Celebrating Our People – Meet Terri Caldwell

Terri Caldwell’s experience started as a cosmetologist with her own shop in Pike County. That work required good customer service and people skills, which she carried with her when she followed a tug on her heart to become a nurse. Today, she is the unit manager for Saint Joseph Continuing Care Hospital.

Care Starts Here

“Health care is customer service,” Caldwell said. “But we must understand it’s not like customer service elsewhere. These people are literally at their worst, their families are at their worst, especially here in the Continuing Care Hospital. We must support them. I tell my people, at the end of the day after that eight hours or 12 hours, we get to go home, but they don’t.”

Caldwell’s initial health care experience came as a surgical technician at Hazard ARH Regional Medical Center. Her options for nursing school in the region were limited, but opened up when she and her husband, former WKYT-TV meteorologist Jim Caldwell, moved to Lexington with their two sons for his job.

She joined the ministry in 2017 as a nursing assistant and received her associate degree in nursing the following year and her bachelor’s degree in 2020. Her first assignment as an RN was on the Continuing Care Hospital’s floor that treated the most critically ill patients, those on ventilators. She worked as a float nurse and nursing supervisor before moving up to her current position two years ago. She is one semester away from her master’s degree at Walden University.

A Path to Long-term Acute Care

Though Caldwell’s entire nursing career has been with the Continuing Care Hospital, it wasn’t what she envisioned when she planned for a specialty. 

“When I started here, my plan was to go back to the operating room (OR). I’d never heard of long-term acute care, didn’t really know what it was, but I was looking for experience outside the OR while I was in nursing school and just kind of  fell in love with long-term acute care nursing,” she said. “I’ve never wanted to leave.”

Caldwell said she loves this patient population. “We have patients come in and we’re kind of their gap between either going home, going to a rehab facility or a ventilator facility. It’s just knowing we are helping these patients, bridging that gap and being another chance for them,” she said.

Before taking the supervisor’s job, she was able to follow some of those same patients when they left for rehabilitation services, since she also worked for four years on an as-needed basis at Cardinal Hill Hospital.

Outside of work, Caldwell and her family are campers. The Kentucky Horse Park and Breaks Interstate Park are among their favorite spots. With the purchase of an RV last year, she said they plan to travel farther afield.

Leadership and Impact

Caldwell was named the Continuing Care Hospital’s 2024 Leader of the Year and is proud of her unit’s record in reducing falls and decreasing central line and urinary catheter infection rates. “I do believe in teamwork 100%,” she said, noting the longevity of her staff. “We’ve all worked together, because it’s not my work, it’s all of our work.”

Practicing humankindness, she said, “goes back to remembering that these patients are here on their worst days, and being there for them.” That extends to being a voice for their families, too, she added: “We all work hard to be sure we do the best we can, not just for our patients but their family members as well.”

Even when it doesn’t end well for the patient, Caldwell said, “Everybody’s journey is different. And being able to be with the family members and being a support system for the family when they have to make those difficult decisions gives me peace as well. I feel like I’m doing what I can do for the patient, whether they pass peacefully, and whatever their journey is, I’ve been a part of that.”

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