Spotlight On

If variety is the spice of life, Leigh Ann Bartlett’s nursing career is as hot as a ghost pepper. Leigh Anne’s nursing career began in 1995 on a Progressive Care Unit at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Health Wayne, formerly Wayne Memorial Hospital, in Goldsboro, N.C.

Beverly started her nursing career in 1976 as a staff nurse in labor and delivery at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. “One night a woman giving birth with a midwife had seizures and was eclamptic when they brought her in. It turned out that she had a ruptured liver. Doreen Reynolds, who many will remember, was working in the main OR that night and she came running in with all the equipment and everything that was needed for surgery.” 

Many perioperative nurses can vividly remember when they first sensed the calling to become a nurse. For Karen Elliott, it goes all the way back to when she was a little girl and got a toy nurse’s kit for Christmas. 

Elaine Geroski is the assistant vice president of patient services and chief nursing officer at West Virginia University Medicine Grant Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital in Petersburg, W.V. 

Yessenia Salgado began her journey with an associate degree from the Beth Israel School of Nursing – now the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing.

Brenda Ulmer still remembers the exact moment more than 50 years ago when she realized that a career in perioperative nursing might be in her future. Her nursing school program included rotations in the operating room, and while watching a cervical laminectomy at the VA Hospital in Atlanta, her stomach started to growl.