Building a healthy America
Modern nurse’s roll is that of teacher, caregiver

Mike Emerson RN checks a patients blood sugar at Fort Defiance Indian Hospital. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

FORT DEFIANCE — Building a healthy America is the type of work that nurses today are helping to do. National Nurses Week is held every year May 6-12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, who is considered the founder of modern nursing. It allows nurses to be recognized and appreciated for one week out of the year.

The Fort Defiance Indian Hospital observed the week with various activities in keeping with the theme “Nurses: Building a Healthy America.”

The role of nurses today is largely that of educators and that is true at Fort Defiance Indian Hospital, Rodney Gorman, a nurse supervisor at the hospital, said. They teach the patients about care, prevention, medication, and the list goes on.

“Teaching is just a huge component of our job,” Gorman said.

Gorman, pointing out a hogan being built on the north side of the facility, said he has seen a shift in health care to focus on the person as a whole.

At the Fort Defiance Indian Hospital there are some 200 nurses employed to serve the people in that area. Their work is in the various departments — surgery, outpatient, pediatrician, emergency room, diabetes education, and more.

Nurses are in high demand everywhere so the job can take nurses all over.

Wasan Cartwright is a nurse at FDIH and chose his occupation because his wife is also a nurse. He had another type of job before returning to school to become a nurse.

“She told me we can travel together,” he said.

Cartwright said he’s a people person which makes him suited for his job.

“It’s good to see all kinds of patients coming in. I like working with patients,” he said.

Case managers manage patient care and it is a difficult job — one that a nurse must often go to graduate school to become. Brad Espeseth, a case manager, started at Fort Defiance Indian Hospital in January.

“I became a nurse about 10 years ago because I thought health care was interesting — a lot of opportunities, a lot of variety,” he said.

Another field is in public health, which is what Valonia Hardy, originally from Chinle, does at the hospital.

“I wanted to do something else in the health field but once I started going to the college, I started hearing about all these nurses. I thought it was really cool,” she said.

Hardy started at the University of New Mexico-Gallup branch and finished her bachelor’s degree at UNM in Albuquerque.

Working in public health is a different job almost every day.

One day the nurses are working on issues of epidemiology and the next they might be doing home visits with elderly.

“Right now we’re working on this whole swine flu — making sure that the message is out,” Hardy said.

One job at the hospital for nurses which requires a lot of home visits is that of the diabetes educator. Lana Dobson has been working with diabetes patients and said that when the nurses work with patients for two weeks, they see improvements.

Dobson was working in the social work field but was coming up to a lot of walls, she said.

“I wanted to do more, so I went back to school,” she said. “I chose to do a bachelor of science in nursing. I did that because it would allow me to advance in the future if I want to.”

Gorman noted that historically, nursing was one of the few fields that women could work before the feminist movement.

Gail Oglebee has been nursing for 25 years but she had fought being a nurse when she first started.

“After I got started with the program I fell in love with it and realized it was my calling,” she said.

Oglebee just started in the surgery unit recently and is now facing the challenge of learning more about the department.

That is one of the advantages, Gorman said, being able to take on something new within the same profession.

“There’s so much within the walls of a hospital,” Oglebee said.

Not only inside a hospital but outside, Gorman added. Nurses can work at schools, in prisons and on air flights, just to name a few options. Nurses can also become sales representatives for companies that sell hospital equipment since they are so familiar with the subject.