For Sean Sanders, a registered nurse with Palmeira Home+Health based in Arizona, taking care of patients and helping them heal in their own homes is what he was born to do.
“I have a patient in her 40s who had been a shut-in for the past 10 years living in agonizing pain,” explains Sean. “Working with her physician as part of her care team, she has progressed so much. She hasn’t had pain in the past 6 months, we’ve removed her long-term IV for pain medication and she is driving again. We have given her life back to her and I was a part of that!”
Sean says it took him a while to find his path. In his first job he was a lifeguard and then worked everything you can imagine from robotics to selling meat to roofing to computer chips. While in the Navy, he was in charge of the medical records for his unit and learned so much from his military experience serving in Somalia – what he calls a real life version of the movie Black Hawk Down. He explains that trauma is his wheelhouse.
“After I got out of the military I knew I wanted to go into medicine. In my 40s, I went back to school to get my nursing degree which is the hardest thing I have ever done. But I have an amazing supportive wife and a beautiful 12-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old nuclear-powered son and now I get to help people every day heal.”
According to Palmeira CEO Gen Barter, Sean always goes above and beyond for his patients driving long distances to see them from as far as Pinal County and back to the west valley sometimes hundreds of miles a day. She credits his former military training that makes him want to excel not only for his patients but for the company too. She says that’s why Sean is our employee of the month.
Sean admits that he often drives between 130 and 300 miles a day to see his patients and seeing them is the most meaningful part of his day. He says he visits patients from the Indian reservation to the big houses in Fountain Hills and everyone has a different story.
“Today I got to visit with my 102-year-old patient and we got to talk about passenger pigeons and when milk used to be a nickel. He was born only 4 years after Arizona became a state – these are amazing people and unfortunately a lot of them don’t get the attention they deserve.”
Sean adds that it is very important to listen to what his patients have to say about their condition. He says it is the attention to detail and very often the little things that make a big difference.
“I don’t cure people, the doctors do that,” he says, “but I heal people and, in order to do that, you can’t miss the little things.”
Sean, who is also a surgical technologist, loves teaching and mentoring new nurses. He adds that he hopes to guide them into being “that” nurse that makes a difference.
