A Caring Career and Beyond

A Caring Career and Beyond

Rose Kilmer always dreamed of being a nurse.

“I love taking care of patients,” she said. “It started with my elderly relatives when I was a kid. I was just drawn to staying with them and being company for them. I’m glad I was able to be a nurse. It was very fulfilling, and I loved my job.”

Rose, a resident of Masonic Village at Warminster, is a retired nurse of nearly 40 years. She most recently worked for the Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) of Greater Philadelphia, the eldest and largest nonprofit home health, palliative and hospice provider in the region. Outside of her duties to them, Rose often did a lot of impromptu home visits, usually related to the neighbors of those she had been assigned.

“VNA was really serious about taking care of our patients,” she said. “Once the neighbors knew there was a nurse in the neighborhood, a family member would come and ask me to come see another [ailing] family member. So when I got done with my patient, I’d go check out the neighbor.”

Rose worked for VNA for 12 years, visiting people’s houses and putting her nursing skills to good use. She often had as many as 13 patients a day, working 13-hour shifts. Occasionally, patients’ needs were beyond her capabilities, and she’d have to send them to the hospital. But she took her job very seriously.

“I took a pay cut, but it meant a lot to me to work for a nonprofit, so I could give that type of care,” she said. “I did a lot of volunteer work. I bought supplies for patients. I would even buy shoes for patients sometimes.”

Rose always gave a portion of her salary to The Caring Foundation, a nonprofit organization that serves individuals who need healthcare, but don’t have insurance. When she had time, she also teamed up with a Christian group to distribute coats, boots and hats to the homeless in and around Center City Philadelphia.

“I really learned a lot there about medical and surgical problems,” she said. “We were the number one emergency room in the country when I was there. I learned so much. You never knew what would come in the door. But after 10 years, it got to be too much. I was doing 16-hour shifts.”

Over the course of her career, Rose was a certified emergency nurse, a certified shock trauma nurse, a certified critical care nurse, a certified wound care specialist, an IV and pick-line specialist and was certified to administer chemotherapy in a patient’s home. She worked as an intensive care/emergency nurse at several other Philadelphia hospitals, including Graduate Hospital, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Hahnemann Hospital.

She was nominated for the Florence Nightingale Award for Clinical Excellence, a national award.

“I was honored to make the short list,” she said.

The day after 9/11, she volunteered for a month at the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, helping those who were wounded from the fallout of the World Trade Center collapse. As a trained emergency room trauma nurse, her skills were most needed.

“It was really sad and very intense,” she said. “You can imagine how very sick people were, especially the respiratory patients. St. Vincent’s was a lot like Temple. I was used to the pace and workload.”

The hospital offered Rose a full-time position in the emergency room in New York, but she declined, choosing to remain in Pennsylvania instead.

Rose earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Widener University. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in economic theory from Albright College. She taught nursing at Delaware County Community College for five years. Rose had planned on working until she was 70 (she’s 65 now), but halfway through her master’s degree to be a nurse practitioner, she suffered a stroke and was no longer able to live on her own.

After such a rewarding (and busy) career, retirement was difficult for Rose, and still is to this day. “I’m around residents [at the village] who may need help. I know I can’t help them, but my first response is to want to do so,” she said.

She arrived at Masonic Village at Warminster in September 2020, after a short stint at another nursing and rehabilitation center. “I knew about Masonic Village because a lot of my family members were Masons or members of Eastern Star,” she said. “I started in Rainbow Girls and was in Eastern Star in my 20s.”

So far, her experience at Masonic Village has been wonderful. “I love it,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place, and the staff are nice. I like the caring atmosphere. I have a good view of the gardens from my windows, and I love having my own room.”

Rose currently volunteers in the library and the gift shop and greets new people who come to Masonic Village. While she can’t practice nursing anymore – she uses a walker and has Binswanger disease, a serious neurological disorder that attacks the arteries and veins in the brain – she said that hasn’t stopped her from living her best life.

“I look at it that I’ve been quite lucky,” she said. “I still keep my mind busy.”

“I always knew I wanted to be a nurse, but I thought it wouldn’t be bad to have a business background in case I went into administration,” she said. “It really did help. I was eventually promoted to patient care manager at VNA, where I was responsible for 40 full-time nurses.”

Even as an administrator, Rose still visited patients off campus. As the only manager at VNA who also had current nursing experience, she felt compelled to do so. “If we didn’t have enough nurses, I had my shoes and bag at work, so if I had to go out I could quickly change,” she said. “Then I had to come back and work more hours to keep up with the paperwork.”