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A Childhood Goal, Met in Full
February 19, 2007
A Childhood Goad, Met in Full
Since age 8, Phyllis Sexton has wanted to be a nurse
By LEE BEACH
Herald and News Staff Writing
When she was hospitalized for a ruptured appendix at the age of 8, the compassionate care of nurses fostered Phyllis Sexton's desire to be a nurse.
"I had a wonderful nurse - kind and nurturing," she remembers.
Today, she is in her third decade as an emergency room nurse at Sky Lakes Medical Center, formerly Merle West Medical Center in Klamath Falls.
Sexton never deviated from her goal of becoming a nurse, despite what she called a nomadic early personal life.
"In a nutshell, my sisters and mother and I were a family of adversity, but my mother and stepfather made sure we had a good foundation to go into professional lives."
In high school and college, she graduated with top honors. At college graduation, her 3-moth-old son Jason cried during the ceremony. She married her husband, Bud, when she was a college sophomore.
Her new career begins.
As a new graduate nurse, her first nursing job was in critical care at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, Calif. Through her school years, she had worked in the hospital's switchboard and in the billing departments. She often worked three jobs while in school and carried a full caseload of patients during her senior year of college.
"As a brand new graduate, I was the only nurse on a 32-bed medical-surgical floor on the night shift. I set up the first intensive care unit at St. Joe's."
When her husband decided to attend Oregon Institute of Technology in 1972, the family moved to Klamath Falls, and Sexton worked as a critical care nurse at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital, the predecessor to Merle West Medical Center.
"I would drift down to help in the emergency room, when needed. I have been blessed by diverse opportunities."
The 1970s and the '80s were a hectic time filled with opportunities and with the arrival of two more children, Cara and Brian.
After 16 years in critical care nursing, Sexton switched to ER nursing.
There was a predominance of ambulance and air flights to other areas for care during those years, and she would often accompany patients on those rides.
"In the '70s and '80s, my kids would wave as I left in the helicopter. They said they would never go into the health care field because I would be called away at all hours and worked such long hours. Now both my boys married nurses."
Changing hospital
When she started at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital, the ER was a five-bed room, with one bed in a pelvic examination room.
Today, Sky Lakes Medical Center has a 16-bed emergency room, which will soon be expanded to 22 beds and a three-bed trauma bay. (Since this article was written, the new Emergency Department was opened and the old Emergency Rooms are scheduled to be renovated as well.)
In her early years of caring for heart attack patients, all emergency nurses and doctors could do was provide oxygen, administer morphine or put on toe tags. She feels the area of greatest advances is in caring for coronary artery patients.
New treatments and new medications meant constantly learning new and better ways of caring for patients, and Sexton admits to a life-long thirst for knowledge.
"In 1971, CPR was not even a certified course. Now it is an absolute standard for health care professionals. Advanced cardiac life support is the stage above CPR; it's a standard of care. We sharpened and sterilized our own needles - now everything is disposable."
One change she has seen is in the patients.
"People are living longer, more positive lives because of the care we can give. We have more knoledgeable consumers. They know more about care and about medications."
Seeing it all
Dress for nurses also changed - from the starched white uniforms to colorful, more informal pants outfits. As an emergency room nurse, Sexton usually wears scrubs and a jacket.
She has seen it all working in the emergency room for 20 years.
"When it comes to the ER, it's fair to say my one area of passion in nursing is its variability. We see everything from minor colds, coughs, strains and sprains to stabbings, shootings, trauma, heart and chemical problems. We provide a rainbow of care for people from babies to the dying - the whole span of life."
"And there is tremendous abuse - of children, of elderly people and domestic abuse. At times there are rampant issues with meth, drugs and alcohol."
As health care providers, it is not the responsibility of nurses to investigate suspected cases of abuse, only report them.
One of two times she has used the emergency room as a patient was when her second child, a daughter, was born in a precipitous delivery in the back seat of their car in the parking lot of the hospital.
Tragedy and compassion
Tragedy is something nurses have to deal with. Sexton admits every tragic situation has left her with a sense of sadness or loss.
"Those involving children are the hardest. You have to put them away in a memory vault. You have to take each and every one of those encounters with tragedy and help people on the path to positive grieving. It's the nursing we chose to do. It's the area in which I have the greatest expertise. It allows us to truly understand and be compassionate."
Consistently through the years she says she has worked with wonderful physicians.
"I've been taught by the best. They have given me collaborative effort to give the best care available to my patients."
As she now prepares to start slowing her work pace so she has more time to enjoy her five grandchildren, she reflected on the significance of the emergency room and the nurses' role in it.
"We're the portal of entry into the health care system. Our empathy, compassion and concern for the patient sets the tone for them."