Nursing is a multi-faceted career that is both challenging and rewarding, and right now and into the foreseeable future, nurses are in high demand.
Patrick Rubida, in his 40s, has been a nurse for four years at Harrison Hospital in Bremerton. He left another profession to return to school, thanks to a very supportive wife. He would do it all over again, too. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he says of his career, “both physically and intellectually.”
The physical challenge of nursing, Rubida says, is in moving and lifting patients. He loves the challenges of the rapid-fire decisions, knowing full well they impact real people. He has recently promoted to management, spending about half his time in pain management for all of Harrison.
Emotionally, Rubida shares about a recent “wonderful experience” he had caring for a terminal patient, and the joy of helping her and her family through life’s ultimate transition. He found it to be simultaneously powerful, stressful, awesome.
Liisa Horn, RN, was in her 30s when she changed her mind about nursing. Previously seeing it only as facing blood and death, she spent time caring for her elderly parents when she realized nursing was a profession she could do.
Horn has worked for five years in the Medicare wing at Ridgemont Terrace Convalescent Center in Port Orchard, dealing with a predominantly elderly population, helping her short-term charges set goals toward their discharge, doing pain management for folks in surgery recovery. “I love my job!” she says with enthusiasm. She utilizes her people skills and assessment skills one-to-one with patients.
“I feel really blessed to have found the right job the first time,” Horn says of her employment at Ridgemont. “It is where I was meant to be.”
Kathleen Sanford, vice president for nursing at Harrison, came into nursing somewhat by chance. She took a nursing scholarship that was readily available, and figured upon graduation and employment, she could use her income for the college path she really desired. Once she became a practicing nurse, she fell in love with the career that seemed to have chosen her.
Sanford is very concerned about the worldwide nursing shortage, and has become an advocate for nurses and for the profession. In the US, she says, baby boomers are aging, meaning more people with chronic illnesses in need of care, while many nurses in that age group are retiring. By 2006, only 60 percent of the 1 million needed nurses will be available.
Within hospitals, patients are being discharged much earlier, leaving only the most ill to be cared for, Sanford continues. That makes the work more difficult. Where one nurse could handle a patient load of 30 some 25 years ago, now 4 is quite a task.
The vacancy rate in nursing positions in Washington State is about 10 percent. At Harrison, it is between 6 and 7 percent. Sanford credits Navy spouses and Olympic College nursing school in our midst.
Nurses work in a variety of settings, Sanford shares. Her list includes schools, community health, infection control, industry, home health care, with the largest numbers in hospitals and nursing homes.
Sanford works with various groups statewide to get out the word how attractive the profession is. Nurses are very well educated, skilled in sciences, such as physiology and psychology. “I am surrounded by bright, articulate, wonderful people!” she says of the 542 RNs and 62 LPNs at Harrison.
About eight percent of nurses are male, except in the military, where about a third of the nurses are men. The pay, previously quite low, has gotten better, and that’s possibly one of the things that has helped attract men, in Sanford’s opinion. Also, society now honors both genders for going into caring professions, once thought the domain of women.
The education to be a nurse may be as little as one year, with degrees offered at every level. Continuing education makes nursing a stair-step profession. With an associate’s degree, a nurse starts at Harrison at $20.88 per hour on day shift, Sanford indicates. With no further degrees and 25 years’ experience, it pays $35.65.
If bored or burned out, there are many types of care where a nurse may transfer within the hospital, from emergency to helping deliver babies, to critical care, surgical, and more.
For people who want to make a difference touching and saving lives, Sanford says nursing can’t be beat. Although some hospitals pay recruiting bonuses, she refuses to do so, believing it dishonors loyalty, and merely moves people around. She rewards employees in other ways. Last year, with many partners, the hospital participated in the Lamplighter awards. With 127 area nurses nominated, only 10 received awards, but the event itself honored all nurses.
Janis Walker, a nurse since 1968, is leaving her job, but not totally her profession. She spent 32 years in operating rooms and trauma centers. She wants to use her expertise in a different way, and will be doing corporate hospital coaching and team building.
“Nursing is a fantastic career,” says Walker. “People need care and compassion.” Walker has been frustrated by the mountains of paperwork required of nurses nowadays, and would prefer to free up more time for patient care. She’d like to see nursing schools offer more clinical experience, too. In her new career, she wants to help people working in all aspects of medicine recognize their interdependence, from the orderly to the surgeon.
“Nursing is very rewarding, spiritually and emotionally, and I love it!” Walker says.
Jim Hunt, in his 50s, works as a nurse in the emergency room at Harrison, where he’s been for 11 years. Previously a paramedic, he wanted to help people more effectively. He said being a nurse “is the funnest job I’ve ever had!” He loves the constant learning, both of the things people do to get themselves into trouble, and figuring out how to get them out of it. “I learn daily something new about the processes of disease and health that just fascinates me,” he describes.
“I ask incredibly personal questions that don’t come up in normal, polite conversation, and they answer me,” he says in awe. Hunt is grateful for the sense of trust people place in him as a nurse. It is a responsibility he does not take lightly.
The profession of nursing is one that can be rewarding for both men and women. They all acknowledge the stress, including shift work and long hours, sometimes beyond the end of a shift. Whether something that drew them as children, or something they came into later in life, nurses seem to passionately love their work, and have great respect for one another.
