Nursing

I interviewed a family friend for many years now, Barb Riser. Barb has been an RN for 12 years now and has worked mainly in Neonatal Intensive Care, but started off in a family practice. She has gone back to school many times, but will be receiving her BSN in December. She currently is an RNC for women and children, RNC for the Neonates, TALS Pediatric Life Support, NRP, ACLS with Adults, CAAMS to be a flight nurse, Advanced Pediatric Trauma, and Advanced Transport Skills. Barb is currently working at Columbus Children's Transport on the trauma team. Here she is services critically ill neonates and sometimes adults all throughout Ohio, to Pennsylvania for organ transplants, and just last week she flew in a Leer Jet to Iowa. Every morning as part of Barb's daily duties, she packs her transport bag and takes inventory. After that, the bag is locked; within ten minutes of an emergency call, she has to be in the air or on the road. While en route, it is her and her team's responsibility to make a care plan- she added that it's not true these plans will "never be seen again" as some schools may advise. She says she uses them all the time. She is in charge of the assessment or evaluation of the children, intubating, cricoids, central lines, fluid recession, all the drips, and ultimately stabilizing and transporting the patient. Barb is practicing under an MCP, so she can do everything that they can under that insurance. But she added that she has to go twice a year to take a skills test and be checked off. She has to go to an intubation clinic once a year, and her certifications for continuing education much be kept up to date. This upkeep of her skills is to ensure that she can be held accountable. Barb has been a mother for 21 years and a nurse for 12. Although most of her children are grown, she said that it is crucial for her to leave her work life at work and her home life at home. Barb said that she likes the autonomy the best about her job. Without the patients or their families, she says, it would not be worth it. Her least favorite part about the job is the hours. She said that she isn't as young as she once was, and the 24 hour shifts are killing her. She also added that with this job you have to work the holidays, miss birthdays and family outings, and hardly get a weekend off. Barb actually just had to do a 40 page paper on where she thinks the nursing career is going and she summed it up by saying