Mahsa Kariman has wanted to make sure her patients get the best care ever since she became a certified nursing assistant.
“I take care of my patients the best way I can,” she said. “I love caring for my patients.”
Still, she was surprised when she was recently named the Clinical Support Employee of the Year at Commonwealth Regional Specialty Hospital.
“I was very surprised,” she said. “I thank my co-workers. It meant a lot to me that they thought I could make a difference in someone’s life.”
Kariman has been a CNA at the specialty hospital, a long-term acute care hospital within The Medical Center, for a little more than five years. She helps the nurses take care of patients by doing a variety of tasks, including checking vital signs, helping with baths or getting them to the bathroom or helping them eat.
“If someone needs to be fed, I feed them,” she said. “Patients are usually here for 25 days or more. They are very sick when they come up.”
A 2004 graduate of Warren East High School, Kariman first became interested in health care while she was still a student.
“In my senior year I was done with credits for high school. I could either graduate early or go the whole year,” she said. “I decided to do a co-op.”
The co-op class was for students interested in becoming CNAs and was done at Warren Central High School. The first semester was mainly in-class work, but the second semester had students visiting places where CNAs may work, such as nursing homes.
“I started to like it,” she said of the possibility of working in health care. “Before that, hospitals always scared me.”
At first, Kariman thought she might want to be a nurse. She became a student at Western Kentucky University and began working at the specialty hospital. She still enjoyed taking care of patients, but the possibility of any of them dying began taking its toll on her.
“I’ve seen a lot of deaths,” she said. “I get attached too fast to people. I told my mom this will be stressful for me.”
Kariman changed her major to public health in her sophomore year at Western. She recently received her bachelor’s degree and plans to continue her education by pursuing a master’s degree in the fall of 2011.
“I want to take a year to research and find out exactly what I’m interested in,” she said. “I hate to leave hospital work because I love caring for people.”
Kariman said she loves it when her patients get well.
“They come in very sick and end up walking out of here,” she said. “There’s something very joyful about that.”
