Vanessa's Nursing Journey

FINALLY....I know you all have been waiting for this—or maybe not!?!? 😂 Either way, here is my nursing journey story.

I must say, it was nice to share, but there is also SO much that comes to mind when you begin to narrate your own story. Being a nurse has always felt like such a natural part of me. ❤️

I hope you enjoy!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome to Nursing the Brave New World, the show where I sit down with individual nurses to explore their unique journeys, the stories they've gathered along the way, how their careers have evolved, and the lessons they've learned in the process. Today is a very special episode because I am not the usual host. My name is Landon, but I am not the usual host of this great podcast because I get to interview the Vanessa, who is the usual host of our podcast. And I'm so excited to have you, Vanessa. Welcome to the show. Um, every nurse's journey is worth sharing, and yours certainly is worth sharing. And so I am so excited to talk with you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I'm excited to get to share my story too, Lana.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

That is we're excited to have you. Okay, so um, first off, I just have to, as a personal note, just I think that you doing this podcast is so special and so cool. And I love that you are highlighting this profession. And so, just personal point of privilege, just want to say thank you on behalf of all of us nurses and the work that you are doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah. All right. So let's get into it. Um, start us off with how did you discover nursing as a career and how did you know that that was the path you were going to follow?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

It's so funny. Like when you think about that, there's so many things that can come to mind. But I think pretty much throughout my life, there was an underlying current or theme to help other people because my mother was kind of like a nurturer, she took care of people, she liked to help people. So in high school, I had several different majors I had kind of considered, and initially when I started off in college, I decided that I was going to do secondary education. However, I saw the way people kind of treated the teachers and their lack of desire to learn and motivation. And I thought, do I really want to be dealing with like high school students that really don't want to learn? And I just was really discouraged by that. And so nursing was kind of in the back of my mind at that point. Um, so I made that switch that first semester of nursing of nursing school, I'll say nursing school, college. And it was just, it seemed like it was kind of like natural instinct for me to do it. And I kind of like really didn't ever look back from then then on.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

You did you have those uh instances in your life where it's like this just feels right? And I imagine like that was it for you, like it was just it just felt right.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

It did, and I mean it was kind of scary because originally I don't know if I've ever told you the story. So I went straight out of high school into college. So I was when I started college, I was 17 because out of when I was born in the year, so like I didn't turn 18 until a few weeks after starting, so it's like this 17-year-old kid going off to college, not really having a clue, you know. And then this kind of evolved that semester, so it's funny how things work out, though.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. Okay, so you changed your major, ended up going to nursing school, and then where did your nursing career begin in terms of specialty?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

So originally I'd always like in nursing school, I don't know about you, but I never really liked the babies, the mothers, that area. I just wasn't really drawn to that space. Some people like it. I just I was kind of like more scared of that space, and so I was always kind of drawn to the cardiac side of things because it had so much to do with your entire body, body, right? And so right out of nursing school, I started working at like what they back then they called it a med renal tele unit. It was kind of a mix. Um, and I was actually in um the south working in a a fairly large uh medical center at that time, but this med tele unit was I always like to tell this story because people don't believe me when I say this, but they you had to have eight to ten patients at night.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Oh my gosh. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

And I can remember thinking I wasn't gonna make it through the night because you were basically passing your nighttime meds and spinning back around, you know, to make sure everybody was okay. And I remember having several nights where like, am I gonna make it through the night? And I did make it through the night, but it taught me a lot about like time management. So I would say that cardiac has a special, like a special place for me. But then when I got out of nursing school, because it's been a few years ago, you could not go straight out of nursing school into ICU. But ICU was always what I wanted to do because I was very intrigued by that, because it was a specialty unit, and I felt like you could provide really holistic care for the patient, learn more about like everything, not just you know, them as a person, but like expanded uh family dynamics, like how their history impacts their care, how you know the family dynamics is impacting their care. So that was kind of where I eventually wanted to land. And I did at some point.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

So that's great, that's great. And so uh was it a specialty ICU or was it just a general ICU, like all all areas?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

So it's kind of interesting how it evolved. So after a few years of doing like telemetry, I went over to a hospital again in the south. It was a different hospital. And at that time, the hospital that I worked at wasn't, it wasn't probably a three or four hundred-bed hospital, it didn't have really like sub sub segregated or subdivided ICU. So it was just one general ICU. So you would take care of like a you know, an EVD, a ventricular drain, or like a respiratory failure, or a cabbage patient, or you know, a patient that maybe was um, you know, experienced some sort of trauma and ended up having to be an organ donation, you would take care of all those in the same unit. So that taught me a lot because I had to learn about all kinds of different types of patients. So it was there, but then later on in life, I experienced the neurological ICU, which I came to really love, even though it can be kind of a bummer at times, yeah. Um, because the patients are so intensely ill and sometimes they don't get better. Um, so I would say that both of those kind of have a special place in my heart for different reasons, and I can share more about that later. But one of the reasons the ICU held such a special place is you know, I was there for several years. I was there close to five years. So I formed a lot of really close friendships with friends, and like it was a smaller community, so I knew a lot I got to know a lot of the people within the community that sometimes would come back in because maybe they were chronically ill, like an end-stage renal disease patient that was repeat or something like that. So you had that opportunity because it was a smaller area, and then when I worked in the neurological ICU, it was a little bit different because it was a bigger area, you know, of the country, but I did form a lot of really good friendships there, also.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

That's great. Yeah, I imagine, I mean, those small town general ICUs, like you really have to become a jack of all trades and be able to, you know, serve all of different patient populations and know so much knowledge. So kudos to you. That's I know that that gave you a great foundation to build.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I think it just helped me also, like, you know, being that I was younger when I became a nurse, I think it helped you sometimes you have to take a step back from your own situation or your own life to like kind of like objectively look at every everything else that's going on around you and kind of like gain insight into what's going on with the patient or the family, or you know, maybe the dynamics between you and someone else that's you know, because sometimes you know this, like sometimes working with certain personalities, you don't always see eye to eye on things and learning who works well together and who doesn't, you know. Um, most for the most part, I'd never really had trouble getting along with anybody, but sometimes the way everybody does things is a little bit different, and sometimes that can cause a little bit of budding of hands.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, I know I get I get that. Yeah, okay. So between all of these places that you've worked, can you share an event that was hard to forget or that was like really memorable for you?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

That's a really tough question, and I thought about this a lot, and I'm not gonna share just one because I feel like there are multiple, I could probably name 15 different events, but um one of the ones that really stands out to me is early on when I was in the the general ICU in the South. So I had a little patient, he was probably about, I think he was like 12 or 14, I can't remember exact age, and he was at home and he has he was on his four-wheeler and he was driving, I guess, in their yard or in their extended area of where they lived, and he had flown off the the four-wheeler and hit his tree, hit it hit the his head on the tree. Well, when he came in, the mom and dad at the time I didn't realize this, but when I was caring for them, the mom she ended up being in the medical field. She was a nurse and she had become a case manager, so she had a really good understanding of what was going on, and she was watching this day in and day out. So I think there was like I probably worked like three days in a row and I was taking care of him every day because of continuity of care. And I came in, I guess it was the third day that I was there, and he had been, I guess, either earlier that day or sometime they had declared him brain dead. And the mom was definitely on board for organ donation, which I didn't approach her, but we had a process at that time where the the organ donation team, it was a separate company, would come in and talk to them. She was on definitely on board. However, her and the dad were not together. And because they were not together, they were not seeing eye to eye on things, and he did not want to donate. And um originally, I think the thing that was hard for me emotionally is because this is one of these first situations I'd had like this where someone was put, you know, declared brain dead, and then you went on with that. Originally, the mom was like, Do you know how hard it is for you to tell me that my child who has an IQ? Because this kid had like an IQ of I don't know what a perfect IQ is, but it was like it was an he was like 20 points from like the perfect score. Oh wow 130 or 40 or something like that. I can't remember. And she said, and you're telling he's being I'm being told that he's brain dead. Do you know how difficult that is? And and I just said, No, ma'am, I don't, you know, because I I mean, what was I gonna say to that?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, no, yeah. You don't know.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

You don't so and so the dad just said he was absolutely vehemently against it. So she was so upset and he was upset, and it was just it was a lot of tension. So we had to get the to the point that we had to have them have like separate visiting hours, they couldn't come in at the same time because it was causing too much stress for her and for him. And you know, even though the child was not, you know, there really his body was there, his brain was not there, obviously. We just we had to separate that, but it just it was so sad because he never got the opportunity to donate because the dad was against it, and but they had to be on the same page and they were not. So that is yeah, that was really unfortunate. Um, um, and then there's another situation. This situation is kind of odd. So when I worked on one of the telemetry floors, I had a patient, he came in, he was in his 40s, and he had come into this hospital from an outlying, very small community hospital. And this hospital was a larger hospital near where this community hospital was. He had been transferred because they had this patient on a nitro drip for eight plus hours, and he had not his chest pain had never relieved, which for me was a Hallmark sign to me, like, why is he still hurting? Right. Well, I'm in the room with him completing the admission assessment, and he says, Well, I told those people at that hospital that my dad and my brother had um uh triple A's. I said, You what? Oh god, and I literally said, Okay, hold on a minute. So I went out and I called, I called the doctor, it was a cardiologist, and I had gotten to be pretty good friends with him. And I said, You need to order an echo stat. This is why. Okay, so he sends this girl over, and this girl and I had actually gone to high school together in Count Line Aries. She comes in, so I go back to the nurse's station as she's doing the echo, and it wasn't five minutes later. I hear her screaming my name. Well, I went in there and he's diaphragmic, he's pale, he's clammy, he his pressure's dropping down. You know, I didn't know at the time, but like I had an automatic machine and checked it because he's on a telefloor, it's not like he's in the ICU, so we didn't have an automatic monitor. And so, you know, we're like everybody's I had called several people in there, and we didn't necessarily have to call a code, but he was, I think what was happening is she could see him starting to dissect on the echo, but he wasn't like dissecting fast, it was just a slow dissection, and she was she could she saw it. So I called the doctor, he called the surgeon. I mean, boom, boom, it was happening really fast. Well, in the interim, his family wasn't even there. Oh, gosh, his wife wasn't there, he had a set of twins that wasn't there, he had a daughter who was in a wheelchair who was handicapped, who was not there. And I remember as we're going to the OR, he wouldn't let my hand go. And he kept saying, You got to tell me I'm gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

And I remember saying, We're gonna do everything we can because in my mind, like I couldn't tell him he was gonna be okay because part of me knew there was a high risk he wasn't gonna make it, and he didn't, he didn't end up making it. But now before he left, as we're going down, and I'm holding his hand, his daughter, who is handicapped, she had gotten there, so she was able to speak to him, but he was kind of coming in and out, and I know it was probably because he was losing a lot of blood and stuff, and so that just I mean, I will never forget that because it was like I just thought if he had been at the right place, yeah, if he had been here and we could have caught that sooner, we could have stopped it. Yeah, because I think his dad had died and maybe his brother survived, but one of them had died and one had not, and they had the same thing. So it's like, why did they not pick up on that the in the history that he probably had potential for the same thing? I was just like, it was so frustrating, yeah, yeah. And then the third one that really was kind of just taps me to this day. I was um training someone in the neurological ICU, and this patient, I don't remember all the details, but she wasn't doing well. And um, we knew there was a potential for her to have brainstem herniation because of the situation. I can't remember her total diagnosis at this time because it's been so many years ago. But the girl that I was training, I had told her, I said, you know, when patients herniate, a lot of times they will have very unstable vital signs. Their heart rate will go up, their blood pressure drop, vice versa. And at the time I was I was pregnant and I had not hardly been able to go to the bathroom that day because, you know, we had just been busy. And I literally, where her room was at was right by the bathroom in the hall. And I literally went in the bathroom and I heard her say, Vanessa, you know, and I ran in there and the the monitor was all over the place. She had like went up to 140 something on her heart rate, her pressure was bottoming out. So I called the neurosurgeon and he went ahead and he, because he he was pretty sure that was what was happening. We anticipated that he went ahead and he ordered like within the next hour or so, we did a um the cerebral blood flow study. And um the thing that was really sad about this situation is this girl, she hadn't really been good to her body, but her brother had had drowned like in the last two to three years prior to her passing away. So her mom and dad had already lost one child, you know. So then this comes along, and um, you know, I think the mom knew she knew this was coming. And so I had told her, we'll go down for this, and when we get back, I'll let you know when we're back in the room and you can come back. Well, at that time, the way the unit was set up, there was a middle section where your pixes and stuff was, but doctors could be on the other side of the hall, and you wouldn't necessarily know they were over there. But then I was on the opposite side, and someone said, This doctor, I won't name any names, is on the other hall. And I said, Okay, so I go over before I call the mom back, and I said, Do you mind, do you mind going and speaking to her to let her know? Because I was told there's no flow. And he says, I don't have time to talk to her. I have to go the OR. And I literally said, So you're telling me that if I was the mom of that child, you're you're saying you don't have time to speak to her to tell her that her child's brain dead. Is that what you're telling me? And he said, Yes. And I said, Okay. I said, I appreciate your help. And I just kind of walked away.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

And when the mom came back in, I didn't even have to say anything. She looked at my face and she could see it. And I really didn't tell her, she just knew by the and I said, you know, hopefully he'll come back later and kind of talk to you. But I will never forget that because I remember it would have taken him 10 minutes to talk to her, if not that less. You know, but he was not willing to do that because what he had to do was more important than her knowing, getting an update, and that still sticks with me. And that particular person, I would never use for care ever. You know, um, because the general area where I'm at, you know, my family could be treated by this person, but it just impacted me in a very negative way, you know, because I just felt like the patient and the family deserved more.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, no, that's that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

And I and I hate that all those situations are like dismal, but I think you know, sometimes it also teaches you a lot about the way you want to treat other people, you know, and and to like be respectful of like listening, hearing them, having patience, things that sometimes aren't easy to do. Yeah, you know. Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Um, well, on a lighter note, um, we all have a mentor that we aspire to be like. Who is one of your mentors and what was so special about this person that that makes you want to be more like them?

SPEAKER_01 20:32

I would say that when I was working in the general ICU that there was a person there who trained me in that general ICU who was she was smart, she was dependable, she was reliable, she was tough, but she also, when she was training me, she wouldn't she would ask me a question and wait for me to answer. It wasn't like she was asking me to give me the answer, it was like, what do you think? Or like if I'd asked her question, she goes, Well, what do you think we should do? Or what do you think is happening? Or what do you think the pathophysiology behind this is? Like she always was pushing me to kind of be better and learn more. Um, and she's still a person I highly, highly like um what what is the word? Like I really uh think very highly up.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah, think very highly and she I hold her in very high regard.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

She's um she went on to become a nurse practitioner, and she's actually someone that um I still kind of stay in touch with some, and like I've actually I've had some family members, especially my dad, that's had some kind of weird situations happen and nobody seems to know. And she's kind of like, This is what you need to do, you know. Um, she's a big proponent of um medication interactions and like people being on too many meds and like she she's talked about that before, like people can be. Over given meds they don't really need, and some of those can cause adverse side effects. So we've she and I've actually talked about that before. So yeah, so she's she's definitely somebody that I aspire to be like.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

So I love that. Um okay, so we all have you know those personal characteristic traits that define who we are. Um whenever you think about traits that nursing has given you, what has been something that that nursing has given you that has strengthened a trait of yours or helped it develop by being a nurse?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

This one was, you know, I didn't think this would be hard to answer, but I think it kind of is.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

It is, yeah. This one was hard to answer.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

You kind of have to think about pre-nurse what I was and post-nurse what I am. So um a lot of people don't realize this about me, but I was always like probably in grades, well, I say in grade school, in middle school, I was probably considered very shy. And um when I got into high school, I became a cheerleader and kind of came involved in different sports and things like that. And just kind of it helped me blossom. But also I think it helped me learn to speak up for myself. Um and part of that is being an advocate, you know, for yourself and for other people. So my mother was always the kind of person. This is kind of a side note, but it kind of helps explain the advocacy part. She was the kind of person, like, if you go to a store with her and somebody overpays you by five cents or 10 cents, she would go back and return that money just because like it was she was honest to a flaw, fault. And so, like, she taught me to always kind of speak up and say, you know, say things but respectfully. And so I feel like that's a part of me that's gotten a lot stronger is to always be an advocate for yourself and for your family, because you don't know, like right now, I have a family member who's going through something kind of difficult with their health. And you know, I've kind of like, okay, well, I can be on the call and kind of listen because it's a close family member, like to what they're telling you needs to happen. Not because I want to tell the doctors what to do, but just kind of just be support there for them, yeah, and help translate the you know medical language. Yeah, like I feel like sometimes they use so much jargon, I guess is a good word, or like you said, language that they don't understand, and then they are trusting the providers or the you know practitioners or whoever it is to just know that they know what to do, and then sometimes it is hard to figure things out if you have a very unusual case. It doesn't mean they don't know, it just means it's it can be very challenging. So I think that is one of the things, and also I think being kind to people, like I I feel like I am kind, but I feel like I developed a different level of kindness dealing with patients and families because you have you have to be firm, but you also have to be kind because you don't know what they're dealing with, like you don't know what happened before they came in the door, you don't know what kind of day they've had, you don't know maybe there's a bad situation in home or something. And so, I mean, and those are things I feel like I could still work on, like being kinder and stuff, but those are things I feel like that definitely got stronger.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

So I love that. Um, okay, so at the heart of being uh at the heart of our being, sorry, um, we really remain nurses even if we're not providing direct care anymore. And I know that you are not providing direct care anymore, but you are certainly still a nurse. And so I'm really curious. Like, tell me more about where you are now, what you're doing um in the area that you work in.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Okay, so it's an interesting story. So I I'll go into it a little bit more. So probably back around 2009 or 2010, um, I was I did home health, I think, for a little while, and my children were kind of small, and it didn't really work because um home health is great, but you have a lot of charting sometimes outside of like your work day. And my children were small, and I really I just really couldn't do it because I had so much extra time outside of work, having to finish up admissions assessments and things like that. So um this job came up and it was called clinical documentation of specialists. I didn't have a clue what it was, to be honest with you. So, and it was at a local hospital that you and I probably both have worked at. And it came up and I'm like, I'll apply for it, I'll see what happens. Well, come to come as the time rocks on, me and another good friend had applied for the same position separately. We didn't realize it and got on the phone one day, and she said, I got this job as a clinical documentation specialist. And I said, Oh no, she got the job and I didn't get it. Well, come to find out they were hiring like three or four different people and we both got it.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

So I kind of fell into it really. And so, you know, as years have kind of elapsed or evolved, I ended up in kind of the management side of it. So now I work for a consulting company where I basically am a manager over clinical documentation people, and we kind of help other hospitals that need support, like find these kind of staff. And so I feel like overall I'm helping patients, I'm helping families, I'm helping staff, I'm helping hospitals improve their documentation.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

It's an interesting, I mean, it kind of probably falls in line with some of the things you've done, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah, no, for sure. And I that's what I love about nursing. I mean, that's what I talked a little bit about in mine, is that it can take you so many different places and so many different areas, like even outside of direct care, it's it's fascinating. And that's I think that that's like the the beauty of it.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Yeah, it definitely is.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Okay, so if you had a chance to choose this career again, would you choose nursing and tell me why or why not? This is a a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

It is a tough one because I feel like I would choose it, you know. Um it's changed a lot, it's evolved a lot, it's not the same as it was when I entered, but I think the reason that I would is because it gives you lots of options, it gives you lots of choices. You don't have to stay at the bedside if you don't want to. You can evolve into a nurse practitioner, you can evolve into CRNA, you can work in a clinic, you can get in the legal side of things, um, you can do what I've done, you can go into management. I think it just gives you choices. And you know, it's kind of like I I wouldn't have I never went into it, I never went into it because of the money. I know some people have done that, but that wasn't my reasoning. I was never driven by the the money, so no, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

I I think that it that will only last you so long, you know, like it it will only last you so long, and then it's like not worth it, right? Like it's it's not it's not worth it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Okay, so last question. Um, what advice would you give someone who is considering nursing as a career today? Um, I love this question. This is my one of my favorite ones.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Um, I have a lot to say here. Um and I think because I've recently dealt with someone that I know that's close to me that's decided to become a nurse is um to be very self-aware, you know, of like what you are good at. Like what are you good at? Are you good at listening? Are you good at being empathetic? Are you good at um, you know, just being patient? Are you good what are what are the things you're good at at knowing what you're good at, assessing that and deciding, does that make a good nurse? Would that make a good nurse? These things about me. Because I think we have to know like our strengths and our weaknesses because we have both, right? Um, and I think also doing your research, making sure you kind of know the climate and the culture of nursing has changed. Can you, do you think you can acclimate to that climate and culture? Um if you're primarily doing it for money, don't do it. You know? Um so if it's because you love people and you're empathetic and you're kind, then I would say you probably have found what you're looking for. But if it's for the money, do not do it. Because at the end of the day, I think you'll be miserable, you'll be unhappy, you'll make other people in your life unhappy, you know, you'll make patients unhappy, you'll make you'll probably end up getting fired. So um, there can be several scenarios.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah. No, I I I totally agree. I think you have to be, you have to have the right mindset. And I love that you said self-aware. I think that that is the perfect word because it it has changed a lot, even in my time of as a nurse. And um, but there's always going to be people that need care and um they deserve to have someone who is, you know, willing to be there for them on their worst and best day, you know. So totally agree. Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for being a guest on our uh podcast today. I am honored to have the opportunity to uh interview the host of our podcast. Um and with that, we ask you to just go out, be bold, and be brave and be you. So have a good day.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

All right.