Angels of Mercy Home Health Care’s Jinner Richason never saw it coming.
“It was a complete surprise,” she said. “I’ve never been that shocked before in my life.”
The 70-year-old registered nurse was recently honored with the “Caregiver of the Year” award during the Indiana Home Care Convention in Indianapolis.
Wyndi Thompson, who is Angels of Mercy Home Health Care director of nursing, said the award is known as the Cheryl Atwood award.
She explained the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care established the award in honor of Cheryl Atwood.
“It’s been about 10 years,” she said. “She was a home-care nurse, who was murdered in Indianapolis while making a home-care visit to a patient.”
The award is open to any direct care nurse throughout the entire state.
Richason explained Thompson asked her to attend the convention this year, which is usually not attended by the health care nurses.
“Wyndi called me one day and said, ‘Listen Jinner, they are letting one field nurse go this year. We threw all the names in a hat and pulled your name out,’” she recalled. “I had no idea. I was sitting at the table when they started talking about the Cheryl Atwood award and they called my name. I was so shocked.”
Thompson explained each person is nominated by the agency they work for.
Angels of Mercy Home Health Care felt it was necessary to nominate Richason for all of her hard work over the years. To gain support, employees went around to the community and collected quotes from people who knew her.
“She is almost 71 years old,” Thompson said. “She’s been in nursing a long time. Pretty much everyone in the community loves her, so we decided to give it a shot and she won.”
Richason has worked as a nurse since 1961 and joined the staff at Angels of Mercy Home Health Care in 2000.
She has spent 16 of her 49 years as a nurse providing home care services. Richason’s job requires her to visit patients’ homes to provide assessments.
“She tries to keep patients in their homes and prevent them from going in to nursing homes,” Thompson said.
Richason said she first became interested in nursing when she was just 12 years old. She had to undergo several knee surgeries as a result of basketball injuries.
“I fell in love with nursing,” she said. “That became my whole focus since I was 12.”
She changed her concentration to home healthcare in 1994, simply because she wanted a change. A friend of hers was working in the field at the time and informed Richason of an opening.
Richason said the best part of home health care is the hands-on patient care and having the opportunity to get to know the family.
She recalled a recent occurrence of running into one of her patients at the grocery store. Just a few months prior, that patient was too sick to go to the grocery store.
“It’s amazing to see something you did,” said Richason. “It’s very rewarding.”
According to Tracy Thompson, who works in marketing, Richason does her job well and is loved by the entire community. She said
when she first started, everyone knew Richason. Everyone knew it as Jinner’s Healthcare, not Angels of Mercy, she laughed.
Wyndi Thompson believes Richason is well liked for several reasons.
“She is a mothering type,” she said. “She gets to know every patient and goes way above and beyond what you expect her to. She is very caring and she loves all her patients and they love her.”
Tracy Thompson was pleased to see Richason win the award.
“There’s no one more deserving,” she said. “If anyone should win, it should be her. I’ve never seen a nurse have an impact on the community as she has.”
Richason remains humble after receiving her award.
“I never expected anything like this,” she said. “I love what I do. I would rather do patient care than anything else in the world.”
• Denise Massie is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached at 574-732-5151 or
denise.massie@pharostribune.com