Recently, Doris Yates, RN, started work as Hanover’s first Community Nurse. What does that mean for you? She will work with you, your family, and other healthcare professionals and caregivers to provide coordinated health care to cover any of your physical, emotional, or social needs—for free! There is no charge for her services.

Doris answered a few questions so you can get to know her better.

Q: How long have you been a nurse?

A: I have been an RN since 1972 when I got my degree from Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut.

Q: Have you ever been a community nurse before?

A: I worked for the Visiting Nurses Association in New Haven for three years. Community nursing did not exist in New England at the time. When I moved to the Upper Valley after my kids were in school, I took a job as a staff nurse at DHMC and worked there for 25 years on several inpatient floors. It was only at the end of my career there that I began to hear about community nursing, which was spreading east from the Midwest. So it is a relatively new though fully recognized field of nursing.

Q: What do you like about being a community nurse?

A: What I like about being a CN is the time it allows me to get to know my patients and to help them on their own turf, i.e., in their homes. It is like a partnership working toward common goals rather than dealing with immediate, urgent needs with sometimes little patient input. I find this very rewarding. And I feel that I get as much as I give by listening to my patient's concerns and working out solutions. They share a lot of “life wisdom” with me!

Q: Is there anything you’d like people to know about your job?

A: What I would like people to know and recognize is that good health is not just about the condition of our bodies, although that is certainly a major part. But health care providers need to also address the emotional and spiritual needs of our patients to achieve satisfactory outcomes overall. In this way, I believe we can help people to find some measure of contentment despite illness.

If you would like to learn more about Nurse Doris Yates’s services, you can contact her at (603) 727-2832 or email her at [email protected].