Helen Tedesco, FNP, took a chance on coming to Gillette. The new nurse practitioner for Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine had 12 job interviews lined up and Campbell County Health was the last one. She turned down all the other job offers she received before CCH made her an offer, and told the recruiter that Gillette would be her home.
Helen’s background was in environmental health and safety and industrial hygiene before she switched to nursing. She consulted with companies on things like noise control, asbestos inspections and water and sewer line inspections. Helen and her family are from New Orleans and experienced Hurricane Katrina in 2005, receiving a work permit to come back to the city a week after the hurricane struck.
After working as an emergency department nurse in several different hospital trauma centers, Helen wanted to be a part of helping keep patients out of the emergency department altogether. She decided to further her education and become a nurse practitioner, graduating from the
Georgetown University School of Nursing in Washington, D.C. as a Family Nurse Practitioner.
Helen is excited to be working with Pulmonologist Dr. Peter Fort and his team. Now she is busy learning the clinic routine and seeing patients with Dr. Fort. Eventually she will see patients on her own and work with diagnostic procedures like sleep studies and pulmonary function testing.
When she’s not working, Helen and her husband Johnny love the outdoors. They enjoy boating, fishing and kayaking, and they also ride motorcycles. She has two sons who are now in college, ages 19 and 21.
“Everyone we’ve met here have just been fantastic,” said Helen.