be a good thing.
She said even during COVID, the home health nurses were still making visits, though they may have worn extra protective equipment depending on if the patient or family member had tested positive.
“We still felt very strongly that the point of home care is to keep people out of the hospital if we can,” Lemmon said.
Misconceptions about hospice
She also said there are many misconceptions in the public about hospice care.
One of those is that hospice will take patients off their medications. Lemmon said they may evaluate if a particular medicine is still needed, utimately the decision is up to the patient.
“That’s when we’re at our best,” Lemmon said. “We can go in and say, ‘You know that statin you’re on for cholesterol? We don’t really have to worry about those long-term issues at this point.’
“And we try to put it all very gently,” she added. “If they want to keep taking their statin, that’s okay. We’re just going to tell them what’s probably helping and what’s not helping. Because comfort is the big thing.”
That goes for the family as well as the patient.
“We just try to be attentive to what the family needs,” Lemmon said. “It’s not just for the patient, it’s for the family. It’s for the caregivers.
“It’s very rewarding and I’m really happy I do it.”
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