Poplar Bluff Regional sits just above the Bootheel and for the last few years has been running a nurse externship program where student nurses get hands on experience working in the hospital.
Ashlee Dunn oversees the program. She grew up in nearby Bollinger County and spoke about the benefits of training nurses from the community — in the community.
For the month of August, we’re focusing on the health of those living in and around Missouri’s Bootheel.
Ashlee Dunn: I am a first-generation nurse, so that's one of the big tenets to my career, and part of why I'm so passionate about this program because nobody in my family was a nurse, was in healthcare, and so, I really went into nursing with no prior experience or perceptions about it.
For PBRMC — Poplar Bluff Regional [Medical Center], we call it a nurse externship, but it's going to be different from a traditional track because they're going to get more clinical exposure — that is the biggest piece.
So, we rotate them through the emergency department, through behavioral health, through women's center, surgical services — more opportunities in the clinical environment that they might see in the nursing program traditionally.
"While nursing is a job — it's more than that. It's a profession, and, at the end of the day, we are taking care of people."Ashlee Dunn, Director of Clinical Education at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center
It opens up so many opportunities, I think, for some individuals who don't want to go far for their education. Maybe they want to stay close for family purposes, or just because it's home, and maybe they are passionate about nursing care because they want to serve their community.
So, having the opportunity to go to school locally just opens up so many doors for potential workforce that maybe we would not have brought into nursing otherwise.
I know that was a real thing for me as a student. I did have to travel a little bit — I drove about an hour to classes every day to school, but it was still at home, what I considered at home, and that was the most important thing to me that I was staying close to my family.
We get a lot of what I would say non-traditional students, as well. Students that have started a family. I've had a few nurse externs who've gotten married during the program. Some of them had their first child during the program. Some of them come back and they already have started their family.
So, it just gives more opportunity to grow their career, advance their knowledge while they're right here at home still.
While nursing is a job — it's more than that. It's a profession, and, at the end of the day, we are taking care of people. Every patient that we serve is someone's loved one, someone's brother, father, husband, sister, niece.
It is so important that we understand what a patient's diagnosis is and what we're treating them with and what their next steps are, their medications, for example, but at the end of it, if we don't connect with them, a lot of that information may not stick if we don't make that personal connection.
And so, we have to have that compassionate piece too, because as people are going through scary diagnoses, doctors' visits, new medicines — all those things can be overwhelming, so we have to have that personal element, that compassion for what they're going through.
