Stripes to Scrubs
By Lanier Norville
As a teenager, Cathy Reece worked as a candy striper at her local nursing home in Paulding County, Ga. She volunteered a few days a week and brought residents meals, ice, and other things they needed. She enjoyed helping the nursing home residents so much that she began to stay late, learning from the nurses how to take blood pressure and temperatures.
“That’s when I really knew nursing was for me,” Reece says.
Today, Reece is the manager of surgical services at Wellstar Windy Hill Hospital in Marietta, Ga., just northwest of Atlanta. She has spent 38 years in nursing, mostly in the OR, a path she chose at age 8 when she realized a career in ballet wasn’t for her. “I decided that since I wanted to help people, I would be a nurse,” she recalls.
A Nurturing Nature
Reece first experienced the magic of caring for others when her neighbor, whose teenage daughter was disabled, asked Reece to help from time to time. “I would stay with her while her mom went to the grocery store.” Reece would bring her a lunch tray and keep her company while her mother was gone. “I enjoyed the friendship of course, but I also felt important,” Reece says. “I felt needed.”
That feeling inspired Reece to get a job as a nurse assistant after she outgrew candy striping. She paid her way through college at Kennesaw State University, with some help from her parents, and earned her nursing degree. Her first job was in the OR at Paulding Hospital, and her next was as a case manager at a nearby hospital. “But I missed the OR,” she says. “I needed to go take care of my patients.”
Today, most of her work isn’t hands-on in the OR, but she still makes herself available to help on cases when she’s needed. “Even though some days I wear business clothes, most days I wear my scrubs,” she says. And she’s still driven by the desire to take care of patients. “It’s so important for nurses to be patient advocates,” she says, “more so in the OR because they can’t speak for themselves because they’re asleep.”
Reece has instated a number of patient advocacy policies in her facility’s operating rooms. As the patients become sedated under anesthesia, the nurses ensure they are positioned correctly. “A little thing like a crossed leg could cause nerve damage,” she explains. “The nurse always assesses the patient to ensure they’re comfortable,” she says, which is important at Wellstar Windy Hill, where many of the surgeries performed are cosmetic procedures that can take six to eight hours. She also has white boards in every operating room, which will soon be electronic scheduling boards. The nurses use codes to indicate patient specifics, such as latex allergies, medication and disabilities. She also encourages close nurse-surgeon relationships. In addition to preference cards, nurses at Wellstar call surgeons the day before scheduled procedures to ensure they will have everything they need.
Reece says it’s just as important for OR nurses to be advocates for patients’ families. “We have a tracking board in our waiting room so they know where their loved one is in the process of surgery,” she says. That way, the patient’s family members will know when surgery is over, and that they can soon expect a status update from the doctor. Reece says surgeon satisfaction relates directly to patient satisfaction, so it’s just another extension of patient advocacy.
Nursing On And Off The Clock
Even though Nix does not spend most of her time in the OR, “I’m a nurse everywhere I go,” she says. She’s known in that role at church, where she always carries a Band-Aid, and ran to the rescue when a member of the congregation fainted. The church also installed AEDs at her urging and had several members take a CPR course. “I was thinking, ‘Well, what if something happens and I’m not here?’”
A few years ago, Reece was playing in a softball game for her church league, when a member of the opposing team had a heart attack on the field. “I called 911, held his hand, and went into my nurse routine. I began asking him, ‘What are you allergic to? What have you eaten today?’ I was prepared to do CPR, but fortunately the ambulance arrived and I didn’t have to.” After he recovered, Reece’s softball opponent came back to the field to hug her and thank her for helping him.
Reece also enjoys helping her younger employees. She says her favorite part about her job is that she gets to mentor young nurses and scrub techs. “I have a scrub tech right now and am working on getting him into nursing school because he’ll be a great nurse,” she says. “We are all learning new thing every day because medical technology has changed so much. And I get to encourage that.”
Speaking of technology, Reece knows how to care for that too. She ensures that all the equipment is tested before the patient arrives, and she always has a back-up plan. “Our biomedical staff is really good, and if something goes wrong, they’re there in a couple of minutes.” Still, she encourages troubleshooting while the biomeds are on the way. “Sometimes it’s just a loose wire,” she says, so she or a staff member can begin to diagnose the problem to speed up the repair process.
Involvement On A National Scale
Reece is the secretary of her local chapter of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN). “We’re well represented nationally and have about 50 very active members,” she says. The group meets once a month to talk about the latest technologies and to enjoy each other’s company. The group sponsors speakers on subjects ranging from the benefits of certification to organizing and de-cluttering your life.
Last year, 20 members of the Northwest Georgia Chapter attended AORN Congress. Some went as delegates. “We have a voice in the bylaws changes,” she says. This year, it was proposed that non-nurses be allowed on the licensing board in Georgia. “We spoke up and said no. If you are talking about licensed nurses, you need to have licensed nurses.” The amendment didn’t pass. “We were excited about that, because you need to have the right people at the table making decisions.”
Next year, Reece will serve on the board, a position to which her fellow members elected her. She was also nominated for her chapter’s Perioperative Nurse of the Year. “I’d like to get everybody involved,” she says, because support is important.
“When you get tired or things get tough, the other members support and encourage you. They’re your peers, and they know what you’re going through.”
