ER nurse recognized for patient care

BARSTOW • Sharon Kolwyk’s co-workers at Barstow Community Hospital notice her smile most of all.

“Not everybody smiles in the E.R.,” emergency room doctor John Stroh said.

Kolwyk, a registered vocational nurse, has worked at Barstow Community Hospital for 11 years, six of them in the emergency room. She is currently working towards becoming certified as a registered nurse. This year, the hospital patients voted her as their Patient’s Choice award winner, a yearly tradition in which the hospital allows patients to nominate their favorite staff members.

Nursing was not what Kolwyk always envisioned herself doing. She once had dreams of being a firefighter.

But after her son, now 18, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age 3, Kolwyk began to think about going into the medical field. She wanted to know how to care for people. Kolwyk has her own medical condition — epilepsy, a condition that causes seizures — which ultimately led her to give up the thought of being a firefighter.

But it was her son’s condition, not her own, that led her to think of nursing as a profession.

Apart from her son’s condition, Kolwyk said losing her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and husband's brother-in-law to cancer gave her an appreciation for how the little things medical workers do can have an effect on patients and their families.

“You have times where small things like just giving a patient a blanket or talking to a small child means a lot,” she said.

Kolwyk’s coworkers have noticed that she has a special way with children, comforting them when need to be hooked up to an IV or go through some other frightening procedure.

Kolwyk said she became proficient at starting IVs on kids because a lot of other nurses don’t like to do it, feeling that they were hurting the children. Kolwyk says she tries to keep in mind that the procedure is best for the kids in the long run. The key is to talk them through the procedure, explaining honestly what is going on, she said.

“I think she should be a pediatric nurse, because she’s absolutely wonderful with kids,” said Jammie Wainner, a registered nurse who has worked with Kolwyk since September of 2005.

Kolwyk said although she does love kids, she would not want to trade the fast pace of the ER for pediatric work.

“You never know what’s coming in the door,” she said of working in the ER.

Shelly Emerick, an admitting clerk at the ER, said she admires the way that Kolwyk treats all of her patients the same, and the way she can lift her coworkers’ spirits when they are having a rough day.

“She doesn’t just smile with her mouth — she smiles with her whole face,” Emerick said. “She smiles with her eyes, and when she asks you how you’re doing, she’s not just asking. She wants to know.”

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(760) 256-4123 or asewell@desertdispatch.com