Happy Nurse's Week!

May 7-11 is National Nurse’s Week. After a meeting at the hospital today, I was strolling through the Nursing Exhibits on display, and a series of big maps and pins caught my eye. Each pin represented a location where a nurse employee had either gone to college or had been employed. As I was pushing my pins into the map, I recalled my own experience as a nurse, including the life-changing moments I've had, the rawness of human emotion I've witnessed, and all the amazing people I have met along the way.

So, at the risk of boring you, I thought I’d give you a little insight as to where my nursing career has taken me.

After graduating from South Dakota State University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing waaaay back in 1992, my first job was at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. I worked on a solid-organ transplant unit. That means we transplanted things solid – like kidneys, pancreas’s, and livers. At that time it was one of the leading transplant centers in the world and I met my share of foreign dignitaries and “important” people…not that it really matters when you’re sick. Looking back on this experience makes me think of the close relationships with patients/families that I formed, the fear I felt toward our very terrifying nurse manager, and the constant challenge of applying my education into the real world and vice versa. Oh yeah, and I also heard, “Don’t f*** with the pancreas!” for the first time. (inside surgeon joke…sorry)

The end of my time there coincided with Bill’s college graduation from UW-Madison. He headed out to Virginia to work for the Department of Defense and I started a stint as a travel-nurse with Lisa, my friend from college. Our first assignment was in Charleston, West Virginia. It took me most of the 4 months there to finally understand the language and to overcome Appalachian culture shock. I worked on a Neuroscience unit and got my first taste of brain injuries, halos, and brain death criteria. It was also a wake-up call in racism for this Midwestern girl.

Next was a 3 month assignment in Bradenton, Florida, a small town just south of Tampa. I worked on a Women’s Unit that opened specifically for the influx of “Snow Birds”. And it was staffed primarily with travelers like me. It really made me realize how important it is for old people to avoid getting sick when they are south for the winter. It was during this job, that I realized that geriatrics and gynecology was not my cup of tea.

Last stop on the travel-train: Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut on a Cardiac Procedures unit. We took care of all the post-angiograms, post-angioplasties, and pre-op bypass patients. This was my first real experience with hearts and I learned so much. I really liked this job, I loved being so close to NYC (and all the New England states, for that matter), but I really despised their warp-speed pace of life and underlying harshness concerning most things.

Overall, this year of traveling was incredibly amazing, fascinating and eye-opening. I learned to appreciate different cultures, people and ways of doing things – both in nursing care and life in general. It was pretty much like being on a year-long vacation…and getting paid for it. It was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So, back to reality again. We got married and moved to Kansas City in 1995 and I took my “dream job” at the University of Kansas Medical Center in KCK. I worked in the Trauma and Surgical ICU in this very busy, urban, Level I Trauma Center. It’s what I had really wanted to do since nursing school. On that crazy unit, we saw everything….literally everything. Trauma patients, as a whole, are not typically known to be a gratuitous group. It’s a patient population that poses many challenges for the health care system. But I loved it. This job was harder than anything I had ever done before, I seriously remember not having time to eat or pee for 12 hours straight on several occasions. My co-workers were awesome nurses and became some of my very best friends. I still look back upon this job and really miss it.

The kids were born and we moved back to Minneapolis to get closer to family. I hopped around between about 7 hospitals and ICUs in the metro area while working for a staffing agency over the next 5 years. And again, I learned so much about nursing and myself, while totally enjoying the flexibility and financial compensation from this type of job.

I’ve been in this current job for about 2 ½ years. And I truly, truly love it! I’m a Trauma and Neurosurgical Nurse Clinician at a hospital trying to obtain a Level II trauma designation. I do care-coordination, I serve as a liaison with the physician, staff nurses, patient and their families, I do some lectures and classes for staff education, and I help gather data to improve trauma care. And for the most part, I don’t have anything to do with bodily fluids anymore. Not that I miss it.

Nursing has been a truly amazing career for me. The variety of experience and possibilities are endless. I’ve seen much of the country, observed a vast array of lifestyles and attitudes, and have met countless people. All these experiences have made me who I am today - and they've made me a pretty good nurse, too. As a nurse, you know that you can’t always make things better, but you can make a difference.

Happy Nurse’s Week!