Nothing rattles this skillful caregiver

A visiting nurse who becomes part of the family

As one patient said of Colacitti, “She cushioned my heart with her caring hands.” (Richard Schultz)

HONOREE: Teresa Colacitti

Joan Barbary is no longer able to speak. The 74- year-old mother of six and grandmother of ten had radical surgery for throat cancer in 2000. Nowadays, Barbary's computer keyboard is her lifeline to a large network of family and friends in her hometown of Scituate and beyond.

But some forms of human connection still trump email, writes Barbary, who nominated her visiting nurse, Teresa Colacitti, of the independent nonprofit Norwell Visiting Nurse Association (NVNA), for a Salute to Nurses Award. "Teresa and I communicate beautifully," writes Barbary. "I don't even have to put my wishes on paper. She knows intuitively exactly what I need, or sometimes, don't need."

Barbary's needs are complex. She breathes through a tracheotomy tube permanently inserted into her windpipe; she takes all her nourishment in liquid form through a gastric tube that goes directly to her stomach, as she is unable to swallow.

When Colacitti first came into the lives of the Barbary family in 2000, she would visit as often as five times a week, remembers Bob Barbary, Joan's husband. "Teresa handed me back my life through her knowledge and clinical care," writes Joan, and her husband describes how he has watched his wife and her nurse develop "almost a mother-daughter relationship" over the years. Colacitti, 47, has four children. The three eldest are living in Taiwan, where she plans to visit them this summer. Being a visiting nurse has a lot in common with being a mother, she says. As Linda Simms, her team manager at NVNA, puts it, a visiting nurse has to be "part social worker, a big part nurse, part dietitian, part mechanic, and part chef."

Since qualifying as a nurse in Oklahoma in 1983, Colacitti has rounded out her nursing expertise in a variety of settings. She worked in obstetrics for seven years, including stints in the operating room and x-ray departments at the now-closed St. Margaret's Hospital in Dorchester, then worked in a long-term geriatric care facility in Braintree. Before joining the NVNA in 2000, she developed her palliative care and pain management skills as a visiting nurse in a hospice program. "Teresa's an expert generalist," says Linda Simms.

The Barbarys vividly remember the day when Joan accidentally pulled out her feeding tube at six in the morning. Teresa "flew to my rescue," writes Joan, and Bob Barbary describes how ingeniously she made a temporary repair with part of a colostomy bag. "Nothing seems to rattle her," he says. "When she's around, you feel everything's under control."

Colacitti is also a great teacher, says Bob Barbary. She has given him "on the job training" in tasks like cleaning, removing, and replacing his wife's various tubes. She takes him step by step through every new process, he says, telling him what to look out for. Colacitti has "a fantastic ability to teach patients what they need to know in order to take care of themselves," says Simms.

The almost family feeling that has grown up between the Barbarys and their nurse only adds to Bob Barbary's admiration for her professional expertise. "She reads a lot, keeps up with the latest technology. You get the feeling that she's staying really current," he says.

As part of her drive for further education, Colacitti is currently completing requirements to become a Certified Wound Nurse, training that will be immediately beneficial to many of her patients, including Joan Barbary, who have non-healing or slow-healing wounds from surgery, radiation, or pressure.

Colacitti sees between five and eight people a day, and usually has a caseload of 40-plus homebound patients logged into her PDA. That's in addition to managing her own complex family life, with three grown children working and studying abroad, and a teenage daughter still at home. Joan Barbary knows very well the pressures of Colacitti's life, and it is one of her nurse's greatest gifts to her, she writes, that "when she comes to see me, I feel like the only person on earth at that moment."