Francine Keogh, RN, BC
Francine Keogh, RN, BC
Associate Director of Nursing
NYC Health + Hospitals/Community Care
Francine Keogh says that for as long as she can remember, “I could not bear to see anyone or anything suffer.” For nearly 40 years, she has been easing the suffering of New Yorkers in a wide range of health care settings.
A certified psychiatric nurse, she now supervises teams that provide care coordination and nursing services to clients with complex medical and psychiatric conditions who live in shelters, safe havens or “anywhere they call home.”
NYC Health + Hospitals/Community Care clients are among the most fragile and vulnerable populations. To care for them, Keogh says, she and her colleagues must first try to alleviate their stress, anxiety, fear and pain. “We get to know the people we care for. Their strengths and weaknesses, their wants and needs. Supporting them in managing their health means that every day I can be a part of alleviating someone’s suffering.”
One of the most memorable – and gratifying – moments in her long career was a home visit with one of her very first clients, a woman in Far Rockaway who needed wound care. “One day I arrived to find her distraught. Her cat, Leo, had jumped up onto the stove and burned his paws. From then on, wound care and bandaging were administered to both client and cat until both were healed,” she said.