Graduate Spotlight
Donna Sespaniak, RN, Doctor of Naturopathy for Healthcare Professionals “Respect for All Ages of Life”
As a small child, Donna Sespaniak felt drawn to the calm, even-keel intelligence and kindness of elders — first with her own grandparents and then, as a young adult, with her grandparents-in-law. “As we started our own family,” she recalls, “I loved taking my two little girls to visit their great-grandmother. We spent Thursdays together — talking, eating out, cooking, visiting with Grandma’s friends. We always looked forward to it.”
It came as no surprise that, in choosing a healthcare profession, Donna’s interests would gravitate toward geriatric nursing. And yet it also didn’t take long to see that her nursing career needed to take wings.
“I realized that, in my role as a floor nurse, I wasn’t able to help elder patients in the ways that I had envisioned. This is a population of people who need advocacy — who deserve to be able to keep their dignity even if their vision, hearing, or other abilities and capabilities begin to diminish. They deserve for their rational wishes as well as their biological needs to be well attended to. Most older people have cared for several generations of family members throughout their lives, they’ve been good neighbors and have served their churches, communities, and often in the military.”
When Donna moved to south Florida in 1995, she immediately loved the energy of year-round sunshine and a vibrant, active population. Retirees move south to enjoy sports and hobbies, flinging open their doors to family visits and summers with the grandkids. But as retirees age and begin to succumb to illness and infirmary, their children and grandchildren sometimes have to watch and worry from a distance, immersed in their own careers, communities and school systems.
And so, since so much of Donna’s nursing career has been specialized in geriatrics…
In 2002 she reinvented her career by establishing Respectful Care Management, Inc., an advocacy organization through which professional geriatric care managers can interface with family members during stressful and transitional times, such as with acute or chronic long-term illness.
“When older citizens can no longer live at home, alone, there are many alternative approaches for assisted living,” Donna explains. “Care managers can help identify an individual’s optimal quality of life opportunities, based on various assessments that include the client’s level of homeostatic balance — their mind-body-spirit health.”
As a certified care manager (NACCM) and registered nurse, Donna may accompany clients during physicians’ visits, serving as her client’s advocate by translating medical jargon so that an older person can understand all options more clearly.
Having recently completed doctoral studies in natural health, nowadays Donna also enjoys the satisfaction of helping members of the medical profession as well as individual clients to understand the value of natural health methods and modalities — nutritional supplements, physical therapy, holistic nutrition and CAM approaches.
“Within these life-changing interactions I am learning how to ‘change the script’ in more ways than one,” she concludes. “A lot of medical appointments are completely prescriptive. There’s not enough give-and-take conversation with ideas shared and the pros and cons of various approaches compared. We all know that there are too many prescriptions and unnecessary tests being ordered.
“I think caregivers owe it to clients to work through issues and make decisions together that help strengthen and fortify all body systems — that bolster emotional confidence as well as making the most of physical strength, lowering the systemic toxic burden and maximizing mental clarity. To me, holistic approaches to care management simply embody The Golden Rule, to do for others as we would have others do for us.”
For more information: www.respectfulcare.com
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This article was based on an interview with the graduate.
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