Nursing Notes Live delves into the world of the pain management nurse. This month’s featured “Get to Know Nurse” Esther Bernhofer is a Pain Research Nurse at the Nursing Institute of Medicine and Digestive Inpatient Cleveland Clinic. I asked her how she decided to become a nurse and what drew her to focus on the management of patient pain on how reducing pain affects patient health and lifestyle.

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Pain Management Nurse Interview

Jamie:                         Esther, tell us a little bit about how you became a nurse. What led you to the nursing profession to begin with?

Esther:                        Well, I pretty much always wanted to be a nurse. I remember as a little girl reading Clara Barton books and Florence Nightingale things. That was always something that I always wanted to do. It was an easy decision after high school to go right into a nursing program at the University of Akron and wanted to get my BS done right away and that was in the late seventies when BSN programs weren’t as popular, of course, as a starting point for Nursing as it is now. But I knew I wanted to do in a very professional way and move my career along right away so that’s what I did. There was never really much doubt otherwise.

Jamie:                         It’s interesting to talk to people about how they get into nursing and so many just – have always been drawn in that direction. It’s interesting to hear that you have a similar experience. What about pain management nursing? Can you tell us a little bit about what types of nursing fields you participated in before you got into patient management and how that led you to focus on pain management?

Esther:                        Sure. Well, when I first graduated, I took a job at the Visiting Nurse Association here in the Cleveland area and really enjoyed that tremendously. I remember going to patients’ homes and thinking, “I can’t believe I get paid for this. I can’t believe I have this marvelous job where I get to take care of patients in such a very real way, in a very real setting, really get to know them and do and fulfill the nursing process as I was taught in school.” Later on, I got to the hospital and worked at a medical-surgical unit. Of course, things were a lot more hectic there. I didn’t get to know patients the way I remember enjoying getting to know them as a visiting nurse. It was a different setting but still very good. I was always interested in comfort of patients. That was sort of an overarching thing no matter where I was working. After I had my first child – well, my children, I had twins first – I began to become more involved with childbirth education. The whole idea of natural childbirth and pain management for laboring women in the most effective way with the least amount of side-effects for women who were delivering. That kind of started me thinking the whole idea of how do we take care of people with pain and anxiety, how do we deal with that medication-wise, drug-wise, side-effects; in that case, of course, with mother and baby. One thing led to another and I became a Lamaze instructor. I helped a lot of women with that. It was very, very focused on taking care of pain and comfort and safety, of course, in the optimal outcome and delivery of the children. That was kind of where I started with the idea of pain management. I took years off then, a couple of decades almost, to raise my own children, my own family. Then went back to work at the Cleveland Clinic taking a ...