Shella Gettings, Clinical Instructor at the OCU School of nursing. Photo provided by Oklahoma City University.
Q: Has COVID-19 changed your opinion on the jobs nurses do?
A: The pandemic that affected our nation in 2019 and 2020 has taken my opinion of the nursing practice into a place of great respect and honor. As a nurse of over 20 years, I have always held abundant pride for what we do within our communities, our states, and all over the world, but when faced with a catastrophic event like this, nurses everywhere stepped up to do the job they were trained to do without fail. My opinion has changed, but it has only changed to a higher level value and admiration.
Q: Has it affected how you look at patients?
A: I have always looked at each patient as a person, that hasn’t changed, but sometimes as years of practice pass, that view is blurred. We tend to start to lose focus on the faces and the stories behind the illness. COVID has reminded me to not look beyond the patient, and to redirect my focus back to what matters.
Q: Has it affected your feelings toward the profession?
A: advanced my nursing degree in order to provide for my family and create a level of autonomy that I didn’t have before. When COVID started to spread rapidly in our state, I had to take a step back and reevaluate what was most important to me and my long-term goals.
I had always wanted to own a private nurse practitioner practice and provide much needed care to the rural communities in need but was now faced with a new challenge that made that prevented that dream from becoming a reality. For the safety of myself, my family, and those around me, it wasn’t the best road to take any longer.
I was beyond blessed to have been teaching clinical practice at Kramer School of Nursing as an adjunct, where I found a new passion and goal to strive towards. I can still embrace the profession as a nurse practitioner with all my might, but as a faculty member in a quality nursing program, I get to help mold and train new nurses of tomorrow while they work towards their dreams and ambitions of becoming a nurse. It is an honor I do not take lightly.
Q: Has it changed how nurses are trained?
A: When one is trained to become a nurse, you start with a firm foundation and build on it, one layer at a time, until you reach the top. This is where you venture out into the real world and help provide care to those who need you, who need trained and qualified nursing talent to prevent bad outcomes and help them heal. Training to be a nurse, in my opinion, will never change, but will only improve as new events occur. We can only change or add training to expand into new situations and prevent different results from an unknown disease and the challenges it brings.
Q: Has it changed the need for nurses?
A: The need for nurses in Oklahoma and around the world has always been extraordinary since the beginning of time. There has always been more illness and disease than there are adequately trained nurses to care for them. Is there a difference with a pandemic? Obviously, the more illness, the more need for care. The good thing is that there are amazing schools that make training and education easily accessible, such as with Kramer School of Nursing, and highly competent and skilled graduating nurses are being placed into facilities where the need is the greatest. We prepare them not only for how to professionally and safely care for their patient’s, but also provide exceptionally capable nurse’s that fill the need without hesitation.
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