The healing power of nurses is the focus in honor of National Nurses Week in this episode of the Nursing Notes Live podcast. I got the chance to sit down and interview RN Donna Sabatino. Donna is an HIV/AIDS nurse educator and community liaison manager with the Janssen Therapeutics Infection Disease franchise. Sabatino is also a member of the Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Council of Excellence (NICE).

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Jamie Davis:         Hi, Donna, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you on the show.

Donna Sabatino:      Oh, it’s great to be on the show, thank you.

Jamie:                   So I always ask out Get-to-Know Nurses their background in nursing. First off, tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse.

Donna:                 Absolutely. I wanted to become a nurse for quite a few reasons. But actually I have to step back because nursing was a second career for me. I went to school to be a teacher. I was an athlete. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My guidance counselor back in the early days recommended I’d be a coach and a PE teacher. So off I went and it was in my senior year of college and realized this is absolutely not what I want to do but figured I’d better finish. I loved the whole health and wellness piece of the curriculum and decided at that point in time I would work in that field and then really just decided that nursing was the place I needed to be that tied together so much of that health and wellness that a lot of my undergraduate degree gave me. So I went into nursing really for many reasons but the passion for health and wellness and the passion for helping people that needed help even if it was just acutely.

Jamie:                   And still coach I’m sure. Nurses are great coaches for their patients.

Donna:                 Absolutely. Nurses are great coaches. Nurses are great advocates. Nurse are educators. Everything that we do ties in beautifully to the role I have now and some of the roles that I have had in the past in my nursing career.

Jamie:                   So what would you say to that person that’s considering a switch from an existing career path into nursing as to how they might apply or not apply their existing skills? Yes, you learn a whole new skill set and theory as a nurse but I found – and I know that other people who have come into nursing as a second career have all found – that there are so many things that you bring from your background in your previous career into nursing.

Donna:                 Yes. One of the first things I would ask them is “Why are you going into this field?” I certainly hope it’s not for the money and I certainly hope that it’s not something that you think will be easy. I really try to find out if they have the personality type to be a nurse and by that I mean are they patient? Are they willing to continuously educate themselves because whatever disease state this nurse is involved in, things change every day whether it would be technology, whether it would be the medications. I would want to know why they feel that nursing is their calling or is it just something they know the need out there, that there’s a shortage out there and they think, “I think I’m just going to be a nurse.” So there’s a lot of personality and deep-rooted personality traits that people need to have to be successful in nursing.

Jamie:                   So tell us a little bit about your progression through nursing school to where you are today.