In the picture of Iwona and Shannon, Shannon is on the left, Iwona is on the right. Same story. I am writing to share my impressions following a recent encounter with your inpatient nursing staff. It is no exaggeration to say that they have restored my faith in the possibility of a human-scale quality health care experience, despite all industry pressures and trends to the contrary in the past several decades. I come from a family of nurses and physicians. I am myself closely familiar with the industry both as a professional and as a patient in a variety of locations.

As a medical psychologist, I interned at the Boston VAMC, and since that time have held staff positions at UMass Medical Center and Marquette General Health System in Michigan, as well as worked in outpatient medical settings, most recently a FQHC in NH. I have also held medical school faculty appointments at UMass Med, Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, and Michigan State University. I have received inpatient care in the Lifespan hospital system in RI, in Michigan, and in Boston, including MGH.

I have had wonderful nursing colleagues at each place I have worked, and I have received mostly competent nursing care as a patient, although the interpersonal skills and sense of caring have been less consistent. Unfortunately, I have also received, in the days before COVID, some appallingly poor nursing care as well. I had the misfortune to have a catastrophic illness in 2009 that involved sepsis and a solid six months of inpatient care bouncing between acute and rehab facilities in Boston and RI, so I became an involuntary connoisseur of the experience of having things done to and for me whilst physically, and for a time, while vented and trached, verbally, helpless.

I am sympathetic to the challenges of inadequate staffing and of the tribulations in caring for difficult patients, which I do not consider myself to have been, but then few patients do. But I do have higher expectations of health care providers in general, and the compassion of the nursing profession in particular. I say all this to contextualize and emphasize the positive things I have to say about patient care at Concord Hospital.

I have chosen CH for my primary and specialty care, and for my husband’s oncology needs, over Dartmouth or Boston because it is a community hospital that punches well above its weight. The providers I have worked with have been as good as or better than those at any teaching hospital in my experience, but I have also appreciated the, now sadly unusual, level of professionalism and patient focus that is the fundamental culture at CH. This has been my experience in every phone call, clerical contact, and provider encounter, from medical assistants to surgeons. Until now, I had not tested the nursing care experience as an inpatient, but I am relieved, even if not surprised, that this culture is consistent on the med/surg floor as well.

I was admitted to CH following a TAVR on November 26. I have not had an overnight admission since the terrible months in 2009, and I had some trepidation about the experience due to medically related PTSD from that time. While my medical care last week was also praiseworthy, I am here focused on your nursing staff: the nursing care on this admission was superlative. From the procedure room and PACU to the floor, RNs and LNAs alike, everyone was uniformly friendly, respectful, kind, compassionate, and competent.

While I imagine you may share my opinion that this ought to go without saying, if not without appreciating, you must know as well as I do that this is regrettably not at all the case, and in fact is enough of a rarity in my behavioral samples as a participant and observer that I am moved to take up so much of your time giving credit where due. And while the consistency across individuals is part of the marvel, I would also like to single out two persons in particular.

I do not know Shannon’s last name, but she is one of your per diem nurses who is also a nurse educator. Shannon is the best nurse I have ever had. There may be some technical unfairness there, as I have had greater demand for more varied nursing skills in previous admissions as a sicker patient, but as a sentient patient, there has been no one who was more efficient, responsive, communicative, and comforting to me than Shannon was on this last admission. I trusted her completely, which is not typical for me as I suspect you have discerned. She is also bright and funny, which was a great plus.

Both Iwona and Shannon took every opportunity to do things in the least aversive, and most thoughtful manner possible, even if this was not the strictly easiest or quickest for them, but they gave no sense that they were in any way extending themselves or expecting recognition for simply doing their jobs. If only all health care providers understood “doing their job” in this way!

If there is anything that can be done to reward nurses for being above and beyond, I hope you will bestow these benefits on Iwona and Shannon. I don’t know who is responsible for the culture at CH, and of course it takes the whole team to effect it in any case, but as the person in charge of nursing I am delighted for you to be the one to receive my deep gratitude for the quality of the nursing care not only that I received, but is clearly generally the case at CH.