Sarah DelConte Cosentino is the new full time nurse at Nashoba. She obtained the position this September. She loves the job and is becoming an active member of the Nashoba community.

DelConte Cosentino was a substitute nurse for 3 years before moving into her full time position. Before becoming a nurse at Nashoba, she worked for 19 years in a hospital for the cardiac unit, labor and delivery, triage and the operating room. She has many stories from her time working in the hospital. Some of her favorites include: taxi births, babies in elevators, and lots of twins and triplets.

What she enjoyed most was the relationships she made with patients and their families. She loves to hike, run and teach yoga; along with spending time with her family and 3 children.

She is settling in well at Nashoba so far. She enjoys her job and says,, “I love all the kids, all the students. I love all the educational opportunities that we get to do in addition to the regular day-to-day health office stuff.” DelConte Cosentino is getting well involved with the Nashoba community and is largely involved in teaching Hands-Only CPR. She has also helped found the Sam Pawlak 5K and has been involved in coordinating it each year.

The Sam Pawlak 5K, is to honor Pawlak, who passed away in May of 2015 due to ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Pawlak was a teacher, school administrator and principal at Nashoba and was later a principal at Luther Burbank Middle School in Lancaster. The 5K honors his memory and contributions to the community and helps fund a scholarship in his name.

DelConte Cosentino enjoys participating in the race also every year and dresses up in different fun costumes for every race. The race is scheduled for fall of this year, with the date to be determined.

In middle of November she helped kick start the teaching of Hands-Only CPR with the Cadet EMTs and a few other students, and has been a part of bringing the teachings into the community.

She says that she “started at Gillette for our kickoff and we trained over 400 people. We have been in the community [teaching at] drama night, theater, sporting events and will be going [on March 13th] to train the whole 8th grade class [in Lancaster]. We also did World Thinking Day, with the Girl Scouts and we trained over 75 people of the community.” Overall, they have trained over 700 people so far.

Hands-Only CPR is an alternative to traditional CPR and does not include mouth-to-mouth breathing. It can be done by anybody to any teen or adult and only takes 30 seconds to learn. This method has been proven to help save lives for people who collapsed in cardiac arrest. According to the American Heart Association, “about 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die. CPR, especially if performed immediately, can double or triple a cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival.”

Learning this skill can enable you to save someone you love, “Chest compression’s push oxygen-rich blood through the body to keep vital organs alive. Hands-Only CPR buys time until EMS arrives,” according to the American Heart Association.

She has accepted an adviser position for a new Red Cross club, that was recently founded by Mei Bell, Carly Henderson, Miranda Clack and Tahmi Johnston. They work in line with the Red Cross organization and are preparing a couple of events each year that go along with the Red Cross mission statement.

DelConte Cosentino says, “We are going to have two events, I believe one is going to be Disaster Preparedness and the other one is probably a fundraiser, it’s not definite yet but, it will be for the wildfires in California.” The Disaster Preparedness event will be collecting donations to be used to create disaster kits for people in need. They will possibly host blood donation events in the future.  

The Red Cross Club is actively seeking new members and have many participants already. Their first meeting took place on February 25th of this year; and they will have their next meeting on March 20th. They will continuously meet on Wednesdays from 2:30-3:30 PM in the art rooms. It will be weekly in March and for, “April and May we will figure out if we are going to meet every week or if it will be biweekly” says Nurse Sarah.

Nurse Sarah DelConte Cosentino is a wonderful new full time addition to the Nashoba staff. She is very inviting and is eager to take part in activities at the school.