Spotlight: Lindsey Hawkinson, LPN
Lindsey found her calling at Alomere Health. For her, being an LPN is more than just a job.
Lindsey Hawkinson, an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) with Dr. Anthony Lussenhop at Alomere Health, is passionate about helping people stay well. “From the age of 16,” she says, “I knew I was born to be a nurse.” Initially, she planned to work her way up to the RN (Registered Nurse) position, and found jobs in nursing homes, group homes, and hospitals. But as she saw more of the RN side of nursing, she realized that it wasn’t truly what she wanted to do. What she was already doing in her position as an LPN was her passion, and one that best served her end goal—to help people.
As an LPN at Alomere Health, Lindsey has been invested and embedded in the local community for more than 9 years. “You see people from babies to the elderly, when they’re healthy, when they’re sick,” she says. “It’s a deeper level of helping people.” When you work in the same community for so many years, patients become more like family.
Lindsey is the primary nurse with Dr. Lussenhop, so while there is some team nursing, the two of them care for patients as a team throughout the day. Their partnership has an almost ten-year history and Dr. Lussenhop has been working at Alomere Health for almost a quarter of a century (“I’m taking care of babies of the babies I delivered 20 years ago,” he quips). Both Lindsey and Dr. Lussenhop emphasize the importance of longevity—as with any job, Lindsey says, “trust is earned.” There’s a big difference between a city hospital in Minneapolis and a community center like Alomere. “I think it’s that feeling of home,” Lindsey says. “I’m from Alexandria, and there’s always been that feeling that we care about you— you’re not just a number, you’re a person. We’re all in this for the same purpose.”
So what does it take to do what Lindsey does every day as an LPN? First and foremost, you need to be a good listener. “People need to know that they’ve got someone here that they can call who will take their call. We’ll listen to them and we’ll work with them to get a resolution,” says Dr. Lussenhop. “Lindsey really is someone who listens,” he says. “That’s one of the things that makes her so special.”
The job also requires patience, genuine care and compassion, a commitment to being accessible, and great communication skills. “Lindsey touches at least as many if not more people than I do every day,” Dr. Lussenhop says, “because she’s talking to the patients and the reception staff and the lab and imaging and referrals and scheduling… And so communication is a real key.”
On top of that, Lindsey says, you need to know why you’re doing it. “When I train LPNs,” she says, “The first thing I ask them is, ‘What’s your end goal? What’s your purpose as a nurse?’ Every nurse has a purpose in their life and they just have to find it.” Lindsey’s purpose lies in making a difference in the lives of the people in her community, and as an LPN at Alomere Health, she’s found the perfect way to do so. “People looking to do this job, her job, really need to think of it as a calling,” says Dr. Lussenhop. “It sounds hokey, perhaps, but the reward isn’t necessarily the paycheck—it’s the relationships that you develop with the people we work with every day.”
Lindsey agrees. “I’ve been doing this for ten years,” she says, “and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
