Nurses Month 2020: John Budziak

REPOSTED FROM TIMESLEADER by Patrick Kernan - pkernan@timesleader.com

“Instead of it being the worst days of their life, I try to make it the most peaceful days of their life,” he said. “Our job isn’t just taking care of the person dying, it’s taking care of the living.”

Olyphant - It was an early brush with the medical profession that set Johnathan Budziak on a course that eventually led to him becoming a nurse.

Budziak, 54, currently works at Allied Services Home Hospice, coming after years of working in various capacities at medical facilities around the area.

But according to him, it was cardiac issues from a young age that set him on his path. Budziak said that he had to have multiple open heart surgeries when he was young, and he was inspired by the nurses who helped him.

“Just the way I was taken care of by the nurses, I got really into it” he said, sparking an interest in medicine.

Budziak eventually went on to work in an intensive care unit, mainly with heart patients, and he said it was his early experience that led to his success.

“I knew more about the heart at 10 years old than most people do at 50,” he joked.

Working at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, Budziak left that job after more than a decade so as to be able to spend more time with him family, which led him to working at Allied Services as the facility’s head of education, before teaching for some time at the Fortis Institute.

But these days, Budziak isn’t in the classroom anymore.

“I got the calling to go back into hands-on nursing” he said, which led to him heading back to Allied, this time as a hospice nurse.

After years of experience in various fields, Budziak said he wanted to be able to help patients in the final days of their lives.

“I’ve been through all these different parts of nursing,” Budziak said, explaining that it deepens his understanding of care to have been involved in so many aspects of the medical field. I’ve already been there with them…having two open-hearts myself and almost dying a few times, I understand what they’re going through a little,” he said.

Budziak said hospice care is about helping everyone in the room – both the patient and their loved ones – find peace.

“Instead of it being the worst days of their life, I try to make it the most peaceful days of their life,” he said. “Our job isn’t just taking care of the person dying, it’s taking care of the living.”