Hometown:Phoenix, Ariz.
In Richmond region:2008
Family:Wife Tiffany, daughter Kinley
Became an RN:2016
Employer: Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital and St. Francis Medical Center
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Originally nursing school was going to be a stepping-stone for me into a career as a physician, but thankfully some nurses showed me the immense rewards of choosing this path.
I’ve had the honor of working with many amazing nurses through the years, one of whom was a pillar of the Richmond nursing community. The late Kevin Shimp was a brilliant man who could blend compassionate bedside nursing with rigorous research. He taught me what he called the “buffalo mentality” – sometimes the most effective way to approach a problem is to run directly toward it.
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That can take many forms, including injecting humor when the situation allows. I’m an okay nurse, but I’m a great class clown.
I distinctly recall a time early in my career when a patient was coming up from the emergency department after suffering a grievous injury. I read the room and snuck in a humorous comment about the appearance of his leg. He found it funny and with a sense of relief told me that he hadn’t laughed since the accident. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine and can ease the tension that builds up in hospital rooms.
I know this because I’ve been on the patient side of hospitalization. Two months shy of graduating nursing school, I was in a car accident that resulted in 64 fractures.
I speak trauma. I had to learn to walk again. I had surgeries that didn’t work and had to be redone. If there’s a silver lining to that accident, it’s that it afforded me the opportunity to have a more direct glimpse into what my patients go through. I am grateful for that insight. It helps with various scenarios I encounter regularly – and it allows me to get away with the occasional funny comment.
That’s what’s so valuable about the process of living one’s life. Those experiences make us who we are. One of the challenges for a new nurse is overcoming the perception that what you’re doing doesn’t matter.
Nursing is a very task-heavy profession. Shifts can fly by. It takes a year or two to get to the point where you can get an assignment and organize a 12-hour shift so that all the puzzle pieces fit together and you see the progress by the end.
It takes time to become the nurse you want to be and the nurse that patients deserve. Nursing school is a vital and irreplaceable part of our training, but much of what informs us as medical professionals comes from the experiences and the people we meet along the way.
