Sarah Minnich
May 2025
Sarah
Minnich
,
RN
Surgery
Madison County Health Care System
Winterset
,
IA
United States
If every nurse nursed the way Sarah Minnich nurses, the world would be healed.
Each patient with whom Sarah comes in contact receives quality care. She does not cut corners in any aspect of her patient care. From a set of vitals to walking out the door after a procedure, Sarah delivers nothing but her best to everyone. If something is off with a set of vitals, a lab value, the way a patient looks or is behaving, she brings it to the attention of those that need to be informed.
She is always thinking of the next step and outcome. She advocates for patients to the degree that would exhaust an "ordinary" nurse. Sarah is far from ordinary. If something gives her reason for concern, she does not rest until she has come to a safe and satisfactory resolution for the patient. Her attention to detail is what makes her nursing care so great.
If necessary, she will comb through months of lab results and office visit notes to create a better picture of the patient with whom she is working. She is dedicated to the whole process. She will spend much time on the phone arranging prior authorizations, chasing physician orders, or calling for lab results. What makes her so extraordinary is that she manages all of this and still performs her hands-on patient care with great efficiency.
Sarah demonstrates compassion by seeing the entire patient picture. She does not limit her knowledge of a patient to a name, DOB, and allergies. She asks questions that help patients open up and give her an understanding of how best to care for them. Everyone has had experiences with patients who are "harder to love" than others. Not Sarah. She sits, she makes eye contact, she asks questions, she jokes, she shares, and she doesn't judge.
She comes to learn details about patients' lives at home that give her insight regarding details like why certain days of the week don't work for scheduling appointments, whose ride works on which days, coordination of labs with specialist appointments, and who needs further evaluation because they are not as lucid as they were in previous encounters. She has an amazing ability to sense when something is amiss or has potential to become so. She will then employ whatever means necessary to avoid trouble.
She puts herself in the shoes of the patient and family and provides the care that she or her loved ones would hope to receive. Her patients adore her. They ask for her because they trust her and they know she is taking the best care of them. She is a friend to them here at the hospital. She will listen to patients and their families. She advocates for them, she cries for them, and she cries with them.
I watched Sarah make 3 different pieces of toast, each with different levels of "toastiness" to please a delightfully grumpy little elderly patient. Despite her best efforts, the patient still told Sarah the toast was terrible and to this day Sarah talks about how she loves that lady and wants to be like her when she gets older.
Sarah once presented a card to a very sick patient and his wife for their 70th wedding anniversary shortly before he passed away. They had no family in the area. She knew this, and she celebrated them. She asked them their secret to this long marriage, and they just giggled. They never did tell her their secret.
One does not need to witness Sarah's compassion firsthand to appreciate it. Listening to her talk about her experiences with her patients paints a beautiful picture of it in action.
We had a patient with weekly PICC line dressing changes, who was doing daily at-home infusions for a very serious health condition. The patient was very rigid about scheduling and would sometimes put off or delay treatment for complications with her PICC line. There were times when this would result in hospitalization or a new line insertion. Sarah would reach out to the provider(s) and coordinate care as far as where the patient should report and if any testing should be done, arrange follow up visits and more dressing changes.
One day, when she seemed exasperated from all of the rearranging and rescheduling, I commented on all of her hard work with this patient. Her response was, "This lady thought she was going to die. Her daughter is still in school and did nothing outside of home and school because she wanted to be with her mom. Now, she is doing better, and her daughter is finally in activities. The patient is living her best life because her daughter is now thriving. If rescheduling a few appointments helps then, 100%, I will do what I can."
We had a patient with heart failure who also needed wound care and dressing changes. The patient did not always have a family member available for the appointments, so Sarah accompanied the patient (on her own time) to help relay important information.
They were great friends, and she treated him as she would treat her own family. He passed away. She was heartbroken. Her comment to me when we were discussing fond memories of the patient was, "He was a lifetime volunteer for people. If everyone were like him, the world would be healed."
If every nurse nursed the way Sarah Minnich nurses, the world would be healed. She truly puts the "care" in healthcare. I'm so proud to be able to say I work with this incredible human being.
She is always thinking of the next step and outcome. She advocates for patients to the degree that would exhaust an "ordinary" nurse. Sarah is far from ordinary. If something gives her reason for concern, she does not rest until she has come to a safe and satisfactory resolution for the patient. Her attention to detail is what makes her nursing care so great.
If necessary, she will comb through months of lab results and office visit notes to create a better picture of the patient with whom she is working. She is dedicated to the whole process. She will spend much time on the phone arranging prior authorizations, chasing physician orders, or calling for lab results. What makes her so extraordinary is that she manages all of this and still performs her hands-on patient care with great efficiency.
Sarah demonstrates compassion by seeing the entire patient picture. She does not limit her knowledge of a patient to a name, DOB, and allergies. She asks questions that help patients open up and give her an understanding of how best to care for them. Everyone has had experiences with patients who are "harder to love" than others. Not Sarah. She sits, she makes eye contact, she asks questions, she jokes, she shares, and she doesn't judge.
She comes to learn details about patients' lives at home that give her insight regarding details like why certain days of the week don't work for scheduling appointments, whose ride works on which days, coordination of labs with specialist appointments, and who needs further evaluation because they are not as lucid as they were in previous encounters. She has an amazing ability to sense when something is amiss or has potential to become so. She will then employ whatever means necessary to avoid trouble.
She puts herself in the shoes of the patient and family and provides the care that she or her loved ones would hope to receive. Her patients adore her. They ask for her because they trust her and they know she is taking the best care of them. She is a friend to them here at the hospital. She will listen to patients and their families. She advocates for them, she cries for them, and she cries with them.
I watched Sarah make 3 different pieces of toast, each with different levels of "toastiness" to please a delightfully grumpy little elderly patient. Despite her best efforts, the patient still told Sarah the toast was terrible and to this day Sarah talks about how she loves that lady and wants to be like her when she gets older.
Sarah once presented a card to a very sick patient and his wife for their 70th wedding anniversary shortly before he passed away. They had no family in the area. She knew this, and she celebrated them. She asked them their secret to this long marriage, and they just giggled. They never did tell her their secret.
One does not need to witness Sarah's compassion firsthand to appreciate it. Listening to her talk about her experiences with her patients paints a beautiful picture of it in action.
We had a patient with weekly PICC line dressing changes, who was doing daily at-home infusions for a very serious health condition. The patient was very rigid about scheduling and would sometimes put off or delay treatment for complications with her PICC line. There were times when this would result in hospitalization or a new line insertion. Sarah would reach out to the provider(s) and coordinate care as far as where the patient should report and if any testing should be done, arrange follow up visits and more dressing changes.
One day, when she seemed exasperated from all of the rearranging and rescheduling, I commented on all of her hard work with this patient. Her response was, "This lady thought she was going to die. Her daughter is still in school and did nothing outside of home and school because she wanted to be with her mom. Now, she is doing better, and her daughter is finally in activities. The patient is living her best life because her daughter is now thriving. If rescheduling a few appointments helps then, 100%, I will do what I can."
We had a patient with heart failure who also needed wound care and dressing changes. The patient did not always have a family member available for the appointments, so Sarah accompanied the patient (on her own time) to help relay important information.
They were great friends, and she treated him as she would treat her own family. He passed away. She was heartbroken. Her comment to me when we were discussing fond memories of the patient was, "He was a lifetime volunteer for people. If everyone were like him, the world would be healed."
If every nurse nursed the way Sarah Minnich nurses, the world would be healed. She truly puts the "care" in healthcare. I'm so proud to be able to say I work with this incredible human being.