Presbyterian Senior Living | Team Members
There are nurses who do the job, and then there are nurses who are the job. Darla Stanford, Skilled Nursing RN Supervisor at St. Andrews Village, is unmistakably the latter. With nearly four decades in healthcare, a résumé that spans virtually every corner of nursing, and a spirit that turns ordinary shifts into extraordinary moments, Darla brings something rare to her team and her residents every single day: a genuine, unshakeable love for the people in her care. Eight years into her journey with Presbyterian Senior Living, she's exactly where she belongs.
A Career Built on Curiosity and Compassion
Darla's story in healthcare began in 1986, when she was just 19 years old. She started as a nursing aide, and it was there, under the guidance of a 3-to-11 RN supervisor who believed in her, that the seeds of a lifelong career were planted.
"She encouraged me to go on to school," Darla recalls of that early mentor. She took that encouragement to heart, earned her RN, and went on to spend nearly a decade at Indiana Hospital before returning to long-term care, the setting she would ultimately call home.
Over the years, Darla has worn more hats than most nurses could imagine: marketing and admissions, MDS coordination, restorative nursing, wound care, nursing administration, and more. She describes herself as someone who soaked it all in and she'd encourage anyone entering the field to do the same. "Soak all the information up like a dry sponge," she says. "Be the best eyes and ears you can for your doctors."
Coming Home to St. Andrews
When Darla was ready for a change of pace, stepping back from management to reconnect with direct patient care, she knew exactly where she wanted to land. St. Andrews Village had been on her radar for years, even during her time at the hospital.
"I really spoke highly of St. Andrews even though I'd been years past," she says. "I knew this was a nice place to work."
She wasn't wrong. From the moment she arrived, the community's warm atmosphere and strong leadership team confirmed what she had always sensed. "This building is the nicest nursing home I've ever been in as far as its layout, its atmosphere," she says. "It's always had a nice management team here since I came."
That return to the floor, to day-to-day patient care, turned out to be exactly the renewal she needed. "I found it very fulfilling to be back on the floor and close with the residents," she says.
The Nurse Who Shows Up In Every Way
As an RN Supervisor, Darla's days are anything but predictable. She assesses every skilled patient in the building, responds to acute events, manages physician communications, handles staffing, oversees admissions and discharges, and serves as the go-to resource for her entire team once the day shift leadership has gone home.
"It can keep you quite busy," she says with characteristic understatement.
But what sets Darla apart isn't just her clinical range. It's the way she shows up for the people around her. She's known to give a colleague a back massage or hand out Tylenol to keep her team going through a tough shift. She sits down with anxious families and walks them through care plans until everyone is on the same page. She dresses up for Halloween just to see her residents smile. She dances spontaneously when music comes on.
"I try to make residents smile every day. That's my goal," she says. "I'll walk in and say, 'Wow, how are you today?' and something — they'll start smiling. In a little bit of time you're with people, we try to combat loneliness, boredom, and helplessness with spontaneity."
A Wedding to Remember
If there is one moment that captures the depth of Darla's commitment to her residents, it is this: the bedside wedding she orchestrated for a dying patient who wanted to see his son get married.
The patient was not expected to survive long enough to attend his son's November wedding. So Darla took matters into her own hands. She reached out to the son and his fiancée, rallied her dietary manager for tablecloths, champagne flutes, carbonated juice, and wedding cake, arranged flowers donated by a local funeral home, found a minister through a colleague, and enlisted a resident's daughter, a singer, to perform.
"We had a minister, we had everything but rings," Darla recalls. "He got to see his son get married in his bedroom while he was in bed but his wife was with him, and then they had their own little reception there. And he died the next morning."
She pauses. "I was happy he was with it and cognitive enough to enjoy it and see it all. That was probably one of my most fulfilling events in my nursing career."
Mentors Who Shaped a Career — and a Legacy Being Passed On
Darla is quick to credit the mentors who shaped her. From the aide supervisor who first encouraged her to pursue nursing, to Ruth Sulkosky at Indiana Hospital, "an excellent nurse," who taught her to always look for the worst first so nothing gets missed, to Kathy Gillespie, a nursing home administrator whose passion for dementia care left a lasting impression.
"Dementia patients are just beautiful people," Darla says. "They have so much to offer us."
Now, Darla is the mentor. She has trained CNAs, precepted graduate nurses, and guided countless colleagues through the challenges of long-term care. "It's nice to see people that you spend time with flourish," she says. "They learn from you and they thank you genuinely for your guidance. That's fulfilling."
Her advice to anyone considering a career in senior living is both practical and passionate: "You must be able to treat your patients like they're your own family. Take full ownership of them and advocate for them. You have to be here for the right reasons."
And for those who worry they'll miss out on clinical experience by choosing long-term care over a hospital? Darla has a ready answer. "You still get to learn trachs. You still get to learn fresh incisions and drains. All those things they said you could never get unless you worked in a hospital. You can get it in long-term care."