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Why did you become a nurse?

That’s the question we asked our nurses at Beaufort Memorial in honor of National Nurses Week, May 6-12.

Some 300 strong, our nurses are female and male, new to nursing and old hands, the best of the best (we’re biased, we admit, but we’ve been around and we know from nurses).

The reasons they gave for aspiring to their profession are revealing. What makes a great nurse great, it turns out, starts early.

Here is a sampling of their responses.

 

 

 

Taylor Furrer with her Grandpa“I knew I wanted to be a nurse ‘when I grew up’ when I would go through boxes upon boxes of Band-Aids in a week, pretending that my family had ‘boo-boos.’ I was never able to see myself in another career.

“This held true when my grandpa was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2014 in the summer before I went to college. I spent hours upon hours and days upon days with my grandpa—I called him Gramps—during his chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I would sit by his favorite chair in the chemotherapy center. I remember seeing the nurses and their never-ending love and compassion as they helped comfort him and offered him warm blankets. I wanted to be able to tend to somebody’s loved one in the way that my grandpa was cared for right before my eyes.

“Gramps would tell all of his nurses that I was starting my first semester of college and that I wanted to be a nurse, because he believed in me and knew that I would be able to someday be the nurse I wanted to be.

“Reflecting back on that event [her grandfather’s illness and subsequent death], it encouraged me to live out my dream of being a nurse. I am motivated to live out my dream, and I will, with my guardian angel watching over me.” 
 

—Taylor Furrer, 4T nurse intern and winner of a 2019 BMH Foundation RN Scholarship

 


 

Leigh Stone, ED staff nurse“Soon after starting in the emergency department [as a medical tech], I saw that the ED nurses were the ones who delivered the bulk of the care. I was amazed by their knowledge, perceptiveness and skills. Within my first months I witnessed three critical events in which the nurse present quickly and appropriately reacted to correct a situation and likely saved a life by her response. I was beyond impressed and decided that if I was to be in the ED, I needed to become a nurse.

“I was the only one in my nursing class to enter the program with a Medicare card! Now in my seventh year as a nurse in the emergency department, I learn something new almost every day that I work there, and I love having the opportunity to take care of our patients.” 
 

—Leigh Stone, BSN, RN, CEN, ED staff nurse

 


 

Julie Schott, RN, department director“I’d wanted to become a nurse for as long as I could remember. I also read a lot when I was young about mission work (as we all know, we were told as children to eat all of our meal because there were children starving in other countries).

“I was able to fulfill a dream to be a missionary nurse in Africa in 1995 after much prayer and faith. I traveled solo to Lagos, Nigeria, then with others to Eku Baptist Hospital in a rural community in Delta State. There I joined a mission team lead by Dr. Tony Bush, a former surgeon here at BMH who has retired but continues to do volunteer work in the community.

“We worked in a mission hospital for two weeks. It was a great experience, and one I will always cherish.” 
 

—Julie Schott, BSN, RN, CNML, 4T department director

 


 

Katrina Middleton, RN”It’s like it found me. When I was younger, my grandparents would have home health nurses who came out to the house and they would help them with their care. I learned so much from their kindness and compassion that I wanted to continue to help and care for others the way they helped us. It just felt right.” 
 

—Katrina Middleton, MSN, RN, APRN, FNP-BC, 4T staff nurse