Meet our Get to Know Nurse Patricia Cunningham, president of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association and associate professor at the University of Memphis Loewenberg School of Nursing in Memphis, Tennessee. I ask Pat about her career in nursing and also shared questions from current nursing students, as part of our “Ask A Nurse” portion of the podcast.

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

Patricia Cunningham:               Thank you, Jamie. It’s nice to be asked.

Jamie:                   So tell me a little bit about your background in nursing. We get questions all the time from student nurses and nurses starting their careers about how they should decide on a specialty or something and I find that it’s often a great opportunity for us to find the various paths that nurses take to reach their career goals. And I thought it would be great to hear how you arrived at – why you wanted to become a nurse to begin with and also what path your career in education took.

Patricia:               Okay. Well, in terms of nursing, I’m an old girl, so I had the early influence of the 1970s where the emphasis was on baccalaureate education and that was the path that I took. I had a mother whom many of us have someone influential like that who understood that education should be at the college level versus, at the time, in the ‘70s, the diploma way of going to school which was very also common in my neighborhood but my mother had a vision and I’m really grateful for that. I was able to attain my baccalaureate degree and became interested in mental health nursing because of the complexity of patient behavior. From a very early point on I understood that patient’s capacity to get well varied quite a bit based on their own motivation, their own understanding, and their own, if you will, what we call now “healthcare literacy.” And I became fascinated early on with human behavior. So within two years of completing my baccalaureate nursing education, I went into psychiatric mental health nursing. And, in terms of, where to start, if you wanted to be a psychiatric mental health nurse, I would highly recommend you pick a really good place to start. And I want to give a shout out to Friends Hospital in Philadelphia which I call a “watershed year” for me. I was only there for one year. I’ve been married and relocated. And it was at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia that I learned the fundamentals of therapeutic communication. The fundamentals once again of the interpersonal relationship and how foundational those two things were to be for the rest of my nursing career as I went on and jumped through all the hoops that we do in nursing for graduate school and pursuing advanced practice that that’s what people like to do and all the different possibilities. The thing about nursing is it’s filled with possibilities to go any direction you want to go.

Jamie:                   An advanced practice nursing really is taking off in many ways, especially, in psychological or psychiatric nursing realm. I know in my area we have a VA hospital nearby and the nurse practitioners there really run the show.

Patricia:               Yes. Depending on the state, of course, nursing in the advanced practice role have different arrangements in terms of state law as to how we function. And that’s a different conversation. But I don’t know of any nurse at any level who doesn’t believe in collaboration and we very often will be the first point of contact and maybe the only point o...

Join our Psych Nursing panel discussion with two distinguished guests. First off we have Rebecca H. Lehto, assistant professor in the College of Nursing at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, and also Michael Rice, an advanced practice RN and professor and endowed chair of psychiatric mental health nursing at the University of Colorado College of Nursing in Aurora, Colorado. Here’s that discussion.

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Jamie Davis:         Rebecca and Michael, I want to welcome you to Nursing Notes Live and thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedules to join me on the show this week.

Michael Rice:              Well, thank you for having me.

Rebecca Lehto:              Yes, thank you.

Jamie:                   I always ask our nurse panelists to share a little bit about their backgrounds and help new nurses and nursing students understand how we arrive, where we arrive in our careers. Rebecca, would you like to go first and just tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse and how that whole career progressed through your education to where you are now?

Rebecca:              Sure. After I graduated from nursing school, I was mainly interested in finding work in a hospital environment just to – I guess, so I can gain some essential nursing experience. When I first submitted my applications, my first offer came from a manager of an inpatient oncology unit so this was a medical unit which took care of patients with hematological kinds of cancers and so that was where I found myself working. So, over time, as I continued to do that sort of work, I became somewhat inspired by this work and, as a result, I just continued down that trajectory where I went back to school and became trained as a clinical nurse specialist. While I was working as a Masters student, I worked as a research assistant for a nursing professor who was interested in neuropsychiatric problems that cancer patients would have as a result of the treatment regimens they were on. So I tested patients for her on that study and then ended up going back to school and getting my PhD and became a researcher and even did a post doc after that just to continue my education to better understand the psychological issues that challenged patients when they’re facing chronic diseases such as cancer. I can honestly say that, as an oncology nurse, from when I was a clinician, even as an educator and now as a researcher, I really never stopped learning and I’ve never been bored. I’ve always kind of had a sense that my work has value and meaning so I actually felt pretty privileged to have this type of a career.

Jamie:                   Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing that. It seems like you’ve done quite a lot in your career.

Rebecca:              Oh, I would say and it’s been over 20 years. It’s a significant chunk of time.

Jamie:                   Michael, how about you? Why did you decide to become a nurse and how did that progress to your advanced practice nursing today?

Michael:              Well, it’s a circuitous tale. I grew up a cowboy in Sand Hills, Nebraska. One day, I decided I didn’t want to farm a ranch and one of the options I looked at initially was a program that I went to had a dual-track nursing and anesthesia which was I was in until I did my clinical rotation in psych. Met a young gentleman who had schizophrenia and while he had total word salad, he could play “Flight of the Bumblebee” in classical style to perfection. I was absolutely fascinated. It just grabbed me.

Meet our Get to Know Nurse Elizabeth Voyles, Nurse Coordinator of Palliative Care at Children’s Hospital of Michigan. I ask Elizabeth about her career in pediatric nursing and also shared questions from current nursing students, as part of our first “Ask A Nurse” portion of the podcast.

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Jamie Davis:         Beth, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you here with us today and I always ask the nurses that come on the show to share with us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse, why is it that you decided nursing was the career for you and maybe give us a little bit of insight into how your education progressed and your career progressed to bring you to where you are today.

Elizabeth Boyles:     Well, I always enjoyed sciences when I was growing up and when you look at being a nurse. When I was growing up it was one of the professions that women could do and get into very easily and I really just thought it would be a good fit for me. I went to nursing school and it really was a good fit. I enjoyed it from the time I started. When I did my pediatric rotation, I fell in love with the kids. At the time, we did a team leading rotation that we had to do, which is sort of like your senior delving into experience. And so I chose to do mine at Children’s Hospital and I worked on an orthopedic-surgical floor for the kids and I loved it. That’s where I started my nursing career. Actually, interviewed and was hired on that floor and I’ve worked in pediatrics all of my career except for about two years when I was out of the area. But even at that time I did some home nursing care and then I ended up doing, working in the health department doing screening for children. So it’s still came back around to the backdoor to kids one way or another. People often ask me why I work with kids and I say that I just love them and I can’t imagine working with adults. So it’s been enjoyable in that sense.

Jamie:                   Yes, it’s interesting. A lot of people talk about – I hear nursing students say, “Oh, I want to work with kids” and it’s one of those fields that you either fall in love with it or you find out very quickly that it’s not for you. Do you agree with that?

Elizabeth:            I think very much so and I think a lot of people start out in pediatrics too when they first graduate and they’re young and then when they start having family and they have kids of their own they find it even more challenging because you identify a lot with those children and your own children and you can see your own children going through this and I think the most difficult things for me in taking care of kids was when I would take care of someone who was the same age as my own child or whatever. And I remember one time taking care of this five-month old little girl who came into the hospital who they thought was previously healthy and she ended up having a cardiac arrest and a major cardiac problem and she died and I took care of her that night. And I had a five-month old daughter at home and I went home in the morning and she was in her chair and I grabbed her out of her chair and I hugged her and my husband was like, “What’s going on?” I said, “I just need to hug her. Leave me alone.” So it’s just those kinds of things and I think you need to work through those differences and realize that it’s challenging but it also makes us human and it makes us more caring when we’re actually caring for the patient and the family in some ways when you can identify with them.

Jamie:                   I see that you’re a palliative care nurse coordi...

Sit in on our pediatric nursing panel discussion with two distinguished guests. First off we have Anne Pettinger, a board certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Pediatrics Northwest in Washington state and Anne Derouin, a Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and a faculty member at Duke University School of Nursing. Here’s that discussion.

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Jamie Davis:         I’d like to welcome both Anne Derouin and Anne Pettinger to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have both Annes here on the show today. I’ll start with Anne Derouin because I always ask this question. Anne, tell us a little bit about your reason for becoming a nurse and maybe a little brief history of your educational background and your career background that brought you to your point of career today.

Anne Derouin:    Sure. First of all, thank you so much for inviting me. It’s certainly a pleasure to be here. I brag about J&J all the time and have all my students use your resources. So I’m really honored to be part of this webcast and discussion. I will tell you that I’m probably born for this. I feel like I have been a nurse my entire life. I always played nurse when I was a kid. Coming up through high school, I tried really hard to look at other opportunities within healthcare and also in other professions. And I actually went to college to become a journalist and was at college for about a semester and pinched myself and said, “What in the world am I doing here? I need to be in a university that has a school of nursing and ended up transferring shortly after that into a nursing program. I have always just been a passionate nurse. I can’t imagine being anything else. I have also always been a pediatric nurse. So, as a young girl, I was always a caregiver. I can remember rescuing someone who was drowning in a pool and being totally inspired about being able to impact someone’s life like that and that may have inspired me. I was always the person in high school that went with my friends to see their sick grandparents or their sick parents or to visit someone who was sick themselves who was at my age. I like translating for people what was going on and providing a sort of a calming influence is what I was always attempted to do. And that has really played out throughout my career. I’ve done a wide variety of experiences. I went to school in Michigan and my husband’s work brought us to North Carolina by way of Wisconsin. And all of those stuff along the way had allowed me to work in different venues of pediatrics mostly in the hospital but I’ve been a flight nurse, an ICU nurse, a neonatal nurse. I’ve worked oncology. I’ve done organ transplantation. I’ve done some research. For the past 15 years, I’ve been doing working in advanced practice nurse as a pediatric nurse practitioner primarily with adolescents and young adults. And then in the past three years, I have been working as a faculty member here at Duke. I teach pediatrics and pediatric nurse practitioners. So it’s come kind of full circle and I envision that the remainder of my career will be in pediatrics as well.

Jamie:                   Wow, I have to say you’re the first nurse I’ve ever met that had any other connection with journalism besides myself. My original degree was in Journalism and then later in life I found myself drawn to healthcare and became a paramedic first and then a nurse. When this whole web – internet broadcasting thing came along, I found myself drawn back into journalism with a healthcare slant. So it’s just interesting how we get to where we are.

Anne D:                That’s right. It all fits.

Check out how nurses use social media and technology in their nursing practice. I got the chance to sit down and chat with our distinguished nursing panel including Pamela Cipriano, Research Associate Professor at the University of Virginia School of Nursing and Meredith Rowe, nursing professor and endowed chair at the University of South Florida College of Nursing. Here’s that segment.

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Jamie Davis:       Pam and Meredith, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you both on the program this month. I always ask the first question of my nurse panelists to share a little bit about their backgrounds in nursing – why they wanted to become a nurse and their career to date in a brief synopsis. So, Pam, why don’t you go first and just tell us a little bit about what directed you into the nursing field.

Pamela Cipriano:     Thank you, Jamie. When I was first going to college, I was pursuing a degree in Medical Technology but then quickly realized that that was really not going to give me the opportunity to be very interactive with people. So I quickly turned my interest to nursing and have never looked back since and have always appreciated the times that I was able to care for patients both as a staff nurse and as a clinical nurse specialist. And then relatively early in my career, because of my experiences, I served as president of the National Student Nurses Association and then quickly became involved in the American Nursing Association. So I did leverage those leadership opportunities and moved into management. So I have been doing that for many, many years both as a chief nurse and chief operating officer in a number of academic medical centers. But probably some of my favorite days were really as I spent as a manager of a Shock Trauma Intensive Care Unit as well as working as an adult ICU clinical specialist where you really felt like you are on the frontline and can influence care. My responsibility in management, obviously, is really to be an advocate for nurses so that they can deliver the best care. So I have really also enjoyed being in management for many years now.

Jamie:                  Great. I’m looking forward to hearing your input on technology later on in the segment. Meredith, how about you? Why did you become a nurse?

Meredith Rowe: I primarily became a nurse because I was very interested in science and research as well as the healthcare field. And nursing was a very nice balance between those three and I originally started out in the Army Nurse Corps, the Army Student Nurse Program and then, after, I went to practice primarily in critical care, my master’s degree and then I went into the Academic route. After getting my PhD, I started in nursing research. I’ve been in nursing research for about 15 to 20 years now.

Jamie:                  And you’re involved actually in development of technologies. So we’re going to be looking at both the management side of nursing involving technology as well as looking at some of the aspects of developing new technology for use in the patient care setting. So I’m really looking forward to that.

Meredith:            Yes, that’s correct.

Jamie:                  Fantastic. Pam, let’s start with you because I know you got a background and done some work with the Institute of Medicine which is a big proponent of utilizing nurses to the fullest extent of their educational potential and training and that includes the use of technology to facilitate better patient care.

Pamela:               And, Jamie, one of the most exciting experiences I had when I was...

Check out our special interview on nursing and social media with Pamela Ressler, MS, RN, HN-BC, founder of Stress Resources and lecturer in the pain research, education and policy program at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She researched how social media can be a tool to help combat isolation and build communities for chronic disease patients. Here’s what she has to say.

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Jamie Davis:         Hi, Pam. Welcome to Nursing Notes Live and I always start off and ask our nurse guests to share with our audience a little bit about their nursing background. Why did you want to become a nurse?

Pamela Ressler: Well, thank you for having me, Jamie. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to other nurses out there. This may sound a little trite or silly but when I was in elementary school – and this is dating myself a bit – there was a very popular series of books called “Cherry Ames.” Cherry Ames was a nurse and she seemed to be able to do anything everywhere. I guess I kind of put this in the back of my mind for several years that nursing didn’t have to be done in a hospital. That it could be done in lots of different places and it was so flexible and I thought this was pretty cool. Again, dating myself, I thought it would be pretty cool to have a white cap and those white shoes. Fast-forward a bit, I did go directly into a bachelor’s program, a BSN program, at the University of Michigan and I entered that in the mid-‘70s, in 1975. I graduated in ’79 and moved to the Boston area where I kind of started a long and winding journey that I never really would have imagined in certainly the mid to late ‘70s my nursing career would take me. I started thinking that I would be in mother-child health especially. I really liked post-partum and nursery work. But my career took me into a more ambulatory area of general surgery, vascular surgery, and I stayed there for a number of years. My main part of my job was a lot of patient teaching, a lot of connection to our folks and lot of learning about – it was very new at that time, it was in the early ‘80s, about this thing that we now call, “Mind-body connection.” So I was in the Boston area, I started to look into work around mind-body medicine which at the time was being touted at one of the Harvard-affiliated hospitals. I learned about this, started to teach our patients in our practice, and we were able to actually use lower doses of, let’s say, the vasodilators that we had been using. So this kind of really piqued my interest in relationship teaching, this whole area of patient self-care, started to really be exciting for me. One of my children had been diagnosed at a very early age with ulcerative colitis and I became an incredible advocate for pediatric care. Then I transitioned my career more back to where I thought I might be when I graduated into working in school nursing for a few years. That was really exciting because again building that relationship really was working with kids with maybe some medical issues but more right with them than wrong with them and how do we support and nurture that ability of being well within the context of disease and that it can really be an integral part of where I felt my nursing was really important.

I formed my own company at the time called “Stress Resources,” which I still run, and the focus was really on how do we build tools and use tools of resilience, those that help healthcare providers, individuals and organizations but also how do we nurture that within our patients and communities. So through that,

Meet Vicky Ruffing, nurse manager at the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center and former president and founder of the Rheumatology Nurses Society, and Sheree Carter, current president of the Rheumatology Nurses Society and clinical assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville College of Nursing. Here’s what they have to say about rheumatology nursing.

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Jamie Davis:         Sheree and Vicky, welcome to Nursing Notes Live and thank you very much for coming on the show today. So I’ll guess start with Sheree. Sheree, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background in nursing? Why you wanted to become a nurse and something about the progression of your career through nursing school and to where you are today?

Sheree Carter:     I would love to. How much time do you have because this a long history. I’ll tell you what, and I’m going to give away my age, I’m in my like 50s. So back in the Dark Ages, we had a choice to go in to be a nurse or to be a teacher or – Home Economics was another great field that young girls went into. But I chose nursing or either it chose me. I tell you when I was a big young child growing up, my neighbor on one side was the director of nursing at Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa and on the other side of me was a professor at Druid City Hospital’s School of Nursing. So I think that was my earliest influence were two my neighbors and saw what they did on a daily basis. Their crisp white uniforms and how neat and professional they looked at all times. Yes, so I decided early on that the medical profession is where I needed to be. Nursing is where I needed to be. I started looking because I was champion of the underdogs as a kid growing up and orthopedics, in particular, was an area that nobody wanted to go into because everybody was stuck in bed and strung up and had casts and whatever. I love that. So I decided I was going to go into the area that nobody wanted when I went into nursing school the first time. So, yes, right out of high school, went to Druid City Hospital’s School of Nursing right here at Tuscaloosa, Alabama and absolutely fell in love with Orthopedic Nursing, just fell in love with it. I knew this what I wanted to be. And then I graduated from nursing school and went straight into orthopedics and then decided, “You know, I really do need to get that baccalaureate.” At that time, the American Nurses Association was saying, “You know, we want the entry level to be a baccalaureate.” So I gathered my little horses together and got my baccalaureate from Auburn University at Montgomery and fell in love with that at that time with the concept of teaching and the theory and that aspect of the nursing profession. Still stayed in orthopedics, neurosurgery and started getting in to rheumatology at that time, some of the rheumatic disease patients that we would see on the orthopedic floor. Later on, I got my Master’s from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Seeing that that was yet another step that I needed to make toward being the best that I could be as a nurse that was following down at administrative type path at that time. And still having that love of research and love of teaching, I decided that I needed to go ahead and get my PhD. And I’m almost finished with that now. Still working on that. It’ been a work in progress. Been working on that for four years. I should be able to finish it this year. And it’s been a decision that I’ve never regretted. It’s all throughout going from a diploma all the way up through a PhD in Nurs...

Meet Jan Revella, an arthritis specialist and the Director of Research and Education at the Sonoran Spine Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Here’s what she has to say about being a rheumatology nurse.

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Jamie Davis:         Jan, welcome Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you on the show here. I always like to start off with my first question to the nurses that I have on the show and ask if you could tell us a little bit about why you decided to become a nurse and maybe give us a picture of your path through nursing school and through your nursing career.

Jan Revella:        Well, basically, I’ve been in the medical field for many years from the very get-go. And my family is very medically-oriented as well. And I came from a background, a very unexciting actually that my mother was a nurse and that was why I chose nursing. I felt that I didn’t know much about nursing at the time but she seemed very happy and seemed very satisfied with her career so I kind of just stepped into her shoes and did the same thing. Went to nursing school from 20 to 23 and graduated and immediately went into orthopedics because it was a day position, funny thing. And fell in love with orthopedics and in that orthopedics hospital, basically, it came down to me taking care of many, many people that had arthritis and that’s where my rheumatology career started. Knee joint replacement is done for arthritis as most nurses know and because of that I started learning about joint replacement and then I started looking at the patients themselves and what they needed to know and that’s really how my career took off.

Jamie:                   You know, it’s interesting. I talked to nurses in many specialties in the course of doing this program and rheumatology is one of the specialties that I’m more familiar with simply because both my mother and mother-in-law have rheumatoid arthritis and one of my daughters has rheumatoid arthritis. So I’m very familiar. And I have to say rheumatology nurses have really touched us in many special ways as a family and I wonder what your thoughts are about how important it is to connect, not just with the individual, but with their family members as well.

Jan:                       I think it’s really important and I think rheumatology is really unique, orthopedics as well, because there has to be a lot of education and that education has to be applied to the patient and also to the family many times because that rheumatology patient may be not feeling well. They have a lot of stress around them. They may have lost some of their independence due to the disease process itself. And because of that, the family has an integral part play in helping this patient feel better and become better and did them the encouragement to become independent as they try to recover either from an orthopedic procedure due to their rheumatologic condition or simply because they need the education so that they can learn to get well.

Jamie:                   Do you see other nurses seeing the specialty and moving into it? Is it something that you see nurses choosing as a specialty?

Jan:                       No, I don’t. I don’t see a lot at all. In fact, nurses are amazed at my interest in this. And I think the reason why it’s seemed important for me is because I learned early on in my career to work hard as a nurse. And that to me is critical in this field because you have to be able to understand the diagnosis process. It gives you the knowledge. It gives you this platform so that you can be effective at providing that education.

Meet Susan Fletcher, a nursing professor at Chamberlain College of Nursing in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of her current senior nursing students, Sarah Turner. In this episode, you’ll hear all about their international service project, taking nursing students to areas around the world.

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Jamie Davis:         Sarah and Susan, I want to welcome both of you to Nursing Notes Live. So I think we’ll start with you, Sarah. You’re still currently in nursing school, at least, for a few more days. So tell us a little bit about your background why you wanted to become a nurse and your path and your nursing experience through nursing school?

Sarah Turner:      Well, I’ve always had a really strong desire to learn science and medicine and really be very aware of what’s going on with people and their bodies. And went to school, got a biology degree, became a teacher. Got tired of it really quickly and then my mom was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. And throughout the time that we lived with her disease, we had a lot of nurses coming and going and we also got a lot of help from the community. Our friends, our families, strangers – people pitched in all the time to make sure that everybody in the family was doing really well. So after we lost my mom, I felt like I needed to re-evaluate a little bit and look at what I was doing. And decided to leave teaching and choose a path that was going to not only give back to the community that gave me so much but give back to everybody around the world and really highlight my love of medicine and science.

Jamie Davis:         Excellent. I find so many people that are touched by the nurses that helped them and want to give back and I’ve heard that kind of story many times before. I think it’s one of the ways that many of us are led to the nursing profession.

Sarah:                   It really is. They not only became the people that come and go from our house or our friends, they became a part of the family and a part of our closest circle as we went through the most difficult times in our lives. I really truly, as I go forward in my nursing career, look forward to becoming a part of the family for everybody I worked with and helping them through the difficult times as well as some of the really happy times.

Jamie Davis:         Susan, what about you? What led you to nursing? Tell us a little bit about your background through school and through your profession to where you are today.

Susan Fletcher:  Okay. My interest has probably always been there in helping people and helping things. Even as a kid, I would be the one that would bring home the sick animals. My father was a physician and I’d bring home birds. I’d bring home dogs or cats. One time, I brought home this great big snake and the family freaked out over that because it was a poisonous snake but I didn’t know that at the time. Other than that, I knew I always wanted to be a nurse. I always wanted to be involved in helping. My first job was in public health. Then I did Emergency Room nursing for quite a while. From public health and emergency, I went into education. And I blended both of those roles into international nursing which is what I do now. It is like the dream job for me. I absolutely love everything that I do and the opportunity to work with so many unique people, so many wonderful students. Sarah is just a wonderful example of the quality people that I have an opportunity to be connected with. But we have the opportunity to serve humanity in so many different countries. So that’s me.

Jamie Davis:         Sarah,

Meet University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill nursing professor Megan Williams and one of her former students, trauma center nurse Lindsey Lang. In this episode, they share their project with us—providing nutritious food and financial support to a local food bank for senior citizens.

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Jamie Davis:         Lindsey and Megan, I want to thank you both for coming on the show and welcome you here to Nursing Notes Live. I always like to start off the show, each episode, with talking a little bit about each of your backgrounds in nursing. And, Lindsey, we’ll go ahead and start with you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse and something about where your nursing practice and educational process has brought you so far?

Lindsey Lang:      Sure. For a long time, I wanted to work in healthcare. I did a lot of volunteer work growing up in a big hospital and I really enjoy that. Once I went to college at UNC, I started looking into nursing. I really liked how after getting my nursing degree I can jump right in to working in a hospital and working with people. Nurses really spend the majority of their time with the patients. That’s what I really liked. So I went to UNC Nursing School on Chapel Hill and actually just graduated this past May. I’m currently working at UNC in their Emergency Department.

Jamie Davis:         Excellent. As a brand new student just graduated and now working in the field, the sky’s the limit. I guess you really feel like your prospects are wide open at this point.

Lindsey:               Yes. I’m really enjoying what I’m doing now working in the ER. I don’t know where I’ll end up taking me but I’m loving what I’m doing now.

Jamie Davis:         Fantastic. Megan, how about you? What was your reason for becoming a nurse and something in your background that brought you where you are today?

Megan Williams:     Sure. Well, thank you, Jamie, for having us on today. I am very lucky because growing up I was surrounded by my family who always have sort of this idea – and I’ve heard about their memories of me as a small child helping to care for my grandfather. My grandmother worked in a hospital. She was an administrative assistant in the hospital and I grew up going with her on Sundays to the hospital for lunch. I was just in awe of the folks that worked at the hospital and I knew I wanted to work there from a very early age. I also had a wonderful role model. My aunt is a nurse and a nurse practitioner. And so I had her as a role model and I heard about her stories and the patients she cared for. So I really knew from early on that I wanted to be able to have a career in healthcare. I knew early on that it was going to be nursing for me. I wanted to be able to help, take care of other people. Nursing has been and continued to be not just for me a job but it truly is a passion that I have for helping other people and giving your time to somebody else, that gift of giving to other people. And we get to do that every day in our profession and I think it’s just such a tremendous opportunity for those who are interested in the profession, to think about what area might work for them. It’s just like Lindsey’s in the Emergency Department but there are so many areas in nursing that individuals can work in. So I just think the nursing profession in itself gives us so much opportunity. I went to UNC Wilmington to get my undergraduate nursing degree. I graduated from there and worked as a nurse at Duke Medical Center. I was a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit nurse and while I was working the...