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Darner To Celebrate 50 Years At OSH

By Jeff Gulley

Donna Darner has witnessed a lot of changes at the Osawatomie State Hospital.

For the past 50 years, Darner has been employed at OSH, starting as a high school student in the dietary department and advancing through the years to her current role as Director of Nursing.

“The hospital has been very good to me,” Darner said. “We’ve had good administration and good staff. And the treatment has improved immensely.”

Darner began her OSH career in 1960, working from 3:45 to 7 p.m. in the dietary department. Her mom, a cook at the hospital, helped her get that first position.

“We had six or seven kids from my class working there,” she said. “There were kids working in every section back then.”

After graduation from Osawatomie High School in 1962, Darner immediately applied for a mental health aide position and completed her training in September of 1962.

She worked in that position until 1980 when the hospital offered a program for employees to get a two-year nursing degree. Darner said she took advantage of the program that paid full-time wages while she was in school, graduating from Fort Scott in 1983. She would go on to earn her four-year degree from Pittsburg State University in 1990 and complete a master’s degree from Pitt State in 1999.

Darner began working in the 1980s with one of the first program that tried to integrate patients back into the community.

“At that point we had about 1,500 patients and they stayed for a long time,” Darner said. “Mental health facilities began changing and the trend was to have shorter stays and get patients back into the community. We would get them out of the hospital and help them with the process.”

In the late 1990s, Darner was appointed section nurse overseeing four units. In 2003, she was appointed to the position of Director of Nursing.

Through the years she has been honored by the state as the psychiatric nurse of the year twice and as volunteer nurse of the year. She is also active with the Osawatomie High School Alumni

Association, is an Osawatomie Chamber of Commerce board member and serves on the ECKAN board.

When asked what kept her at OSH for 50 years, the answer was the patients.

“My whole life has been about the patients,” Darner said. “We are here to serve the patients, we are their support. But I have learned a lot about life from them. Mental illness can affect any family at any time.”

OSH will have a celebration for Darner from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Sunflower Room. The public, family and friends are invited to help her celebrate her 50 years of service to the hospital.

Short URL: http://osawatominews.com/?p=687

Posted by admin on Dec 8 2010. Filed under News and Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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