Jen Loesch, Director of Patient Care Services at River Falls Area Hospital, and one of our newest members, presented her introductory talk via Zoom last week.
Jen showed photos of her family, including the family dog, Pete, a 10 year old Pug. Her family loves to spend time at the lake.
Early path
Jen grew up in Colorado just outside of Denver. She considered herself a “farm girl” because she spent a lot of time on her grandparent’s farm.
Jen’s father died when she was in 9th grade, and her mom moved to Minnesota to be closer to the rest of her family.
“We were split between Colorado and Hastings being our home,” she said. “My mom was really strong, a wonderful person.”
Jen said her mom was a big inspiration for her career path, as she taught her that life can bring the unexpected, and to have a way to make it on her own if needed. Her health care calling was sparked in 8th grade, when she volunteered in the hospital as a candy-striper, complete with red and white striped uniform.
“Hospital work planted the seed about how meaningful the relationship you develop with folks in a crisis and acute care setting is,” she said.
International student experience
After high school, Jen moved back to Colorado to attend Colorado State. A friend asked her to go and study in England, so she transferred to U of M, majoring in Speech Pathology and Audiology. She spent a year attending the University of Nottingham and spend a lot of time traveling. She took the summer off to travel as well.
As Jen’s academic career progressed, she started doing practicums and hearing the call of nursing. Because there was a long (1-2 years) waiting list for the nursing program and she didn’t want to wait, she transferred to St. Kate’s and completed the two-year nursing degree, thinking she would finish later.
In 2010, she returned to complete her Bachelor’s degree.
“Now it is a common thing to do that,” she said. “It was a great career path for nurses to continue their education. But once I finished bachelors, I wanted to get into leadership – so I got my MBA. I had the goal of finishing that by the time my oldest graduated from high school, and I made it by one month.”
Jen is glad that she completed the challenge.
“It was well worth it,” she said. “Health care gives opportunities to continue your education throughout your life.”
From nurse to director
Jen started as a RN at River Falls, and over time started to focus on the role of infection control as epidemiology; she got into emergency management. From there she got involved with quality performance improvement and all the inner workings of what runs a hospital.
“It was a great opportunity to learn the department processes and how things worked outside of direct patient care,” she said.
Mentioning past well-known nurses, like Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, Jen credited them with exemplifying that nursing is more than just taking care of people. It includes advocacy, mission, service, and scientific applications like preventing infection.
“Nursing is an art and science. There are lots of opportunities and a flexibility that still appeals to people going into nursing today,” she said. “Different hours, lots of flexibility and a collaborative team environment are some of the things that interested me.”
Nurses work with the patient, physicians and family. They coordinate care and advocate for their patients.
“That was the part I really loved,” she said. “How you communicate, how you understand, dealing with people of different backgrounds and levels of crisis. That is something difficult to be taught – you have to learn it over time.”
“We have a strong nursing core here. I’m appreciative that I’ve been able to do this and have the opportunity to work in such a wonderful place,” she said.
Community health care
In 2015, she became the director of patient care. Jen has since developed as a major advocate for community health care.
“Serving the community and rural areas, we’ve learned that while it is a lot of work, we can do it at such an amazing level.”
Jen also talked a little about some of the advancements in clinical education.
“Through the help of the foundation, we obtained a high fidelity mannequin, which gave us the ability to train people in teams, which is very helpful, as that is how we end up working – together,” she said.
She said that some of the joys of working in a place for so long is being able to see plans implemented, like best practices, processes and procedures that become standardized practices.
Some of those procedures include a heart attack and stroke protocol, which helps patients get the care they need in an efficient manner. Additionally, the hospital has been an early adopter of Telehealth, (health care provision via telecommunications technology.)
“Telehealth has provided the nurses with an amazing resource,” Jen said. “They can call and the camera can zoom in for the physician to do an assessment. The doctor can actually hear someone’s heart, zoom into their eyes or listen to lung sounds.”
Jen noted that one positive effect of COVID-19 was the ability to expand telehealth to do what it was made to do.
“Telehealth gives us ability to provide access to top health care,” she said.
Jen said that the hospital has a history hallway, with a section on the 1918 pandemic. River Falls had a number of patients during that time – soldiers coming back from war bringing it back with them.
Two sisters opened the hospital to begin with and started working on the question: How do you provide care to a community in the best manner and keep it local?
“I will be interested to see what will be in the history hallway in 20 more years,” she said. “One thing I love about health care: As much as you think what is coming and react to it, you just never know what is coming!”
Rotary: Putting our hearts and minds together to find action
Jen said Rotary felt like a really good fit for her.
“Humanitarianism is close to my heart and I liked both the local and international component,” she said.