DiversityNursing Blog

By: Shazia Memon

I didn't figure this out until last summer. I was at a friend's place helping her move out some old furniture. Right after I lifted her hardwood coffee table, it broke apart, and the heavier piece dove straight onto my toe. After the initial shock, the pain hit, and then the picture was not pretty. I hopped around the living room erratically, alternating between standing and sitting as I tried to find some position of relief. I kept muttering phrases to my friends like "you guys just need to relax" and "calm down, everyone just calm down." They observed in silence, wide-eyed.

After several laps of limping, I ended up on the couch with my foot propped up. My friends put a frozen bag of peas against my toe and then finally said, "We are calm Shazia. YOU need to calm down."

I looked at their faces, stopped my sighing short, and thought about the situation at hand. They were right. I had kind of lost it.

As a pediatric critical care nurse, I deal with my fair share of screaming toddlers, stressed parents, and anxious kids. We hold the hands of children as they undergo painful procedures (sometimes at the cost of adequate circulation to our own hands). There are always worried parents who need reassurance that we are doing everything possible for their sick child. And during the most unpredictable of emergencies, we maintain a cool composure in hopes that the patient and our colleagues will follow suit.

Basically, calming down panicked people is a huge part of the job description. But when that table hit toe, my role had reversed. In hindsight, of course I see how ridiculous I was acting. And that got me wondering more generally about when nurses become patients. How do they handle being in the bed, as opposed to at the bedside?

Turns out that many do not handle it well. After talking to a few co-workers, I realized that nurses can be some of the worst patients. My personal opinion is that it's a dysfunctional coping mechanism; we don't know how NOT to be calm and in control. So the rare times that we don't feel those ways, we project our anxiety through behaviors that are just as unfamiliar to us.

To put it bluntly, we can be kind of obnoxious.

Take, for example, my coworker who was in the hospital and put on a medication that had possible side effects of nausea and vomiting. The doctor's orders stated to give anti-nausea medication if needed--only for if and when the patient displayed the symptom. But my coworker decided that her orders superseded the doctors---a classic mindset of nurses who become patients. She had no intention of feeling any of the side effects.

"I want that anti-nausea medication around the clock. I don't want to have to call you. I don't want to have to wait for it. I want it every six hours, on the dot," she demanded from her nurses.

Some of her nurses initially protested, saying the medication wasn't supposed to be given preventatively. Others knew that it was a battle not worth picking. Regardless, she got her way and spent the entire hospital stay without feeling any nausea. Or making any new friends.

In other cases, we see nurses taken out of the hospital environment but not able to let go of hospital policies. One PICU nurse went to her primary doctor after a few days of coughing, congestion, and fever. In our unit, there are a lot of children with multiple underlying health issues. We usually respond to a fever and respiratory distress with a series of tests to pinpoint exactly what the cause of those symptoms are. But when an otherwise healthy person shows a mild presentation of these symptoms, the first line of treatment is usually a round of antibiotics. That is exactly what her doctor prescribed after a thorough assessment. But my coworker had a hard time being 'written' off, albeit as a prescription.

"But ... are you sure you don't want to take a chest X-ray?" she inquired, followed by a strategic cough.

The physician smiled and nodded, explaining to her why he deemed an X-ray unnecessary at this point. She wasn't convinced but let it go. As they parted ways, she made sure to take some purposefully labored breaths. Just for emphasis.

Her case of the common cold was cured within a few days--without any unnecessary exposure to radiation. In the back of her head, she knew her request was unreasonable. She just didn't know how to do anything other than what she was used to. Other nurses also admitted to parallel behaviors in primary care settings--the urge to impose hospital protocols isn't easy to shake.

It's also not unusual to find nurses believing that they are above the rules when the tables turn on them. One rule we reinforce to patients and families is not to touch or handle the pumps and machines around them. When one of my colleagues had still not gone to the bathroom twelve hours after his surgery, his nurse and doctor discussed inserting a foley catheter--that is, a tube through his urethra into his bladder to drain it.

"Give me until 7 am. If I don't go by then, you can put it in," he bargained.

They reluctantly conceded. As soon as he was alone, he reached to the pump that was infusing fluids through his IV. After a fleeting pause of guilt, he cranked up the rate to 3 times what it was set at. His plan to over-hydrate himself was not the right or safe answer, but luckily he woke up at 4 AM with an overwhelming urge to relieve himself. He knew it didn't necessarily happen as a result of his medical manipulation, but was desperate to avoid any discomfort down there.

Nurses also make their caretakers work hard to earn their trust -- harder than they really need to sometimes. One of my coworkers has no shame in interrogating her own doctors on their credibilities, and doesn't take them seriously unless she approves of their medical school, residency, and fellowship (fellowships are a given in her book). Another nurse I work with frequently trains new graduates and employees. When it comes to education and advancing the nursing profession, she is always at the front line.

Except when it was her turn to have a breathing tube placed for a surgery. As she was signing consent for this, she looked suspiciously at the badge of the woman obtaining her signature. The woman was a nurse anesthetist.

"I totally respect your profession. But I would feel more comfortable with a physician intubating me," she said.

The nurse anesthetist was slightly taken aback, but offered to speak to the fellow to see if he could do it.

"Actually I'd like the attending to do it," my co-worker responded.

So much for promoting the nursing profession. Or even encouraging the general endeavors of a teaching hospital -- she dismissed every step on the learning ladder by only trusting the attending.

But in this scenario, she was on the receiving end of care, and totally out of her element. Just as I felt when that coffee table fell on my toe. Our comfort zone is nurturing patients and serving as the foils to their fear. When we step out of it and into a position of fear ourselves, we lose our way. Some a little more than others. And some not at all. But for those who do, their healthcare providers should remember -- nurses are generally good, warm, loving people. They might just have passive-aggressive tendencies when they feel anxious, that's all.

As for me, I'd like to think I learned from their stories. If I am ever in a state of vulnerability again -- or rather, when I am -- I'll do my best to stay calm and cool, to be an easy patient. 

As long as everything goes my way, of course.

Source: The Atlantic

By Georgann Yara

Clad in pajamas and a Diamondbacks cap, the “patient” lay still in the bed as Banner Health registered nurse Stacey Fuller looked on and answered questions from an inquisitive mother worried about her son’s asthma attack.

Fuller determined her “patient” displayed good vital signs — even without a heart, brain and other functioning organs.

A recent nursing school graduate, Fuller was interacting with one of 80 high-tech mannequins at the Banner Simulation Medical Center in Mesa, where some 1,500 registered nurses train a few days annually.

The mannequins give nurses the chance to practice their skills in a real-time setting before working at one of Banner’s medical centers because they simulate breathing, bleeding, giving birth and even speaking.

“At first, it’s odd having these pretend conversations. But you get used to it and you get to practice conversations that you would actually have with patients and their parents,” said Fuller, whose specialty is pediatrics. “I like to talk to people and explain things, so I think it’s a lot of fun.”

The 55,000-square-foot facility is among the largest in the world and gives new hires an opportunity to work out the kinks and adjust to any policies and procedures specific to Banner. The Mesa location is one of Banner’s two simulation centers in the Valley. The other is in central Phoenix.

The center has many of the same departments found in an actual hospital, such as an intensive-care unit, operating room, emergency department and pediatrics.

Recently, the simulation program received accreditation from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare in five areas of expertise, becoming one of three organizations in the world to achieve this status. Last year, the program was accredited by the American College of Surgeons.

Being placed in real scenarios has given Fuller a better idea of her strengths, like patient interaction, and areas she needs to work on, like time management.

“I’m practicing getting the timing down,” Fuller said. “What I like is that Banner hones their nurses’ education and is supportive of that. Other places don’t do that.”

As Fuller made her rounds, registered nurse and simulation specialist Vickie Hawkins sat in a control room in the pediatrics department. Here, she can watch nurses interact with patients and evaluate their performance. Nurses have the opportunity to see themselves at work by viewing the videos.

Hawkins also plays multiple roles, depending on the scenario. With Fuller’s asthma patient, she was the voice of the mother. In other situations she can play the patient or physician.

The simulation center gives new graduates the chance to function independently — a luxury that they typically don’t get to experience in training, Hawkins said. It also gives veteran nurses new to Banner exposure to situations that they may not have experienced despite their years in the field.

“We allow them to make decisions and mistakes because, unfortunately, mistakes are how we learn,” said Hawkins, who has worked at the center since it opened in 2009.

However, nurses aren’t the only ones gaining knowledge. Simulation director Karen Josey described a scenario that simulated post-labor hemorrhaging. It required taking a mannequin to Banner Gateway Medical Center in Gilbert and putting everyone involved, including representatives from the local blood bank, through the paces.

A few days later, doctors at Gateway repeated that scenario. But this time, it was for real.

“Everyone knew exactly what they had to do and they could do it quickly because they had just gone through it,” Josey said.

The training center is a far cry from when Josey, as a registered nurse in training years ago, practiced inserting IV’s by using oranges.

“We immerse them in a clinical environment so they get that complexity,” Josey said. “It’s about how realistic we can make it.”

Source: AZ Central

By Elizabeth McNamara

Editor's Note: This article was originally published by our Patch family at Fenway-Kenmore Patch.

After the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., in December, in which a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Stephanie Zanotti of Charlestown, Mass., was inspired by the suggestion to complete 26 acts of kindness as a response. In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, Zanotti decided it was time for Part Two of those 26 acts of kindness.

"I am participating in 26 acts of kindness for the victims at the 26th mile of the Boston Marathon," she wrote on her Facebook page. Using Facebook and Instagram, she is chronicling her acts and hoping to inspire others to do the same.

"It's forcing me to think about how you can make someone's day a little lighter, a little brighter," she said Saturday.

She stresses the acts can be as simple as paying for the person's cup of coffee behind you in line at your favorite coffee shop or dropping off some candy at your local fire department – both things she did during her Newtown acts.

So far, Zanotti has completed two acts in this new cycle: she has promoted the sale of a T-shirt designed by a friend in which all proceeds will go to One Fund Boston. And she signed up her dog Lucy, a rescue dog with only three legs, in a dog therapy program. (The t-shirt and Lucy are pictured, right.)

Zanotti is a nurse at Brigham & Women's Hospital and has seen the power of therapy dogs for patients. Knowing that several of the bombing victims have had limbs amputated, Zanotti realized her dog in particular could provide special inspiration.

She said she's speaking out about her actions to raise awareness and, she hopes, to inspire others to follow suit. The realization that the bombings happened at the 26th mile and the parallel with Newtown's 26 school victims was powerful to Zanotti.

"Unfortunately, the '26' theme again," she said. But at a time when so many people want to dosomething in response to the events of the past several days, Zanotti's found a way to be both creative and kind. 

Source: Woodbury-Middlebury Patch

BOSTON (AP) — The screams and cries of bloody marathon bombing victims still haunt the
nurses who treated them one week ago. They did their jobs as they were trained to do, putting their own fears in a box during their 12-hour shifts so they could better comfort their patients.

Only now are these nurses beginning to come to grips with what they endured — and are still enduring as they continue to care for survivors. They are angry, sad and tired.  A few confess they would have trouble caring for the surviving suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if he were at their hospital and they were assigned his room.

And they are thankful. They tick off the list of their hospital colleagues for praise: from the security officers who guarded the doors to the ER crews who mopped up trails of blood. The doctors and — especially — the other nurses.

Nurses from Massachusetts General Hospital, which treated 22 of the 187 victims the first day, candidly recounted their experiences in interviews with The Associated Press. Here are their memories:

THEY WERE SCREAMING

Megann Prevatt, ER nurse: "These patients were terrified. They were screaming. They were crying ... We had to fight back our own fears, hold their hands as we were wrapping their legs, hold their hands while we were putting IVs in and starting blood on them, just try to reassure them: 'We don't know what happened, but you're here. You're safe with us.' ... I didn't know if there were going to be more bombs exploding. I didn't know how many patients we'd be getting. All these thoughts are racing through your mind."

SHRAPNEL, NAILS

Adam Barrett, ICU nurse, shared the patient bedside with investigators searching for clues that might break the case. "It was kind of hard to hear somebody say, 'Don't wash that wound. You might wash evidence away.'" Barrett cleaned shrapnel and nails from the wounds of some victims, side by side with law enforcement investigators who wanted to examine wounds for blast patterns. The investigator's request took him aback at first. "I wasn't stopping to think, 'What could be in this wound that could give him a lead?'"

THEIR FACES, THEIR SMILES

Jean Acquadra, ICU nurse, keeps herself going by thinking of her patients' progress. "The strength is seeing their faces, their smiles, knowing they're getting better. They may have lost a limb, but they're ready to go on with their lives. They want to live. I don't know how they have the strength, but that's my reward: Knowing they're getting better."

She is angry and doesn't think she could take care of Tsarnaev, who is a patient at another hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: "I don't have any words for him."

THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

Christie Majocha, ICU nurse: "Even going home, I didn't get away from it," Majocha said. She is a resident of Watertown, the community paralyzed Friday by the search for the surviving suspect. She helped save the lives of maimed bombing victims on Monday. By week's end, she saw the terror come to her own neighborhood. The manhunt, she felt, was a search for justice, and was being carried out directly for the good of her patients.

"I knew these faces (of the victims). I knew what their families looked like. I saw their tears," she said. "I know those families who are so desperate to see this end."

On Friday night, she joined the throngs cheering the police officers and FBI agents, celebrating late into the night even though she had to return to the hospital at 7 a.m. the next day.

Source: Times Union

In March 2013, Dr. Donna Shalala, the longest-serving secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and chair of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that produced the report “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health”, addressed hundreds of health care leaders at the American College of Health Care Executives (ACHE) Annual Congress. Dr. Shalala provided her reflections on the removal of barriers to practice and care and the future of health care delivery. Dr. Shalala underscored the need for nurses to play a lead role in all aspects of the health care debate, ensuring that patients and families have access to timely, effective care; and outlined specific steps that health care executives should take to fully maximize nurses to meet patient care demands.

Donna Shalala Addresses American College of Healthcare Executives

By: Jacqueline Ingles, WFTS

Nicole Turner is calling her neighbor Aly Smith a miracle and a savior.

Smith, a nurse, came to the rescue of her 2-year-old daughter Ireland after her legs were severed in a tragic lawn mower accident Wednesday night.

"It was horrible," explained Smith.  "It's the scariest thing I have ever seen."

A labor and delivery nurse for nine years, Smith's training kicked in and got her through it.

Smith was sitting at home with her husband when she heard screams coming from outside.  Her husband ran outside first and she followed.  That's when she came face-to-face with a horrific scene.

"He kept saying, 'Her legs are gone, her legs are gone.'  And I said that can't be possible."

Jeremiah Nugent, 47, was swaddling his daughter whose legs were both severed below the ankle.  Just minutes before Nugent accidentally ran over his daughter with his riding lawn mower.

According to Ireland's mother Nicole, Ireland darted from the backyard into the front yard.  Then, when she saw her father, she ran to him and began calling out, 'Daddy, Daddy.'

Nugent never heard his little girl because the lawn mower drowned her out.

Nicole tried to flag her husband down to warn him.  Thinking he was about to hit something moving forward, he put the mower in reverse.

Ireland's mother watched the horrific accident.

"Why couldn't it have been me?" Nicole Nugent asked during a press conference at Tampa General Thursday afternoon.  "Why did it have to be her?"

Smith said she helped wrap the little girl in towels and put pressure on her legs to help stop the bleeding.  Smith was also comforting the little girl.

"She kept saying, 'I want to go to bed. I want my daddy and I want to go to bed,' anything to keep her talking," Smith explained.

Smith said she was surprised at how calm Ireland remained.  She stayed with the little girl while her mother called 911.  Fire crews responded and then Ireland was airlifted to Tampa General.

"It felt like an eternity," Smith said.

Ireland remain in the ICU tonight and is in serious condition.  Doctors said she will recover and will walk again.  And while Ireland's parents are thankful to Smith for all she did, she is remaining humble and said she was just doing what she was trained to do.

" I'll never forget it but it could have been a whole lot worse," she said.

Ireland has already undergone two surgeries, one to clean her wounds and a second to put a pin in her thumb.  Doctors initially thought her hand needed to be amputated but only her thumb was broken.

The Nugents say Ireland will undergo several more surgeries in the coming days.  She will also need skin grafts.

Steve Chamberland with 50legs visited Ireland in the hospital Thursday.  He arranged for Ireland to get fitted for prosthetics for free.  He says once doctors close her leg wounds Monday, she'll recover for four to six weeks before heading to Orlando.

He says they will fit her and she will be back on her feet the next day.

"To see a 2-year-old walk again, it's pretty much her first step and life," explained Chamberland.  "Her father was so funny.  He was ready to go.  He was like, 'Can we get legs now?'  He just wants to see her run again and be normal.

Source: WPTV

By: STACIA GLENN

Florence “SeeSee” Rigney brushed off retirement as easily as she does the good-natured jabs from co-workers at Tacoma General Hospital for being the oldest nurse in recent memory.

Rigney, who will turn 88 next month, still bustles around the operating room wing with the energy of a woman half her age. She expects to be working at least another year.

More than 20 years older than the next senior staff nurse, Rigney is respected, revered and relentlessly teased.

“I kinda keep them in line,” joked Rigney, who blushed in embarrassment and dismissively waved her hand at fellow nurses who call her everything from a star to their hero.

Rigney got her nickname as a kid. She kept telling a teacher, “See, see,” to show how well she knew her lessons. The teacher started calling her “SeeSee” and the name stuck.

In 1946, she donned the stiff white uniform of a student nurse. In her home, she has a framed photo of herself as a fresh-faced nursing student, next to an old black-and-white image of what Tacoma General looked like back then.

Her career crisscrosses the map.

She started in Tacoma General’s operating room before going to work for a private doctor. She had stints in operating rooms in Atlanta and San Antonio, Texas, before her husband deployed for the Korean War and Rigney returned to Tacoma General. She spent a spell in Cheyenne, Wyo., but once again came back to Tacoma.

The couple adopted their first child in 1958, and Rigney shifted to working on an as-needed basis to fill shifts when the hospital was short-handed. When her daughter reached college and her son was in high school, Rigney was needed at home less so she worked more.

After her husband died in 1977, Rigney started full-time again, working 10-hour shifts three days a week. She found it kept her mind occupied and surrounded her with a second family. The hospital gave her plaques to mark her long-running career – five years, 10 years, 15 years. She can’t recall getting the 20th-year plaque.

When she was 67, she thought it time to retire.

“I stayed retired for about five months then I came back and here I am,” Rigney said. “I always thought I’d come back and work but I never thought I’d stay this long. I’m really very blessed my health is good and they want me to work.”

Supervisors and co-workers describe Rigney as one of the best.

Julie Christianson, who has worked with Rigney since 1980, said she is a “crack-up” who is full of great tales about what nursing used to be like.

She regales them with times before computers when charts and records were all hand-written, when staff nurses helped out in the emergency room delivering babies, before technology and equipment became so advanced.

Rigney is not an operating room nurse, handing doctors various instruments. She’s the nurse who sets up patient rooms and keeps track of supplies. Fellow nurses insist Rigney will knows half the patients and has a soothing effect on those she interacts with.

It’s difficult sometimes to keep up with the advancements, Rigney said, but she’s always learning.

“She can still run circles around people half her age,” Christianson said. “She’s very inspirational for the rest of us because she’s still working and she’s still sharp.”

 By Robin Farmer for HealthCallings

If Janet Patterson, RN, could go back in time, she would learn the answer to a simple yet overwhelming question: What exactly do nurses do?

For most people, images of bedpans and needles pop into their minds, says Patterson, a nurse for 33 years who now works as a home care nurse at Maxim Healthcare in Santa Rosa, Calif. “We think we know [before going to nursing school] what [nurses] do, but we really don’t. I became a nurse and I couldn’t talk about it with anyone who wasn’t one.”

A realistic job description tops the list of information veteran nurses say they wished they had known before embarking on their careers decades ago. Experienced nurses recommend that new nurses and students talk to people doing the job they want. Ask questions in person, by phone or online in chat groups for nurses.

Nursing is intimate

Nancy Brook, MSN, RN, NP, wished she had known that “I would be changed as a human being because of the intimacy of the moments that you share with patients.” New nurses must prepare for this, she says. The impact of witnessing many life-changing experiences such as birth, death and serious diagnoses lingers beyond the workday, says Brook, a nurse practitioner at Stanford Hospitals and Clinics in Redwood City, Calif. After the workday, “It’s not your muscles that are sore, it’s the mental muscles,” Brook says.

It’s important for new nurses to create a routine to unwind, learn healthy habits and stay socially connected, seasoned nurses advise.

Keep learning

When Cynthia Ringling, RN, BSN, started nursing in 1990, she had no idea “that the personal touch of nursing would have changed with the age of computers. It made the RN much more of an administrator and documenter,” says Ringling, a chief clinical officer at Interim Healthcare in Colorado. “A lot of the personal tasks we did have been pushed to unlicensed or trained people.”

Nursing is an evolving profession with changing technology. New nurses must stay open to learning from patients, peers, physicians, professors and other professionals.

Squash conflicts

Another discovery Brook wished she had known before pursuing her career are the challenges of working with colleagues. “It’s not the patients who are hard, it’s the other nurses, managers, physicians — that whole interplay that professionals experience, unless you are working independently,” she says.

Ask for help. Make building a support system a priority, veteran nurses recommend.

Remain flexible

Adjusting to an intense work schedule also topped the wish-I-had-known list for longtime nurses. Meeting the demands of patient care can be exhausting. Add nights, weekends and holidays to the mix and maintaining a social calendar requires patience and flexibility. Brook says she wishes someone had told her in advance she would be late for every party because her shift did not end on time.

Accept that people get sick every day and require care. Imagine patients as your own loved ones who need care, says Sheri Cosme, MSN, RN-BC, a clinical educator at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

“Nurses work 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. So to think as a new graduate nurse that you will only work days, Monday through Friday, is not realistic,” advises Cosme.

The demand for nurses has significantly increased over the past few years and while the profession is mainly represented by females, more and more men have started to join the field as well. 

According to a study by the U.S. Census Bureau, male nurses are becoming increasingly more commonplace. 

In 1970, only 2.7 percent of nurses were male, compared to 9.6 percent today, meaning that the proportion of male nurses has more than tripled over the past 4 decades. The male proportion of practical and licensed vocational nurses has also increased over the same period, from 3.9 percent to 8.1 percent. 

The finding comes from a study of the 2011 American Community Survey which measured the proportion of men in each of the following nursing fields: nurse practitioner, nurse anesthetist, registered nurse, licensed vocational nurse and licensed practical nurse. 

The majority the 3.5 million employed nurses in 2011 were women - close to 3.2 million. However, the number of male nurses is on the rise - close to 330,000 at the last count. 

In addition, they analyzed the characteristics of men and women working in these fields, such as age, origin, race, education, earnings, industry, work hours and citizenship. 

The author of the report, Liana Christin Landivar, a sociologist in the Census Bureau's Industry and Occupation Statistics Branch, said: 

"The aging of our population has fueled an increasing demand for long-term care and end-of-life services. A predicted shortage has led to recruiting and retraining efforts to increase the pool of nurses. These efforts have included recruiting men into nursing."

Male nurses typically earn more than their female co-workers. For every dollar male nurses earned, female nurses earned 91 cents. This difference in earnings is a lot smaller than most across all occupations though, with women earning 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.

Healthcare is among the fastest growing industries and as people are living longer there is an increased demand for long-term care as well as end-of-life services. The unemployment rate among nurses is extremely low due to this increasing demand. Only 0.8 percent of nurse practitioners, 0.8 percent of nurse anesthetists, and 1.8 percent of registered nurses were unemployed in 2011. 

Some additional findings of the study, show that in 2011:

• The majority of employed nurses were registered nurses (78 percent), followed by licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses (19 percent).

• 41 percent of nurse anesthetists were male - the occupation with the highest male representation.

• Male nurses earned an average of $60,700 per annum compared to $51,100 per annum among women. 

According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing's Center, nursing is a profession with an extremely high burnout rate and many nurses report feeling dissatisfied with their jobs. They say that it is imperative that hospital leaders and policy makers improve work environments for nurses, which in turn also improves quality of care for patients.

Source: Medical News Today

BY SCRUBS EDITOR 

It’s easy to forget that so many nurses don’t actually work in a hospital, clinic or school. Nursing is the kind of career that can really take you in several different directions. Case in point? Rose Church, famous for being NASA’s first nurse. But that’s not the only reason we love her–we’re also impressed by how she landed the gig!

An employee of McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, Mo., Church had heard that the company was hiring an “aerospace physician.” Interested in the gig, she created an opportunity to speak with president James McDonnell and told him, “Where there’s a doctor, there’s always a nurse.” And after that conversation, she was that nurse!

Church went on to serve as the nurse to the Mercury and Gemini astronauts, including John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. She is remembered as having a smart, quick wit and being super sweet–she would often bring astronauts their favorite training snack, even if it was a doughnut or a beer. Ha!

Church passed away late last year, but her spirit and hard work will always be remembered.

Source: The Aero Experience