What made you get into your career?
My mom was a nurse. I didn’t have an intention to get into healthcare, but as life changes and evolves, you find your path. I slowly found my path working from a volunteer on up to where I am now.
Did you always know this was your passion?
I didn’t always know this was my passion, but getting into the field and starting to learn about people and hospitals, I was motivated to learn how to help people, and that’s allowed me to learn all kinds of things from communication to helping patients and their family members, and just technology. It’s endless amounts of learning if you’re motivated to go after it.
Is this a first time career or did you retool?
Somewhat of a first time period. I tried various other types of work but ended up going to lifeguard training, basic EMT course, good state license and that, but ended up volunteering at the hospital and found that to be a great place to learn and grow.
What’s your favorite part and your least favorite part of the job?
Favorite part would probably be constant learning, constant change which is good and bad. And we’ve been presented with quite a challenge at this point with the pandemic, so it’s great to see people come together to try to help other people get through such a difficult time. [My least favorite part is] probably not being able to fix everything or fix everyone, so there are times where this frustration and not having the resources you need maybe or you just couldn’t quite do as much as you wanted to for a patient or a family member or something, but that comes with any type of work.
What’s your advice for people getting into the field?
Certainly be ready for change. That’s definitely a constant, and people in healthcare are known to not always like change, but it’s every day whether it’s a shift or something goes wrong with a patient or a schedule change. So it’s constantly being able to balance. Looking back on my experience at this point, probably that it may not go in a straight path. I did start out going to college for a year and decided to leave school and took a very non-traditional route of working my way through the hospital for three years before starting nursing school, went to a diploma program, which there are very few of those left, and then went back to school for my bachelors and then recently finished an MBA in healthcare administration, but that comes over a long span of time and different experiences, so be patient.