Super-caregiver wears her heart on her sleeve

Saturday,

June 9 , 2006

By any standard, certified nursing assistants in nursing homes have a difficult job. On a daily basis they deal with people who are sick, worried, disoriented. They help residents eat; they help them bathe. They do tasks that are not for the squeamish, the faint of heart.

Karen Cotsworth of Irondequoit, a certified nursing assistant for 41 years, knows all of this firsthand, but she sees her work as an endless source of joy.

"I love everything about it," she says. "I love the good days and the bad days, all the relationships. It's not just a job."

Cotsworth started working in nursing homes when she was 16 and in high school in Rochester.

She has been at Kirkhaven, a nonprofit nursing home on Alexander Street, for the last 22 years.

She knows what medicine can do, but she also knows the redeeming power of a kind word, a hug, a smile.

"She's wonderful," says Mary Fedoryshyn, 89, a Kirkhaven resident. "I can tell her anything. ... We can really have fun over nothing."

"Karen is a wonderful, caring individual," says Sue Conolly, Kirkhaven's nursing coordinator. "She's very, very busy. But she'll stand on her head to make (the residents) smile."

Fedoryshyn and Conolly's words are echoed throughout Kirkhaven.

And now she is one of 16 health care workers statewide to receive the Long Term Care Employee of Distinction award from the New York Association of Homes & Services for the Aging.

The award, which will be presented June 21, embarrasses Cotsworth, and she barely consented to be interviewed and photographed for this story.

Even then, she arrived at work a half-hour early on the day of the interview so she wouldn't shortchange her residents.

Duane Girdner, a vice president for Seniorsfirst, Kirkhaven's parent company, had urged Cotsworth to tell her story. He's proud of her work. But he also wanted to call attention to all the certified nursing assistants who work at nursing homes throughout the state.

As anyone who has a relative or friend in a nursing home knows, good and caring nursing assistants are invaluable. It's not just that they do the bad parts of their jobs with skill. Beyond that, the best assistants seem not to mistake the illness for the person. They connect to the individual within.

"The only thing that really bothers me is that you can't always bring them peace," Cotsworth says. "This isn't their home. But if you can make one day a little easier, that's what it's about, that's where my heart is."

Cotsworth wears that heart on her sleeve as she zips about Kirkhaven.

"She's hard-working, she's dedicated," says Bob Bowes of Irondequoit, whose wife, Ann, is a resident at Kirkhaven. "She's moving all the time."

She fusses over her residents, all the time talking to them, even if they don't seem to react, all the time comforting them with a pat on the hand, a hug.

Etta Patterson, the nurse manager on Kirkhaven's third and fourth floors and Cotsworth's boss, says Cotsworth has a gift, a gift she shares with residents and the staff.

In the early 1990s, before she got her nursing degree, Patterson was a new nursing assistant at Kirkhaven, learning the ropes from Cotsworth.

"When I came here, I had fears," Patterson says. "Karen helped me through that. She brought the human side. She let me know you can touch somebody."

Cotsworth, whose husband, Michael, is a Rochester police officer, has no plans to retire.

"I'll work as long as God keeps me healthy," she says. "Then I'll be 80 and someone will get out of bed and I'll get in myself."