North Salem Honors Longtime Nurse

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - Practice compassion.

That’s Linda Van Auken’s advice for the upcoming generation of nurses as she prepares to retire from Waterview Hills Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in North Salem, where she’s spent about half of her 40-year career in medicine

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“It’s always been a tough profession,” the longtime director of nursing said, worried that younger folks looking for bigger paychecks might be losing sight of some important stuff.

To Van Auken, it’s always been more than just a job; it’s a calling. Those who go into it need to be kind, caring, and forthright, she said.

Working at Waterview has “just been a pleasure.”

Some of its nurses and aides have been there for decades.

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“The longevity is what makes it like a family. We all support each other through thick and thin,” Van Auken said.

That helped keep things together for the residents and workers during the isolating and extremely stressful COVID pandemic.

“I still can’t believe we made it through all that and we wouldn’t have without the staff we had,” she said.

Town Recognition

Last week, the rehab center surprised Van Auken with a retirement party. There were flowers, presents, and a proclamation issued by the town and presented by Supervisor Warren Lucas and Deputy Supervisor Peter Kamenstein.

Also offering congrats and bidding farewell were Lizer Jozefovic, operator and CEO of Epic Healthcare Management, which calls itself a “family of rehabilitation and long-term care facilities,” and his son, Joe, who is Waterview’s former administrator. The younger Jozefovic was recently promoted to management.

Declaring Sept. 18 Linda Van Auken day in North Salem, the proclamation pointed to her “dedicated 23½ years of exemplary service to Waterview Hills Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center” and said she’d demonstrated “unwavering commitment, leadership, and compassion in the field of nursing.”

(Prior to Waterview, Van Auken had worked in the ICU of an upstate hospital and as a respiratory therapist in Syracuse, which to some who grew up in a “small, rural town” seemed like a huge city.)

She had also “significantly contributed to the advancement of nursing practices,” which ensured high standards of patient care and fostered “a culture of excellence and empathy among the nursing staff,” the proclamation read.

Furthermore, Van Auken “has been known to juggle patient charts, and the occasional cat toy, with remarkable skill and grace.”

(She has two kitties at home about whom she loved to share amusing anecdotes and who are “undoubtedly plotting to take over her schedule.”)

The document also made note of Van Auken’s “sparkling personality and impressive collection of shiny things” that “have made her a ray of sunshine to colleagues and patients alike.”

She’s been “a mentor and a role model to countless nurses, inspiring them to pursue excellence in their professional and personal lives” and someone whose dedication to the well-being of patients “has earned the respect and admiration” of everyone who knows her.

The town wrapped up by expressing its “deepest gratitude” to Van Auken for her outstanding service.”

It also hoped that her retirement is “filled with shiny things, cat cuddles, and endless joy.”

“I wasn’t prepared for the emotions I felt,” Van Auken admitted after the event.

Moving Forward

Although the decision to leave was hard, she felt “it was time” to get out of the rat race and let younger blood step up.

Planning to move back upstate to be closer to family, Van Auken’s looking forward to being able to attend her grandson’s baseball games and taking “life easy a little bit.”

But she’s not going to “just curl up on a couch and sleep.”

Van Auken said she may look for a part-time nursing position as a way of continuing her “service to the community.

Core of Care

She pointed out that doctors might only see patients an average 10 to 15 minutes a day, but nurses are with them “24/7.”

That means that they get to know them better.

“Not just the diagnosis, the person,” Van Auken said.

She hopes that next-gen nurses know how important it is for them to “foster compassion,” which, studies have shown, is really the core of care.

That’s because it can improve patient safety and patient outcomes.

It can make them feel more comfortable when they’re in pain: physically, mentally, or emotionally. It also leads to faster healing and shorter hospital stays – saving time and costs -- and better results for both patients and their caregivers.

It provides patients with the emotional support and confidence they need to battle their illnesses, get ready for recovery, or undergo serious medical procedures.

Those treated with compassion are also more likely to stick to their treatment plans.

Compassionate care can be accomplished in a number of ways such as being mindful of others, acting with intention and empathy, communicating honestly, assuring patients that they’re valued and respected, seeing them as individuals, and being kind even when it’s not easy.

Nurses, being only human, need TLC, too.

“The basic tenet should be caring,” Van Auken said.

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