Celebrating Our People – Meet Lynn

Lewisport native Lynn Johnson fell in love with Bardstown more than a decade ago. Now a nurse at Flaget Memorial Hospital, she brings her experience and skills to help patients at the birth center, the unit where her career began.

She and her husband started visiting Bardstown in 2010, and little did she know then that she would move to Bardstown when her husband retired. After a 30-plus year career as a nurse, including 18 years in leadership roles, she is enjoying semi-retirement as a weekend-option nurse.

“I always teased my husband that I was going to get a weekend-option position when he retired,” Lynn says. “Nine months before he retired, I saw a position open here in the skilled nursing unit and got the job. The funny thing about us moving to Bardstown is that I started this position before he even retired and sold our house, so we had to figure that out.”

Lynn transferred to the birth center team after coming to Flaget in 2018, coming full circle in her nursing career. Her first position as a nurse was in the NICU at Daviess County Hospital, but then she found her home at the birth center at Our Lady of Mercy, a small, rural Catholic hospital.

“My college mentor became the director of the birth center at Mercy, and I asked her if I could come work with her,” Lynn says. “I’ve measured everything against my experience at Mercy, so when I applied to Flaget, they chose me, but I feel like I also chose them.”

In her career, Lynn says she learned to meet patients, families and caregivers where they are rather than focus on the past or future.

From her experience, especially in the emergency room, Lynn says patients are uprooted from their lives and tend to be nervous or scared while staying in the hospital. Approaching them from their present perspective eases their fears.

“We think about what we can do to help them in that moment,” Lynn says. “It’s all about ‘how can we help you,’ not ‘this is what we need to do.’”

Another way Lynn meets people where they are is through art.

She approached the birth center manager about doing a mural style painting on the windows right off the elevators on the third floor. The first mural she painted was during Christmas 2021 to bring joy and cheer to patients and caregivers.

“The windows were a blank slate,” Lynn says. “My husband and I were involved in our home church’s dinner theaters, and I always did the set design, painting and costumes. I’m not trained, just self-taught. But I thought the paintings meet people where they are.”

When the skilled nursing unit reopened last fall, Lynn asked the manager if she could extend her seasonal painting to their windows. She started incorporating others into the murals by outlining parts of the mural and leaving window markers for others to fill in the rest.

“Because of COVID, everyone was worn out, working extra and harder,” Lynn says. “People could come up and paint or add their own drawings into the painting. The mural isn’t about me, it’s about meeting people where they are. Art is therapy because you can erase it or paint over it and start all over again.”

Lynn and her husband Mark have been together for 37 years. The couple has three grown daughters, a son-in-law, and a future son-in-law and daughter-in-law as two of their daughters are engaged to be married. Lynn is also “Grammie” to three grandchildren.