Career change leads to rewarding work for cancer nurse

I am a flex nurse, so I spend about half of my time in our infusion centers administering chemotherapy and infusions. The other half of my time is spent as part of a care team working with our oncologists, seeing patients, answering calls from patients, and helping them through any questions or issues they may be having. Every day is different, which I appreciate. I feel like I have the best of both worlds!

I joined Mission in 2015 after spending the first years of my nursing career on an oncology inpatient floor at a local hospital. I got to know many of the physicians and nurses at Mission when they would see their patients, and it felt like it could be a good fit for me. I was intrigued by the unique model of care and how everyone at Mission is 100% focused on patients and their experience. I wanted to be a part of it.

I came to nursing as a second career, graduating in 2011 from nursing school. During the first part of my career, I worked at a financial services company in 401(k) compliance, so nursing was a big change! I come from a nursing family—my mom was a nurse, and my sister is one, too. And now my youngest daughter wants to be a nurse, as well. It must be in our DNA!

I love our patients! This is such a rewarding job. It is an honor to be able to help treat people who are in the worst situation of their lives. Of course, it can be challenging because caregiver fatigue is very real. But I get the opportunity to really get to know our patients and their families, and I wouldn’t have that if I were in one location every day. Visiting with patients is one of my favorite parts of the job.

I also really enjoy my coworkers and the entire atmosphere at work. From the moment I walked through the door 10 years ago, everyone was so welcoming; I felt like I was at home. Our leaders and physicians have always had an open-door policy, and they are receptive to new ideas, which I appreciate, and they care about each of us as individuals. The culture at Mission is really special.

Our clinical trials program has really taken off in the past few years, and I am very excited about our patients having more access to all of UI Health Care’s clinical trials, too. These trials mean our patients may get to try the latest treatments and drugs, so the more opportunity, the better. With cancer rates continuing to rise in Iowa, it’s more important than ever that we continue to bring new treatment plans and immunotherapies to the forefront.

As the treatments get better and more targeted, people are living longer and remain in remission for longer periods of time. It’s amazing to be able to help people live longer lives or have extended periods of time where they feel good and can be active and do what they want to do without being impacted as much by their treatment. We want to give our patients the best quality of life we can.

I also continue to be optimistic about our unique model of care and how, with our outreach clinics, we take our cancer care on the road. There are so many patients who don’t have the time, or financial ability, to travel to a bigger hospital or the metro area. Without our clinics, they may not be able to be treated. It feels good to know that we can at least make receiving treatment a little bit easier on them by bringing the care close to home.

Although there are definitely a lot of changes taking place, we are all supporting each other, and taking things one change, one day at a time. As a private practice before, we didn’t have the accreditation standards to follow, so those are driving many of the process changes. Some of the medicines are different, so we sometimes will need to explain the change to a patient. The latest thing has been learning the Epic electronic health record (EHR) system, which is a huge shift for us. Between the UI Health Care Epic team and our team, we have been doing a lot of training, and they have created guides for us to use. Although it was a bit bumpy at first, we all understood why it’s important for us to be on the same EHR system.

Change is always hard, and no one likes it in the moment, but I always try to remember that a year from now, we’ll look back and it will feel like nothing ever happened!

My children and I love to play cards—right now, our favorite is a game called Piles. My husband is going to teach me how to golf this summer—so that should be interesting! We also like to spend a lot of time outside on our deck whenever the weather cooperates. One of my children is a collegiate athlete so I spend a lot of time chasing her around the country.