Throughout her childhood, Amber Eaglin loved animals so much that she’d planned to pursue a career in veterinary medicine. Unfortunately for those dreams, during her first internship at a local zoo, she froze up around the miniature horse and started to have second thoughts.
Fortunately for Eaglin, she was living in Lafayette, which happened to also be home to one of the best nursing schools in the south: the University of Louisiana. With a slight adjustment of focus, Eaglin embarked on a course of study that became her path to the operating room.
Among the first skills the program emphasized was “rewiring the way that you think,” Eaglin said, from time management practices to intensive research into community health problems. The academic intensity of the program was legendary, but its rigors produced nurses who were eminently prepared for their work in the field.
“It’s a full bachelor’s degree program, so we learn everything about our patient,” Eaglin said, “not just the disease process, but the comorbidities, what we do to fix it, the medications and their contraindications, what we expect to happen, and, if it doesn’t work, what we do after that.”
“It’s a tough time, a very intense school, but by the time they graduate, our students have a job ready to go,” she said. “There’s a lot expected of you, which is an important thing. Nursing isn’t just handing out medications and giving shots. It’s about what’s best for the patient and their healing process.”
During a three-week summer program, in which she shadowed working nurses to observe their experiences in the workplace, Eaglin followed as her mentor navigated the ins and outs of the job: conflicts with patients, consultations with colleagues, managing medications and supplies, and the details around patients and their procedures.
It was her first opportunity to be exposed to the pre-operative environment, patient recovery, and the operating room, where she felt like she had found her place. Eaglin loved it so much she returned for a paid internship the following summer, and after graduation, when she began working at a nearby regional hospital, she headed into the OR after building skills as a floor nurse. She handled bariatric and general surgeries, but specialized in the treatment of burn victims.
“The hospital opened up a burn unit – one of the few in the area – and helped so many people close by instead of flying them out [for treatment],” Eaglin said. “We had cases every day, and it took up most of my morning every time.”
As her career progressed, Eaglin honed her focus as an OR nurse, developing her understanding of the surgical team and how to support its goals. Although her work in the OR was different from performing bedside care as a circulating nurse, Eaglin nonetheless delivered perioperative patient education with the same bedside manner of a floor nurse as part of her work in that environment.
“As nurses, you learn to work as a team,” she said. “We learn how to handle our six to eight patients, and how to manage all that, but you’re still the one doing most of the care for that patient. Then you go into the OR, and there’s so many things you need to know – some of the surgeon’s job, some of the scrub tech’s job, all the different equipment that needs to be used – it’s so much more of a group effort.”
After years in the OR, Eaglin decided to pursue a master’s degree in nurse education at Lamar University, which she earned over three years, all while working full-time. Upon graduation, Eaglin went on to become an instructor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and now enjoys the work of teaching the next generation of nursing students about what to expect from their careers. The guidance she offers nursing students is based in both her own practical experiences in the field as well as the academic curriculum.
“You have to have a thick skin, because people will come at you sideways quite often,” Eaglin said. “And you have to be autonomous. You need to learn what needs to be done in a day so you can get it done as fast, efficiently, and as well as you can, because something will go wrong. Do what you need to get done, but prepare for things to go wrong.”
Eaglin’s work in the health care field also influenced the vocational choices of her siblings. Her younger brother now works as a travel nurse, and her sister is a clinical pharmacist. She believes her perspectives in the field have helped clarify their expectations just as they have those of her students.
“It’s a lot of un-thanked work, but we do it because we want to take care of people,” Eaglin said. “You’re not going into this for the money, because it’s not as great as you thought it was, and you’re not going into this for the glamour, because it’s not there. Go into it for a good reason.”
Eaglin is the married mother of a four-year-old son, Sylvester, and is pregnant with twins. Her husband, Johnathan, is a youth pastor and educator, and together, the family is focused on raising their young children. When she’s not busy at work or home, she enjoys reading. She described the value of good fiction in helping her manage the variety of personalities she encountered in her nursing work.
“You meet so many people in books who have backstories and perspectives; when I run into different patients it makes me think about where they’re coming from,” Eaglin said.
