CONCORD -- "How do you do this?" Jean Gifford was once asked about being a parish nurse, and she couldn't think of a simple answer.

Gifford, better known as "Nurse Jean," has served as parish nurse at Good Shepherd Parish in Wayland for three years, and at the Concord-Carlisle Catholic Collaborative for almost a year now. She is a registered psychiatric nurse who has spent decades helping people with mental illness, from children with PTSD from abuse to convicted murderers. She is also an end-of-life doula who cares for patients and their families in their final moments. Sometimes she wonders how she finds the emotional strength to do it all.

"It's something in me that I just do," she said. "I just do. And I think maybe that's where I see God, that this is what I'm here to do. To take care of these people also."

On Aug. 15, Gifford's sign was set up in front of the Holy Family Parish Center in Concord: "Parish Nurse Here Today." She spends four hours at Holy Family on Fridays and four hours at St. Irene in Carlisle on Wednesdays. She's in Wayland on Mondays and Thursdays. Her office is on the third floor.

"I get the penthouse office," she joked.

The office is sparsely decorated save for some John Singer Sargent prints, courtesy of Pastor Father David O'Leary. Back when he was pastor at Good Shepherd, Father O'Leary was filling a bird feeder when he fell, cracking three ribs and three discs. Gifford helped out with his recovery.

"They gave me this turtle shell," he said. "This body doesn't do well in a turtle shell, but Jean helped me through that, too. So I go from being pastor to being the patient."

"He was a good patient," Gifford said.

Father O'Leary said that Holy Family and St. Irene both have large senior populations, so Gifford has been "very helpful."

"All parishes should have a parish nurse," he said.

It was Father O'Leary who asked her if she wanted to be a parish nurse. She said yes and signed up for the Archdiocese of Boston's nurse training program.

"It's an intense program with knowing your faith and knowing your job," she said. "And I thought, yeah, it'd be nice. It would be different. It would be a nice challenge."

Gifford is one of 64 parish nurses in the archdiocese. All of her equipment has to fit in her medical bag. She's always on the go, so there's nowhere else to keep it. She has her stethoscope, blood pressure machine, bandages, gloves, and informational pamphlets.

Parishioners come to her with medical questions, and she gives them advice. For many, the church is a more welcoming environment than the doctor's office. She checks on people who are no longer physically able to come to church. Sometimes she's simply a source of emotional support.

"A lot of them are older people who need somebody to talk to," she said. "They need a smiling face."

She has attended funeral Masses for many of her former patients.

"It's sad, but I know that they got the best of care from their families and from me, and that they were settled, and that made me feel good."

Parish nurses are not authorized to give vaccinations or do other medical procedures, but Gifford wants to do more. Sometimes she has no choice. She was one of three parish nurses present at the installation of Archbishop Richard G. Henning on Oct. 31, 2024, an unseasonably hot day. During the ceremony, a priest passed out and collapsed. Gifford and Archdiocese of Boston Nurse Educator Karen Wenger leapt into action.

"We settled him down, took his vital signs, quieted him down, and then took him out of the area, out of the situation," she said.

Gifford and Wenger waited for a part of the Mass when everyone was standing to bring the priest back into the sanctuary.

"We snuck him out and brought him so that nobody could see him, so we made it a little inconspicuous," Gifford said.

Archbishop Henning recently visited Holy Family and met with Gifford. He told her he had no idea what happened to the priest, until he wrote a letter to the archbishop thanking the nurses.

"That was the point," she told the archbishop.

Gifford, 64, was born and raised in Mattapan, where she was a parishioner at St. Angela Parish and attended grammar school there.

"It was a big part of our social life," she said of the church. "It was a big part of learning how to take care of people and a community, a really close community."

When she was in kindergarten, she was asked to write her name and what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wrote that she wanted to be a nurse. Her mother kept that writing and gave it to her years later.

"I think I always liked to take care of people," she said.

She sees no difference between taking care of people's medical needs and spiritual needs.

"A lot of people need to know that there is a God in their life that is watching over them, even if they're violent or incarcerated or depressed," she said.

After graduating from the now-closed St. Clare High in Roslindale, she went on to study nursing at Quincy College and Curry College. Much of her career was spent with psychiatric patients at Boston Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. There, she learned what she called "trust before task:" Listening to patients and building bonds with them before treating them.

"You had to treat them as if they were human beings, as if they were just somebody that had a problem," she said. "I always listened and was very calm, because you're treating the problem. You're not treating the problem patient. You're treating the patient with the problem."

One of her fondest memories is of treating a "traumatized" young girl who couldn't walk. Gifford told her that before she was discharged, the two of them would skip down the hall. The night before she was discharged, the girl walked with the help of a walker. That night, she told Gifford, "We need to skip down the hallway." They did.

"She looked forward to that, and she wrote me a note saying that was probably the best thing that she ever did while she was there, that someone cared for her that much to give her that goal," Gifford said.

At Mass General, she was part of a double-locked unit where incarcerated people would come for treatment. Some had been convicted of violent crimes.

"You had to sit and let them know that you weren't against them," she said. "You were listening to them, and you were there for them, and you were giving them that care, that medical care that they really needed."

When treating the incarcerated, there were always security guards present, but it was still tough. They would call her "every name under the sun" and she had to ignore it.

"You don't get excited," she said.

She has only ever been attacked once, by a young boy with a history of violence at Boston Children's Hospital.

She still thinks about that boy, and prays for him. She said he and the rest of the kids need her prayers.

"I always think there's something else going on in their mind, that they lash out for a reason," she said.

Once her patients leave the hospital, she has no idea what will become of them.

"Sometimes I question, is there really a God out there taking care of the little ones who don't know they're sick?" she said.

She reads Scripture and goes to Father O'Leary to talk about her experiences. That comforts her. So does spending time with her husband John (also a psychiatric nurse), spoiling her niece's children, crocheting, knitting, and riding her motorcycle. So does letting a patient know that everything is going to be okay.

"It's a nice feeling," she said. "It's a comforting feeling, too, because I feel like this is what I need to give back to the community."