Magazine

Ashley Bartholomew’s road to a career in perioperative nursing started out in an unusual place: as a dental technician while serving in the U.S. Air Force at just 18 years of age. While stationed overseas in Japan, she got to scrub in and assist in oral surgeries at the Navy hospital. “This inspired me to want to be an operating room nurse,” she says.

It was while working as an assistant at a nursing home in high school that Tracy Hoeft-Hoffman decided that she wanted to pursue a career in nursing. “That’s when I saw what a difference nursing can make in people’s lives,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I need to be doing with my career.’ ”

For the last three-and-a-half decades, Sandra McPeak has devoted her career to the ophthalmological and surgical care of adults and children. A dedicated nurse at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, she’s spent nearly the entirety of her career not only in one specialty, but almost all of it in one health system.