In her 15 years as a nurse and 17 years as a nurse practitioner, Bonnie Rademacher-Flis has seen how slow-healing wounds affect the lifestyle and health of patients.

Unable to move or exercise normally, patients with slow-healing or non-healing wounds become vulnerable to bed sores, infections and respiratory diseases like pneumonia. Because wounds can make it difficult to leave the house, patients may lose touch with friends and become socially isolated.

Rademacher-Flis, who moved to Maine two years ago after serving as a nurse practitioner in a 70-bed rehabilitation unit in Wallingford, Connecticut, is excited to join the LincolnHealth Wound Care Center staff, including Medical Director Mark Mainella, DO, Garth Miller, MD, Program Director Mike Boardman, and Clinical Coordinator Susan Papineau, RN, WCC.

“We want to be able to heal patients quickly and get them on their way and back to their normal life,” said Rademacher-Flis.

The Wound Care Center is a partnership of LincolnHealth and Healogics a national wound care provider with more than 500 wound care centers. Healogics wound care centers feature physician-led teams that specialize in the treatment of difficult-to-heal wounds that are often associated with chronic conditions like diabetes and poor circulation.

With a database that includes the treatment and outcomes of millions of wounds, Healogics brings state-of-the-art resources to the task of matching the best treatment options available to each wound.

Rademacher-Flis said she became a nurse practitioner so she could better serve as an advocate for older people after accompanying her grandfather to physician visits and watching as most of the physicians talked to her rather than her grandfather.

Her philosophy as a provider is to try to understand each patient as a whole person including the challenges they face.

She also hopes to help patients understand how changing their lifestyle can help them avoid difficult-to-heal wounds.

Often, she said, struggling with a non-healing wound can be very discouraging, but when that wound finally does heal, that patient often has a new opportunity to change their lifestyle for the better.

Rademacher-Flis lives in Newcastle, with her husband Bob, daughter Alicia and chocolate labs Chip and Scooter. She and her family moved to Maine about two years ago from Connecticut after vacationing in the state for years. She is excited to be helping people within her own community.