Get to Know med-surg nurse educator Westley Foster, a clinical nurse at Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona and nurse educator at Mesa Community College Nursing Department in Mesa, Ariz., and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. On Nursing Notes Live this month we will focus on medical-surgical nursing. Here’s that interview.

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Jamie Davis: Hi, Wes, I want to thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule and coming here on Nursing Notes Live to join us. It’s great to have you here on the show.

Wesley Foster: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Jamie: So, let’s start off and find out a little bit about your background. I understand you kind of took every steppingstone along the way to your nursing career in multiple stages. So why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse and what’s your educational career looked like as you progressed.

Westley: Okay. Well, I always felt that I started off wanting to become a nurse from the time I was a little kid, around four years old, when my mother was working in a long-term care facility. We used to go there and hang out on Sunday afternoon to meet with the residents she was working with. I was just fascinated with seeing what everybody was doing and helping people with different things. I just remembered thinking that’s what I want to do when I grow up and that’s been my focus ever since that. So it’s always kind of been in my blood being raised in the family of nurses and nursing assistants. So it just seemed a natural fit. The educational path, I took the long way as I tell everybody, but I think it was a good way for me. I started off as a nursing assistant. I went back to school. I became a licensed practical nurse. I went back to school in a diploma program and became a registered nurse. I went back to school for my Bachelor’s degree. I went back to school for my Master’s in Nursing Education. Now I’m actually getting ready to start work on my Doctor of Nursing Practice. So my education is kind of varied and wild and it seems to be continuous which is exactly what we need to be doing anyway.

Jamie: I completely agree with you. Whether it’s getting formal degree education or just working hard at staying active in your profession and getting good continuing education in nursing, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s all about continuing to grow and learn because everything in nursing and medicine and healthcare is changing so quickly.

Westley: Oh, it is. If you don’t keep up – even if you don’t have to go, like you said, with formal education, just keeping up with what’s going on in your area, what’s going on in your nursing world, keep up with the changes. Because when I think back with how I’ve seen things changed when I started back in the ‘80s to what we’re doing now, it just boggles my mind how far we’ve come. I know that means more is going to happen, so we have to be ready for it.

Jamie: So what about nursing in the Medical-Surgical specialty drew you in? I know with your mother’s background maybe I would’ve thought you would have moved towards long-term care nursing program.

Westley: You know, that’s where my grandmother worked as well. She was in long-term care up until a couple of years ago when she finally retired. And I did work in that area as a nursing assistant but it just wasn’t – I’m not an adrenaline junkie per se, but it just wasn’t giving me what I was looking for.  I’ve worked in other areas.