TAMMY HITTELL RN Physician's office and Medicine Hat Regional Hospital.
Nursing runs in the family for Tammy Hittell who has been an RN for 25 years.
“I’ve just always had an interest in the whole medicine part of it, the caring for people, the disease process and treatment,” said Hittell. Growing up, there were nurses in m
d
her family, and her daughter has also just graduated from the nursing program.
Hittell has found her niche working in both acute care at the ICU in the hospital, and as a Primary Care Network RN at a physician’s office.
“It’s fantastic to do both because it gives you a very different perspective,” said Hittell.
In acute care she’s dealing with patients, directly intervening in a “take charge” manner to immediately get them better — such as caring for someone with a heart attack.
It’s more than just listening to what the doctor orders as well.
“You spend the majority of time with your patients, so the physicians that you work with trust that you have good assessment skills, critical thinking skills so that if you happen to see something go wrong, they trust you to notify them that there’s a problem.”
Meanwhile, working with the PCN is more of an educational role, she explained.
“It’s what do we need to do to get these people to take ownership of their illness, and to go forward with that?” — usually exercising, taking their pills and eating right.
It’s focused more on chronic diseases, like high blood pressure or diabetes — or the discharged heart attack patient to address heart disease.
“Nurses are the patients advocates, the last place people want to be is in the hospital. We want to make sure that they’re well looked after, that their needs are holistically looked after.”
KIM CARRIERE RN, Longterm Care Even as a little girl, Kim Carriere knew she wanted to be a nurs
But she never imagined that she would find her nursing niche in longterm care.
in
“And then when I was a student we did a stretch in a long- term care facility, and I absolutely loved it,” Carriere said. It’s the field she’s stuck with since graduation.
“I absolutely love my job, I love the residents. It was a good fit.”
It’s also a hands on job, she said, with the whole day spent witwith residident a lot of assessments and nursing care going on.
sidentts withs with
It includes medication management — giving residents their medication and also monitoring to make sure the medication is working and checking in with how they’re doing daily. With fellow nurses and health-care aides, it’s working to monitor each patient and assess them on a daily basis so their needs are being met.
“Patience is definitely something you see amongst all long-term care nurses,” she said, adding that incoming nurses shouldn’t be scared off by the perception of what it entails.
Her favourite part of being a long-term care nurse is being able to help people.
“You have the same faces every day and you can really build up a relationship with them,” she said. “It’s rewarding when you can see, especially the residents that don’t have a lot of family, you can see when you’ve made their day even by just spending a small amount of time with them.”
“And seeing the difference you can make in someone’s life towards the end of their life, the feedback from the family, that their parents last years of their life a positive experience — it is an extremely rewarding field.”
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