Choosing Geriatrics
Essentially, I am just a country girl from Kansas who has been on many adventures! To be honest, I really can't say that I always wanted to be a nurse.
I was a single mom, and until my mid 20's I had worked in various jobs, including as a nurse aide in nursing homes. As a nurse aide, I can clearly recall that I did not want to be a nurse, because all they seemed to do was sit around and write in charts! (OK, I have learned a lot since then!)
I eventually decided to spread my wings, and I moved to a small town in Oklahoma, where I worked for a contract agency that staffed respiratory therapy departments. That is where I met my future husband! He had just graduated from physician assistant school at UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, Texas). Later, we both moved to different parts of the U.S., but we stayed in contact. About a year later, my son and I moved to Reno, and eventually Mark and I were married. My husband is a gypsy at heart, and we have lived all over the place. From Reno, we moved to Las Vegas via Baltimore (trust me, that is a long story.)
When I turned 30, I decided to attend nursing school at UNLV (University of Nevada - Las Vegas). In 1993, I graduated with a bachelor's degree in nursing, and my goal was to pursue an "exciting" career in ICU or ER or as a flight nurse. Even after working in an intermediate care cardiac unit for 2 years, I never felt as though I had found my niche. In fact, I felt beaten and lost.
When I started crying on the way to work, I knew I had to make a change. I started working in home health, and boy, what a difference that was! I could give my undivided attention to the person right in front of me. No call lights. No IVs or cardiac monitors going off. No meds or charting for several patients. No charge nurse.
My husband's daughter moved to Las Vegas, then shortly after that, my son graduated from Las Vegas High and he joined the Army (I'll tell you more about the kids and grandkids in future postings). That same year my husband and I moved to east Texas, and I took a job as a nursing home surveyor with the Texas Department of Health Services.
Well, that was the beginning of a new passion for me, and I became certified in gerontologic nursing. Anyone who thinks that nursing jobs in nursing homes are easy or boring or are where untrained or burned out nurses should go, are sorely mistaken. Nursing homes are where the best nurses should be because of the patient loads they carry and because excellent assessment, communication and critical thinking skills are essential.
Nursing homes need to be a specialty area, and the staff that works there needs to meet higher requirements than what is currently required. In my opinion, the nursing homes that provide the best quality of care are the ones that have nurse practitioners (or PAs) in the facility daily that have established good working relationships with the nursing staff.
After attending a gerontologic nursing conference in Houston, I discovered there was a geriatric specialty available for nurse practitioners, and I knew without a doubt that is what I wanted to do.
From that point on, everything fell into place. When my husband wanted to move, again, I readily agreed because the University of Texas Heath Sciences Center San Antonio (UTHSCSA) had a gerontologic nurse practitioner program, which was "only" 100 miles away. I got a job as an IDR Reviewer with a different department of the state and started school a month later, in the fall of 2004. I received a wonderful scholarship from AACN/Hartford Foundation. Everything looked good!