 |
| Cindy Poknis, (center, seated) with her rehab staff. |
Cindy Poknis, Program Director (PD) and a practicing Physical Therapist at Mountainview Specialty Care Center in Greensburg, PA, says there are two reasons she won RehabCare's 2007 Trusheim Spirit Award, an honor given annually to the employee nominated and judged to best exemplify the spirit of RehabCare.
One is the strength of support from the team in her facility. “People say there’s so much responsibility that comes with being a PD, but there really isn’t if you have a good team backing you like I do,” she says, adding, “Our team also gets amazing support from our administrator… we’re part of a family here.”
The second reason is the inner strength she gained from her late husband during his four-year fight against multiple myeloma, a systemic cancer of the bone marrow.
“It’s his spirit in me,” she says. “That’s why I won the Spirit Award, because I am so much stronger than I was prior to Eddie’s diagnosis.”
Poknis had planned to attend the RehabCare award ceremony in December, but decided to stay home with her husband and sent her parents with a speech in hand to accept the award for her. The day following the ceremony, Poknis’ husband passed away at age 48 surrounded by his priest, family and friends.
Poknis says she and her husband, a self-employed contractor, were dedicated to their work and that he helped her understand that a good supervisor leads by example and never fails to help others on the team.
Her devotion to this principle is evidenced by the fact that she remains a practicing PT, while, among other accomplishments cited on her nomination form, she has grown her department from four to more than 10 employees, continuously rolls out clinical training and education opportunities for her staff, volunteers for fundraising and marketing events, readily rewards and acknowledges her team and recently guided her staff in its transition to RehabCare from a RehabWorks facility.
“Cindy never flinched when faced with new operating expectations and performance standards, but led her program to exceed their goals for contribution margin and efficiency in 2007,” says Trish Miller, Director of Operations for western Pennsylvania.
All the more amazing is that she accomplished this while coordinating a non-stop regimen of experimental treatments for her husband at Hillman Cancer Center and working closely with a live-in caregiver for her husband, says Miller.
“Cindy is a tireless crusader for whatever she believes in,” she comments. “No matter what project or obstacle she is presented, she embraces the challenge and runs with it.”
Poknis, along with her husband’s caregiver, is writing a book chronicling the four-year journey from his diagnosis to his death in the hope that it will lead to greater efforts to find a cure for the little-known but deadly form of cancer that ended her 10-year marriage.
During a telephone interview Poknis mentions that a photo on her desk is the one she will use on the front of the book. It was taken three days before his death, when he was leaving the hospital for home in a wheelchair with a big smile on his face and his arms upraised as he said, “I’m Rocky!”
“He was so full of hope and that’s what I want to give other people with the book and it’s the only way to keep him with me, I think,” Poknis says.
At the same time, Poknis says she knows that life must go on in the home she shares with two therapy dogs, Benji, a soft-coated wheaten terrier, and Molly, a schnauzer-shih tzu mix, and at work, where an outpouring of heartfelt letters and e-mail from people throughout RehabCare has further cemented a bond she first felt when attending PD training in St. Louis in 2006.
“That training gave me a sense of who I work with and for and the experience was wonderful,” she says. “I am very honored by this award and I feel very dedicated to RehabCare.”
|
