The longest-serving certified registered nurse anesthetist in UConn Health Center history is retired after 36 years of service.

Pattilynn Conard says goodbye with fond memories of the Health Center.

“You are always learning at an academic institution,” Conard says. “The Health Center truly is a center of health as it offers the opportunity to open many doors and advance in one’s profession.”

Over the course of her career she was both an instructor—in anesthesiology on the UConn School of Medicine faculty—and a student—earning degrees in biology, philosophy and medical ethics. But the patient was always her primary focus.

“A nurse anesthetist very fortunately has the wonderful experience of offering the patient clinical care eight hours a day,” Conard says. “You’re always in contact with a patient so you really have to love what you do. You need to want to help the patient grasp some control over their illness and disease, be it chronic pain, acute pain, the safe and pain free surgery, and resuscitation efforts.”

She first joined the UConn family in 1971 at McCook Hospital in Hartford, which didn’t have a nurse anesthetist at the time.

“I was the only one there,” Conard recalls. “There were two doctors and me.”

She was there less than a year, compelled to leave Connecticut by her husband’s military commitments. But five years later she was back for good, this time at the two-year-old John Dempsey Hospital.

“The Department of Anesthesia was in its infancy,” Conard says. “It was in charge of the operating room, anesthesia, intensive care unit, emergency room, and respiratory therapy.”

She also was involved in dozens of research grants and publications on topics such as respiratory control mechanisms, inhaled anesthetics, and pediatric pain control, including study of the fentanyl lollipop, which enabled pain-free delivery of chemotherapy to pediatric cancer patients.

“It’s a narcotic grape-flavored lollipop that was experimental at the time,” Conard says. “Some of the anesthesiologists and I had a research study where we actually administered this to these children, and it was absolutely wonderful.”

That was in 1988, when the fifth floor of John Dempsey Hospital was the pediatric floor. The fentanyl lollipop would win Food and Drug Administration approval and is used today.

“Pattilynn has been a true pioneer among advanced practice nurses at the UConn Health Center,” says Chief Nursing Officer Ellen Leone. “I think it only fitting for each of us, as nurses, to take a moment to celebrate the remarkable career of our nurse colleague.”

Her last day was June 13.

Dr. Thomas Yasuda, clinical chief of the UConn Health Center Department of Anesthesiology, credits Conard with being personally involved in the “tremendous clinical growth of the Department of Anesthesiology. She has been a leader in the institution and has provided anesthesia care to thousands of residents of the Farmington Valley and the state of Connecticut.”

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