MELROSE, MA – National Nurses Week is celebrated from May 6 through May 12. Meet this Melrose nurse who is helping her community, one home visit at a time.
Mary McDermott is a home care nurse who works at Beth Israel Lahey Health At Home, which provides skilled nursing, rehabilitation services, medical social worker services, palliative care and hospice care for patients and their families throughout eastern Massachusetts.
McDermott has lived in Melrose for eight years, and cares for patients in their homes throughout Melrose, Medford, Winchester and Stoneham.
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“It is nice to work in a nearby surrounding community and work with the same outpatient resources and doctors offices, and to see patients and their families in your own community to provide the best care that you can to them,” McDermott said.
She worked on the medical and surgical floor at Beverly Hospital for about nine years and at an outpatient clinic in Danvers before transitioning to home care, after seeing her own parents use home care services.
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“It just meant so much to my parents, the services that they were receiving, and how it made such a great difference in their lives,” McDermott said. “So I decided to go into home care. I thought that it would be something I would be good at.”
McDermott is often the first encounter a patient has with home care services and she sets the tone for their experience, comforting them and putting them at ease, assessing their needs, making sure they are safe and connecting them with services.
She said the most rewarding part of being a home care nurse is being with a patient for the duration of their rehabilitation journey.
“It’s just so nice to see the patient from the beginning of admission until discharge and all the progress that they’ve made,” McDermott said.
During the pandemic, she was often the only person her patients would have seen in months or even a year.
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“They haven’t had anyone in their house, they haven’t left their house,” she said, “The only people that had eyes or ears on these patients were the home care services coming in.”
National Nurses Week this year happens to coincide with the end of COVID-19 as a public health emergency in the U.S. McDermott said she is proud of the challenges she and other nurses overcame to help so many patients and continue to care for them in their homes throughout COVID-19.
“We can face such intense challenges and come out positive on the other side,” McDermott said.
Deborah Costello, chief operating officer for Beth Israel Lahey Health At Home, said Mary is a “shining example” of what a dedicated nursing professional looks like.
“We are so grateful to have Mary as a role model for our nursing team,” Costello said. “Her passion for caring for our patients and assisting their families is unsurpassed.”
McDermott lives in Melrose with her husband, Ryan, her two kids, Jack and Emma, and her dog Otis.
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