Ethlyn - It Takes a Village to Raise a Nurse

Ethlyn -







My grandmother, Annie Mae Johnson., was a midwife for our community in the south, not by training, but because it had been passed down through our family. My grandmother learned to be a midwife from her mother, and her mother before her. After I saw grandmother deliver babies and assist mothers with their deliveries, I aspired to become a midwife. In my six-year-old mind I didn't understand that to become a nurse meant graduating from high school and heading off to college. She encouraged me to do all that and to continue on to nursing school. She would say, "Ethlyn, the Lord has a greater plan for you." That greater plan was to be a role model in my community.

I spent the first ten years of my life in Mississippi, in the early 60's, during the time of segregation. To me it was just my community, full of loving women and men who supported each other, supported their community, and supported their kids. When I was ten, I moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where my family knew I'd have greater opportunities. After high school, I applied and was accepted to a four-year program at Ursiline College, where I started my nursing journey.

I had an instructor at college who became a mentor to me: Ruby P. Jackson, the first and only African American instructor I ever had. The first week I had her for clinicals, I came to the pediatrics rotation not prepared."Nursing is beyond just serving at the bedside. It's serving my community as a role model." I thought because we had this bond she would let me get by, but she sent me back home on the bus, in the snow. She told me, "If I allow you to be ill-prepared today, that will be the standard you'll live by the rest of your life." Needless to say, I came very well prepared for the rest of my clinicals. She had a master's degree in nursing, and she held high standards for herself and for her students. She was also a wife and a mother, and to see an African American woman in all those roles was inspiring.

These experiences gave me hope for myself and my generation, and I want to give that hope to the generation that's following me. Nursing for me is beyond just serving at the bedside. It's serving my community as a role model. So many of the things I do are not just clinically based. They're more family based. I use my skills for the community. Because it does take a whole village.

I had obstacles along the way. In the junior year of my nursing program, I became pregnant. I might have become just another statistic, a single mom collecting welfare. But the village came to my rescue. My mother and father helped with my daughter, so I could work on the weekends as a nursing assistant. I'd have class Monday through Thursday and do my clinicals. Then I'd work Friday night and 16 hours on Saturday, and spend Sunday preparing for the next week.

Because I had a daughter, I knew I had to be a role model for her. For that reason, I named my daughter Faith, so that every day when I called her name, I would be reminded: faith is what it took for me to bloom and grow. Whatever community I'm in, it all starts with the church. That's true for most African Americans.

In Tacoma it was Saint John Baptist Church where I began working with members who started our healthcare ministry. People would come up after church services and say "I have a question about my blood pressure." Or about diabetes, or whatever they needed to know, but were reluctant to ask their doctor. I could talk with them about what they needed.

I met my husband when both of us were in the military. I served as an Army Nurse. When my husband was deployed to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, I began helping other women who were left behind when they had questions about child rearing or budgeting or illness and hospitalization.

After two years, we moved back to the south, and again we found community in our church. We began going to small churches in rural areas and giving presentations on health care. It was our way of ministering, whether to seniors, or to families with children. Those people gave back to us when I had surgery, by bringing food to the house and taking my children to appointments.

Now we're in Tacoma again. I've worked at three of the large healthcare systems. I serve as adjunct faculty at Pacific Lutheran University and part time at Tacoma Community College, so now I have all these students that have come through me as I've taught classes. Once I had to go to the emergency room on New Year's Eve night, and it looked like I wasn't going to be admitted at Tacoma General Hospital because they were full. So I spoke on the phone to the charge nurse, who immediately said, "Nurse Gibson, it's Katrina your former student. You come on." At the hospital, the doctor told me, "I don't know who you are, Ms. Gibson, but I have three registered nurses out there and they said you taught all of them, and that I need to come in here and take care of you." That's the only time I got in and out of an emergency room in less than an hour, with x-rays, blood work, everything.

In 2004, I started working in a newly created position: community outreach liaison. I'm the bridge between the community and the hospital system. Part of my job is opening opportunities for middle school and high school students to understand what it takes to prepare for a career in healthcare. I also work with senior citizens that typically, in ethnic minority communities, don't feel comfortable coming to the hospital. We have free healthcare forums in the community that target cancer prevention, diabetes, heart disease. We bring healthcare providers who look like the people in the community to deliver those messages.

I talk to my students about what makes a nurse. Nursing is a science, and we spend a lot of time on that. But it's also an art. We need to help everyone understand what is special about the art of nursing, the art of caring. When people ask me why I don't become a doctor, I say, "Because I would miss so much."

Being a nurse takes the ability to look within your heart and know that you give a part of yourself every day to help someone become a better person. If you believe that, then everything else follows. If you believe in your heart that you are making that patient in the bed a better person, you have no trouble making sure you give them the right medication and give it to them on time, and recording it correctly. Because you believe in what you do. In your heart.

Recently I cared for my mother after surgery in Cleveland, Ohio, where she and my father live. I was my mother's nurse for two weeks. We talked about my life, the things I've been doing in teaching and nursing, and then she said to me, "You are exactly like your grandmother. Your mannerisms, the way you give to people, the way you encourage your students." I liked that.

Power Strategies; Legacy, Leadership, Community
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