La Sean Davis-Semple: It’s her nature to help the helpless

Being a social worker is not a walk in the park as many of us would think it is. It’s a job that requires patience and hopefulness and a drive to help people. It also requires involvement and investing your own personal time into contributing to the well-being of someone else’s life.

The involvement of a social worker in someone’s life plays a major role in that person’s willingness to move in the right direction in their life.
For 43-year-old La Sean Davis-Semple, a social worker at the Dialysis Department at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), helping people has always been her dream as she was growing up. Before she even knew what the word social worker meant, she wanted to be one. The memory of her telling her mother when she was a little girl that she wanted to build homes for homeless people is clear as day in her head.
Her mother would always tell her that she would become a welfare officer, because she saw the willingness and the determination in her daughter’s eyes to assist people who were in need.
La Sean has been a social worker for the past seven years at the GPHC, but she has been working there for more than 20 years. The job description of a social worker is nothing like she imagined, especially for a social worker who deals with patients who are on dialysis – a life-determining treatment.
La Sean is responsible for preparing and prepping patients by helping with social and interpersonal difficulties before, during, and sometimes after their dialysis treatment. It is a lengthy process that sometimes requires months of involvement, depending on how long the patient remains on dialysis treatment.
The mother of two has faced many challenges during her time as a social worker at the GPHC. She recalls working with a 16-year-old girl who was receiving dialysis treatment at the hospital after being diagnosed with hypertension.
“So, there was a 16-year-old girl that came in with instagia disease and I wanted so bad to help her get a transplant and all of these things, but because she wasn’t getting a match – her sister wasn’t a perfect match, her mom wasn’t a perfect match – she didn’t get the transplant. Eventually, that patient died,” La Sean recalled.
La Sean said that the girl’s passing devastated her because she kept thinking of her own daughter who was the same age.
“I got really close to that patient and that patient died. Why it hurt me so much? Because I thought that she could’ve been my child, you know. I got really close with that patient,” she said.
As such, La Sean stated that she had to develop a mechanism whereby she taught herself not to get close to her patients, no matter the situation. She did this so that she could safeguard her own mental health.
“That is one thing I learned over time is that you mustn’t get so close emotionally with patients. Yes, you must have some sort of emotions involved, but then you have to know how to separate it,” she explained.
But this strong woman who has been dreaming of helping people since she was a young girl, found it hard to create that barrier and block out her emotions. She detailed another case of an eight-year-old boy who died. This is probably her most heartbreaking case yet.
“My most traumatic case was this eight-year-old boy. I watched him in the hospital for over a year. We tried everything that was available, every resource that was available we gave to him, but he didn’t make it. And to watch him die…you know, to prepare him for death, like to tell him, ‘well, you know, you cannot make it or you wouldn’t make it’. I’m not God, but this is what the medical aspect of it is,” La Sean said.
She stated that after the child passed away, she was heavily involved in the planning of his funeral; that is how attached she was to the little boy.
The helper by heart said that she would go, and have gone, to great lengths to help the people she worked with, especially financially, as most patients who receive dialysis treatment cannot afford it, due to it being expensive.
“I’ve gone so far, trust me. I would ask persons who I know are very comfortable with money, who can afford it to assist a patient. Even the doctors that work right in this department I would ask them for money to assist this patient. ‘Please for this money to buy this for this patient.’ ‘Please for this money to do this for this patient.’ I would go to the length for patients because to watch persons just die, young people, mothers with young children, fathers who are breadwinners and have young children, it’s heartbreaking. It’s really heartbreaking,” she explained.
The mother who juggles a marriage, the responsibility of caring for two kids, and patients who need emotional support, likes to escape it all when it gets too overwhelming.
She goes to the movies or for a walk on the sea walls for some alone time she can’t get anywhere else.
La Sean’s determination to help the people she works with is truly inspiring. She travels miles for them, cries a river with, grieves with them, and prays for their safety every step of the way. She is a true hero. And her hard work proves that it is in her nature to help the helpless.
So as International Women’s Day approaches and we all ponder on the thought of how women manage a professional career like being a social worker, remember that there are strong, confident, and resilient women just like La Sean Davis out there who help, care, love, and understand willingly to make people’s lives better.