Nancy - Heart, Mind and Soul

Nancy -







Nursing was such a great career choice for me because I have always been able to work it around my family. I dropped out of high school and became a mom at the age of sixteen, but by the time I was in my early twenties I knew I needed to figure out what I was going to do career-wise to be able to support my family and get my life on track. Going back to school was the obvious choice, and nursing seemed like a good fit because it combined two things I really love – science and working with people. I started out going to LPN school, and eventually ended up getting my Bachelor’s degree. Today, I am a nurse administrator in a brand-new hospital, and I’m also in the process of working on my Master’s degree.

Hospital nursing faces some challenges in the 21st century. If I learned anything as an instructor, it’s that not everyone is destined to be a hospital nurse. We have to consider that every five years we’re going to turn over a whole new batch of nurses because the ones that are going into nursing today want to be nurse practitioners, or they want to manage something, and they see hospital nursing almost as an entry level to their true profession. We as leaders have to be ready for that turnover and quit thinking we’re going to have that twenty-year career nurse. We might have a few of those, but not like we’ve had in the past. That’s the sense I get in talking with young people entering the profession.

Nursing as a profession has struggled to articulate to the world what it is all about. There have been these approaches to try to get it out there but they were developed in language that only nurses understood.“I read articles that ask, ‘Is nursing a dying profession?’ And I think, no, it’s very alive.” It’s such an amazing career, and yet most people don’t understand it or have a good idea of what nurses really do. And the people who are running hospitals that deliver nursing care are not nurses themselves. They may be wonderful, bright people, but they don’t have a good idea of what nurses do, what they need, and what they deal with every day. These executives listen to the doctors’ complaints, but they have no clue that the nurses are working under those same challenges every day and yet we’re able to succeed. It’s such a nod to the strength of nursing and, in my mind, women and their ability to work under all kinds of conditions and succeed.

I think nursing is really designed for young people. It’s high-energy. It takes a quick mind. You have to be able to work twelve hours. And yet young people are not always ready for the responsibility or how complicated the role is, so they need to have mentors. They need to have guidance from the older nurses. It’s the senior nurses that make the best mentors, if they have the right attitude. I read articles that ask, “Is nursing a dying profession?” And I think, no, it’s very alive. But it’s a changing profession. We have to create the environment to keep it.

I often speak to young people who are considering nursing as a career, and I tell them how nursing touches your heart, mind and soul. It’s physical. It’s interactive. There’s a lot of critical thinking and detective work involved: what’s wrong with this patient? How come this isn’t all fitting together? I can’t think of another profession that offers all of that.

My daughter has a degree in sports marketing. I’ve never talked to my children about becoming nurses because I feel they should pick their own life path and I didn’t want to be a major influence. But she came to me about six months ago and said, “I want to do what you do. I like what you talk about when you come home, and I want to feel what you feel about work, Mom.” So now she’s going into nursing. Isn’t that wonderful?

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