Jodi Hoyt
802-249-8956
Email: [email protected]
We are proudly announcing the launch of the first-ever Tunbridge Town Nurse!
Tunbridge community voted on the need for a community nurse in 2020/2021. The Upper Valley Community Nursing Project presented community nursing plans and what other current towns are doing in the area. The first nursing budget got passed at Tunbridge Town Meeting in May 2022. The Selectboard advertised the position, interviewed candidates and after deliberation offered the position to registered nurse Jodi Hoyt.
Jodi gladly accepted the position and has been jump-starting the program since November 1, 2022. She is so excited to get this position up and off the ground.
Tunbridge town’s mission is to provide in-home nursing assessment, patient safety checks, care and advocacy for Tunbridge residents.
Town Nurse services
- Basic assessments: vital screening (not diagnosing)
- Health care coordination, referrals, and case management
- Patient advocacy
- Health and wellness education, resources and counseling
- Discharge planning
- Facilitating discussions between patients and family members
- In the future, wellness and education clinics for Tunbridge community members
IMPORTANT: Please note that the Tunbridge Town Nurse services do not include direct patient care and treatment. This position does not substitute for individual medical care or “hands-on” nursing care. For example, The Town Nurse does not diagnose or treat illnesses, change dressings, administer IVs, supervise prescription medication use, or handle emergency medical calls. (Always dial 9-1-1 in the event of an emergency).
However, the Town Nurse will help you and your family to receive the services you need, and if the agency can hire the Town Nurse to do these tasks for you that is sometimes a possibility in rare instances. The Tunbridge town nurse is here to help you navigate the current challenging health care system.
Jodi’s hope is to fundraise and grant write to be able to produce funds to provide future flu clinics, COVID tests, CPR training and other health education for the community members of Tunbridge.
Why is a Town Nurse important?
The Ongoing Importance of Community Health
According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Healthy People 2030 initiative, the health of a community directly affects the quality of life of its members. In fact, community health has been found to impact educational achievement, crime rates, life expectancy, and more. That’s why the primary focus of the initiative is on building healthier communities, including increasing the number of organizations that offer preventive healthcare services, creating safer workplaces, and providing children with more opportunities to stay active.
Around the world, nurses continue to make a difference for citizens and communities. Historically, there were people who cared for the sick and the dying with the resources and knowledge available to them. This concept of caregiving was a precursor to the modern nursing profession. As the need for qualified nurses grew and as scientific knowledge of medicine advanced, nursing became correspondingly more effective. Nurses became the highly skilled and well-educated professionals they are today. Why this is so important to have in our wonderful community of Tunbridge.
Who is the Tunbridge Town Nurse?
Jodi Hoyt is a registered nurse born and raised in Central Vermont. She grew up on her family’s small beef farm in Chelsea. She was a four-sport athlete and was always very active in the Chelsea/Tunbridge community growing up. You might have even caught her starring as Peter Pan in the high school play.
Jodi lost her father tragically as a young girl and since then was super motivated to become a nurse. She attended the accelerated program VAST at Vermont Technical College during her senior year of high school, graduating in 2009. She began her nursing journey at the University of New Hampshire during that time she was on the executive board of multiple student-run groups such as Project Sunshine and Up Till Dawn. The groups fundraised and volunteered at Shriners Children’s Boston, Boston Children’s Hospital and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Boston. Also during her undergraduate time, she studied public health abroad during the summer in Botswana, Africa. She wrapped her time at UNH being awarded a Summer externship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, working on the medical surgical unit. Leaving UNH with a practical nursing and a Bachelors degree, she was invited to stay at DHMC and continued her nursing journey there with the infection prevention team and then transitioned into outpatient urology and pediatrics. She married her young love (a Tunbridge local), bought a home in South Royalton, and raised her sons while continuing her education at Vermont Technical College.
She received her Registered Nursing degree from VTC in 2017. With her new degree, she left DHMC to work in the General Surgery department at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital. Jodi worked with multiple specialty surgeons, including plastic surgery, gastrointestinal, general and once again urology. She received the nursing excellence recognition for passion for nursing award in 2018.
After having her daughter, she left the hospital setting and got hired as a nurse care manager at The Scotland House, an adult day program in Woodstock, Vt. She had just started her journey there when the COVID pandemic hit. Due to her daughter’s immune status, she sadly had to leave that position to take care of her family. As the pandemic pushed on, she was able to find a position as a virtual RN care/case manager for her current employer, Hope Home Care Services out of Barnard, Vt. She currently works there part-time and has been working on this plan to start a Tunbridge town nurse for the last two years.
She has been volunteering as Tunbridge’s Health Officer since 2021.
Jodi and her husband care for their widowed grandmothers, raise their two steer teams and love to be super active in their children’s lives. Jodi has strong connections to Tunbridge and is so excited to serve the community.
Look for future health education updates and links in the future. 😊