Making a Difference

Outside the main doors at Rowan Medical Facilities in Salisbury, N.C., Bonnie Laster has posted a sign. It reads, “Today We Are Here to Make a Difference in Someone’s Life.”

“I firmly believe that,” the 2006 HomeCaring Award^® winner says. Since 1996, when she first got involved in respiratory care, making a difference is exactly what she’s done.

When a severe snow and ice storm in December of 2002 caused widespread power outages in the area, some 185 of Rowan Medical’s patients couldn’t use their oxygen concentrators. But thanks to Laster’s preparation and her management of employees during the storm, there was not one emergency incident with any of those patients.

“Routinely, Bonnie carefully plans how Rowan Medical would take care of our oxygen patients during a time of crisis,” a co-worker’s nomination letter says.

Planning is something Laster does well. She put together Rowan’s oxygen patient education procedures, including comprehensive forms and a follow-up checklist. The company’s educational approach has been published by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in both its reference manual and in its newsletter The Source.

Laster first became interested in health care during her mother’s struggle with breast cancer, which had metastasized to her lungs. A few years later, her grandfather became ill with lung cancer. Laster says she saw how home care made a difference in each of their lives.

In the years that followed, Laster became involved in respiratory care.

“I just really fell in love with it,” Laster says, explaining that she prefers specializing in certain disease processes rather than the entire range of them. Respiratory dealt specifically with the heart and lungs, and “that was an area that really intrigued me.”

She worked first at Albemarle, N.C.-based Stanly Regional Medical Center, which was then called Stanly Memorial Hospital. But the schedule got hectic and she began to get burned out. She then decided to look into home care, and found the job at Rowan. When she started, it was supposed to be only a temporary, part-time position.

“I was here five weeks and then started fulltime, and it’s just grown and grown,” Laster says. “Now, I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

One thing she did miss was working in pediatrics. At the hospital, “the young children would come in sick, and I just related to them really well,” she says. “There was just something special about it.”

Though now she works mostly with the elderly, she helped launch an asthma camp last year that teaches children who would not normally be able to attend a camp how to handle their condition. The first of its kind in Rowan County, the Second Wind camp was selected to participate in the 2006 North Carolina Asthma Summit in Burlington, N.C.

“Hopefully, it’s going to keep the kids out of the emergency room and they won’t be my patients 20 years from now,” Laster says.

At the last camp, a dietitian taught the children the best things to eat, a yoga instructor taught them how to control their breathing and a fireman taught them about his job — and about the career possibilities for asthmatics, as he is one himself.

“They were learning lessons through their projects and didn’t even realize that they were being taught, because they were having fun,” Laster says.

While not discounting the hospital setting, Laster says what she likes about home care is that she has a chance to build deeper relationships with her patients.

“What a privilege, for that to be a part of your life,” she says. “I think a lot of people are seeking that, looking for something to fulfill them. And I’ve found it.”

Chosen from nominations sent in by readers, HomeCare’s HomeCaring Awards^® are presented in recognition of distinguished service to the home medical equipment industry. HomeCare is proud to acknowledge the talent, dedication and generous spirit of those who make the HME community a better place, and who demonstrate the caring that HME is all about.