NEW TO NEW RICHLAND - Care Center Administrator Dave Dunn
Star Eagle photo by Melanie Piltingsrud
By MELANIE PILTINGSRUD
Staff Writer
As of July 19, Dave Dunn is the new administrator at the New Richland Care Center.
“It's been an absolutely wonderful change,” Dunn says. “This is a great facility, great staff. The community has been very welcoming. I think it was my second or third day on the job, I had my first board meeting with the city council. The mayor and the other city council members were very receptive. This is a good fit for me.”
Dunn comes to the New Richland position with a lot of experience in health care, but it took some doing before he discovered what he terms his “calling.” Dunn spent 16 years in the air force before deciding he needed a career change. He sold manufactured homes in Nevada, but it took only three months for Dunn to realize that wasn't his “cup of tea,” as he puts it.
“I flew out to Mesa, AZ, where my X-sister-in-law was a director of nursing for a facility out there, and started my career as an admissions marketing director,” says Dunn, who has a degree in marketing and management. He worked there for six months, at which point the administrator saw something special in Dunn, and approached him to ask if he would be interested in getting his own license to work as a nursing home administrator. Dunn took up the challenge and, after a year of training to attain his license, he began work as a nursing home administrator in AZ.
“Even when I started marketing for this nursing home in Arizona, I knew nothing about health care, but I found out in a very short amount of time that that must be my calling because I absolutely love long-term care,” says Dunn, who explains that it is in long-term care that one can build unique relationships with residents and family members. He speaks of the joy of being on the job and getting to sit down to talk with residents. “I love to hear their stories,” he says.
Four years after becoming a nursing home administrator, Dunn moved to Minn. in 2004, where he became the administrator for a nursing home in Olivia.
Dunn was an administrator in demand. He worked in Olivia for only a year before he was approached by one of the physicians, who co-owned the family practice clinic there. Dunn says, “They were looking for an administrator, and I went to church with the three owners, and they asked if I'd be interested in coming to work for them, so I did.”
Dunn spent three years as their practice administrator, and then two of the owners decided to retire. “So they sold the practice to the hospital, which was physically connected to the clinic,” says Dunn. “So my role changed from clinic administrator to hospital COO [Chief Operations Officer]. I thought I'd spend my entire career working for the hospital in Olivia, but it just didn't work out. Things happen for a reason.”
Budget cuts ended Dunn's job nine years later, and he was given a position in Sleepy Eye as the administrator for a 60-bed nursing home, and a 54-apartment assisted living facility, which he ran for two years, from 2012-2014.
“At that time my two kids were younger, so I was missing a lot of stuff for school,” says Dunn. He decided to work for CentriCare's ObGyn and Genetics Clinic in St. Cloud.
After two years with CentriCare, Dunn took a year off of health care work. Still living in Olivia, Dunn worked as a substitute teacher, coached basketball and helped on the football team. “I loved it,” says Dunn. “It was a nice break from health care. I was a part-time sub, but I was subbing every day.” Dunn taught a great variety in his capacity as substitute teacher, including special ed, kindergarten, choir, band, math, and history.
In 2018 Dunn received a call from an administrator he knew from 2004, when the two had worked for the same company. “He was the regional director for a company in Rochester,” says Dunn. The regional director asked him to come to Rochester to run one of the facilities under his jurisdiction. Dunn worked in Rochester from June, 2018 – Jan. 2021.
Then, Dunn received a call from a director of nursing he used to work with, who offered him a job as the regional director of five nursing homes in the Redwood Falls, Wabasso, Benson area. “So I packed up and moved to Redwood Falls,” says Dunn. “That was very short-lived.” Dunn worked there from March 19 – July 16. “It just wasn't a good fit for me,” says Dunn, citing promises that the company wasn't able to live up to once he actually took the job.
Dunn saw on the Minn. Nursing Home Association website that New Richland Care Center had an opening for an administrator. “I wanted to get back to Rochester, because I really loved Rochester,” says Dunn. “I saw it as an opportunity to get back this way.”
In his free time, Dunn likes to run, play the drums, and listen to music. In fact, that's one of the reasons he wanted to be back in the Rochester area; he enjoys listening to summer musical events there. “Every Thursday they have a band and they close off three blocks of downtown,” says Dunn, who moved back to Rochester as soon as he was employed at New Richland Care Center.
Dunn is a musician himself, and has played drums for church worship. From fourth grade through his training for the air force, Dunn played the trumpet. “When I was in basic training, I was on the Drum and Bugle Corps,” he says. “So we got to travel to different bases and play for events and celebrations and things. That was really fun.”
Now, Dunn plays drums in a Rochester-based band, which he says will eventually play at the New Richland Care Center, once the Covid restrictions let up.
Dunn may one day move closer to New Richland, he says, but, “I don't mind the drive right now. I've commuted farther.”
Dunn enjoys getting to the Care Center early to make his rounds and see how everything is going. Then he helps some of the residents with their breakfast. “I know a lot of administrators who will literally just sit in their office and that's all they do,” he says. “They're not engaged with what's going on outside of their four walls, and that's really hard for me. One, I would be bored to death just sitting in my office on a computer all day, and two, you gotta know what's going on.
“I'm a very hands-on leader, so I'm on the floor almost all the time,” Dunn continues. “I help feed. I'll pass trays. I'll help assist and things like that. I got my CNA certification several years ago, just so I legally could help do some care.
“I think my biggest strength is just a passion for people,” says Dunn. “That's what drives me. I get up every day, knowing that I have the ability to change someone's life. If they're having a bad day or a good day, just to take the time to talk to them and get to know them better.”
Although he's only worked a month at New Richland Care Center, Dunn says this is where he wants to stay. “This is it for me,” he says. “I have no intentions of going anywhere else.”