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Panel Discussion: The Past, Present and Future of Critical Care Nursing
Two critical care nurses are here to kick off our panel discussion. Hear what Karen McQuillan, a clinical nurse specialist at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore and the president-elect of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), and Heather Morey, a nurse manager at the Munroe Regional Medical Center ICU in Ocala, Florida and a four-time recipient of the AACN Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence have to say.
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Jamie Davis: Heather and Karen, I want to welcome you both to Nursing Notes Live and I guess I’ll start off with my first traditional question for our guests and Heather I’ll start with you. Tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse and how that educational process progressed, what you career through school was like?
Heather Morey: I actually was in school to be a teacher. I wasn’t looking at nursing at all. My mother got very sick and she was in the hospital for probably a month. I was actually just starting school, just starting college at that time so I was going to the hospital before classes, go to the hospital after classes, doing my homework there and saw the interactions that the nurses had with her. And during her hospital stay, I realized that this is what I want to do. I had to change colleges [Laughter] and go to nursing school. I was working fulltime and go to the school part-time. So my ADN degree actually took me about five years to obtain. But once I got that, I never looked back. It was worth the struggle. I was having all of my friends be done with school before I was, to know that it was something that I accomplished on my own.
Jamie: Fantastic. How about you Karen? Why did you want to become a nurse?
Karen McQuillan: Well, I started off by going to school at University of Maryland, College Park. It was near my home and reasonably priced since I live in the state of Maryland. It was a very good college. I started going there and taking classes. Initially, my thought was – is that I wanted to be a Marine biologist and about a year in to school I thought, “I don’t know about being a Marine biologist. I really like to do something where I could help people more rather than just study Marine Biology.” So I actually had lots of the prerequisites started since many are the similar science-type classes that I would need for nursing school. So I finished my prerequisites at the University of Maryland in College Park, and transferred to the nursing school University of Maryland in Baltimore and finished my two years of nursing there to get my BSN. From there, I actually entered nursing and I entered at a community hospital in critical care medical-surgical unit. I just absolutely loved it. I knew immediately I had made a really great career choice and as I spent years working there it’s sort of became apparent that there was still so much more to learn. It’s “the more you know the more you figure out you don’t know.” So I decided to go back to school really to just better understand what was going on with my patients so that I could better take care of them. So I went back and got my Master’s degree in Trauma-Critical Care Nursing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I learned an incredible amount. It was an absolutely wonderful program. I actually became a clinical nurse specialist. I have been doing that job for a number of years.
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Two critical care nurses are here to kick off our panel discussion. Hear what Karen McQuillan, a clinical nurse specialist at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore and the president-elect of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), and Heather Morey, a nurse manager at the Munroe Regional Medical Center ICU in Ocala, Florida and a four-time recipient of the AACN Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence have to say.
—-
Subscribe to the MP3 Audio Podcast
Facebook
—-
Jamie Davis: Heather and Karen, I want to welcome you both to Nursing Notes Live and I guess I’ll start off with my first traditional question for our guests and Heather I’ll start with you. Tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse and how that educational process progressed, what you career through school was like?
Heather Morey: I actually was in school to be a teacher. I wasn’t looking at nursing at all. My mother got very sick and she was in the hospital for probably a month. I was actually just starting school, just starting college at that time so I was going to the hospital before classes, go to the hospital after classes, doing my homework there and saw the interactions that the nurses had with her. And during her hospital stay, I realized that this is what I want to do. I had to change colleges [Laughter] and go to nursing school. I was working fulltime and go to the school part-time. So my ADN degree actually took me about five years to obtain. But once I got that, I never looked back. It was worth the struggle. I was having all of my friends be done with school before I was, to know that it was something that I accomplished on my own.
Jamie: Fantastic. How about you Karen? Why did you want to become a nurse?
Karen McQuillan: Well, I started off by going to school at University of Maryland, College Park. It was near my home and reasonably priced since I live in the state of Maryland. It was a very good college. I started going there and taking classes. Initially, my thought was – is that I wanted to be a Marine biologist and about a year in to school I thought, “I don’t know about being a Marine biologist. I really like to do something where I could help people more rather than just study Marine Biology.” So I actually had lots of the prerequisites started since many are the similar science-type classes that I would need for nursing school. So I finished my prerequisites at the University of Maryland in College Park, and transferred to the nursing school University of Maryland in Baltimore and finished my two years of nursing there to get my BSN. From there, I actually entered nursing and I entered at a community hospital in critical care medical-surgical unit. I just absolutely loved it. I knew immediately I had made a really great career choice and as I spent years working there it’s sort of became apparent that there was still so much more to learn. It’s “the more you know the more you figure out you don’t know.” So I decided to go back to school really to just better understand what was going on with my patients so that I could better take care of them. So I went back and got my Master’s degree in Trauma-Critical Care Nursing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I learned an incredible amount. It was an absolutely wonderful program. I actually became a clinical nurse specialist. I have been doing that job for a number of years.