This article was excerpted from the April 2004 issue of Provider Magazine, the monthly magazine for long-term care professionals.
For a rugged outdoorsman, it’s no surprise that Stanley Jesinoski, director of environmental services at Otter Tail Nursing Home, near Battle Lake, Minn., volunteers to set up the dock and pontoon boat at the edge of Otter Tail Lake each summer and the fish house each winter. What is surprising is that he is also the one who takes patients boating and fishing all year round.
But for Jesinoski, it’s all just “part of the job,” he says. A 34-year employee whose mother has lived at Otter Tail for the past three years, Jesinoski says he began doing these jobs because “most everybody else here are ‘gals,’ so I figured these were just part of my job. It’s got to be done, and residents are what’s important here, and that’s why we’re here,” he says.
“If you take [patients] out fishing in that fish house, when they catch a fish, it’s all worth it, because they really enjoy that,” he says.
“Stan has a heart of gold and cares passionately about the well-being of our residents,” says Glenn Pearl, executive director.
Jesinoski also tends the facility’s garden in the summer, last year naming the garden in honor of a patient who enjoyed working alongside him as he weeded and tended the plot. He also built a gazebo and a resident courtyard and has made floats for an annual local parade.
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