Generations of care
Carla Genovese appreciates the intellectual challenges of intensive-care nursing as well as the more individualized patient care. Garrett Cheen/Daily Inter Lake
Grandmother inspired top nurse
As a girl, Carla Genovese loved to watch her grandmother work.
Grandmother Nancy Reap was a private duty nurse in Butte.
Her grandmother doing the job's simplest tasks - bathing, changing sheets, comforting - nurtured a passion within Genovese.
"I thought it was cool - how she took care of people," Genovese said.
That inspired Genovese, now 37, to become a nurse 16 years ago and later an intensive-cure-unit nurse. All that led her to being named Kalispell Regional Medical Center's Nurse of the Year.
Intensive-care-unit nursing is highly technical.
But it's the intangibles - calmness, caring, helpfulness, the so-called "fluffing and puffing" - that earned the award for Genovese.
"I strive to be like Carla. She's always composed. I've never seen her stressed. … I love to watch her in action," said Erika Delaney, a Kalispell Regional intensive-care secretary and a Montana State University nursing student.
Jeanne Lalich, the hospital's critical care manager, said: "She's very good at the compassionate side of nursing. … She truly wants her patients to have the best care. She's just one of those inspiring people that makes you happy to have her on your team."
A Montana State graduate, Genovese worked as a nurse in Butte, New Jersey and Denver before moving with her husband, Paul, to their dream home on the North Fork seven years ago.
Genovese frequently swapped notes about nursing with her grandmother, who died three years ago. The new technology fascinated her grandmother. But Reap wasn't thrilled about starch-white skirts and caps giving away to today's nurse attire of more scrub-like, colorful pants and shirts.
In Denver, Genovese got a hankering to try ICU work, and went through the training.
The work appealed to her intellectually.
There was more equipment to know, more medications to learn, many more physiological factors to track, and a closer eye was needed on the patients.
"The first couple of weeks, I told my husband: 'It's too much,'" Genovese said.
The equipment and medications gradually became less overwhelming.
And the work appealed to Genovese's nurturing side.
Caring for two intensive-care patients as opposed to six or seven on a medical-surgery floor meant spending more time to get to know and care for each.
Genovese applied to Kalispell Regional's ICU in 2001. She read in the Hungry Horse News that the hospital was going to begin doing open-heart surgery.
That again sparked the ICU techno-geek within the nurse - more gizmos, more nuances to learn about the human body, more medications to master.
"It was more challenging to my mind," she said.
Lalich said: "She's not only fascinated by" the ICU's intellectual challenges. "But she loves to spread her technical knowledge. It's the same thing that motivates an Olympic athlete that goes for the gold. She wants to be the best she can be."
There's a lot of pressure when working with touch-and-go patients.
But saving lives and making patients feel better boosts Genovese's spirits.
"I like making someone feel better in what is likely the worst part of their life."
Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com