what2be

Family Nurse Practitioner

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

Who am I?
Name: Leatha Ross
Titles: Family Nurse Practitioner
Director, Student Health Services
Affiliation: Wright State University
Education: B.S., Microbiology, University of Maryland
B.S., Nursing, Wright State University
M.S. Nursing Education, Wright State University
M.S. Family Nurse Practitioner, Wright State University

Quote: “(The Family Nurse Practitioner Exam) is a national certification exam. So while I might practice her in Ohio, I know my certificate would go anywhere in the country. My certificate to prescribe would vary from state to state,” she said.

What’s2Like:
►Patient-Nurse interaction
►Being able to assess patients
►Teaching
►Being able to write prescriptions

What’s Not 2 Like:
►Nurse practitioners sometimes cannot prescribe certain medications.
►Some testing facilities won’t accept a nurse practitioner’s signature.
►Insurance companies (especially Medicare) won’t reimburse NPs equally with physicians.

For Leatha Ross, it all started with her love of science. When she graduated from high school in her native Maryland, she enrolled at the University of Maryland and graduated with a degree in microbiology.

Nursing was not on her horizon.

“To be honest, I was fighting against it for a long time,” she said with a laugh. Working with a pair of OB/Gyn specialists, she spent a lot of time in the exam room. “I learned to do vital signs. I was doing that and talking to the patients and in the room with the physician and always asking questions. He made the comment one day, ‘you should go to nursing school.’

“After I finished the degree in microbiology, I learned something about myself — that I really did not enjoy being away from people. In a lab you were under a hood a lot of times and you didn’t have a lot of contact. I found that I really did enjoy talking to patients and being around them and figuring out what was going on and helping them through different aspects,” she explained.

Ross enrolled at Wright State University and graduated with a second bachelor’s degree — a B.S. in Nursing — and became a Registered Nurse.

She confessed to a second love — teaching. So she worked and got a master’s degree from WSU with a concentration in nursing education.

She then decided to become an Advanced Practice Nurse — in the field of Family Nurse Practitioner. “I completed the program in 14 to 16 months (at Wright State) because I already had a master’s,” she said.

AP Nurses can choose to follow such disciplines as Nurse Anesthetist, Nurse Midwife or Nurse Practitioner. “You can have Acute Care Nurse Practitioners, Pediatrics. Actually there is now also a geriatric AP Nurse,” Ross said. She chose to become a Family Nurse Practitioner.

She is currently Director of Student Health Services at the university.

Ross pointed out that an FNP can see patients across all age levels and can work with a pediatrician, in internal medicine or even in a hospital.

Once a nurse completes the curriculum, he/she must sit for a national certification exam. With that in hand, the new AP nurse then applies to get a certificate to write prescriptions. “Once you are approved to begin your certificate to prescribe, you work 1,500 additional hours in a clinical setting. You write prescriptions — the first 500 hours under the supervision of your physician. After the first 500, you write them independent of the physician and then the physician or the nurse practitioner with whom you are working signs off.”

Nurse practitioners can set up an independent practice. “If they have the money,” she said with a smile. “Currently my colleague has a practice in Springfield and she has two other nurse practitioners. They provide primary care which entails diagnosing and treating common health problems.

“When you are in practice by yourself, there is a scope of practice and you know what you are allowed to do — in other words, managing common chronic problems such as diabetes, hypertension, doing physicals, giving annual Pap Smears to females and taking care of people that have maybe…bronchitis, sinus infections, headiaches — just the common things,” she explained. The practice must also have a collaborating physician available if something is beyond the scope of the AP Nurse’s practice.

Ross pointed out that the national certification makes her eligible to work anywhere in the United States although her prescriptive powers may vary from state to state.

“While as a Family Nurse Practitioner (career) can be rewarding and kind of gives you a little sense of accomplishment, it is also a big responsibility being sure that you accurately treat your patients and give correct medication dosages and so forth.

“It is so important to keep up,” she said referring to the additional continuing education requirements in addition to those of a Registered Nurse.

Wright State’s School of Nursing requires a Registered Nurse to have at least two years of practice before entering the Advance Practice program.

Ross also noted that the school is about to graduate its first Doctor of Nursing Practice.

MS Certified Genetic Counselor

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

Who am I?
Name: Julie Sawyer
Title: Certified Genetic Counselor
Affiliation: Miami Valley Hospital South
Education: Bachelor’s degree, Biochemistry, The Ohio State University
Master’s degree, Medical Genetics, University of Cincinnati
Quote: “I happened to be at a health fair where there was a genetic counselor,” she said. “I really hadn’t heard of that field before so I read about it and talked to her. I thought this would be a good combination of what I liked and what I wanted. I think it was a very good choice.”

What’s2Like:
►Helping families by making science meaningful to them.
►Sharing information about the mystery world of the cell and its effects on the body.
►Usually day shift work in a controlled environment.
►Decent pay

What’s Not 2 Like:
►Having to give someone bad news.
►Possible hassles with insurance companies
►Being a newer discipline, not as many job openings exist yet.

No sci-fi here. Julie Sawyer, a certified genetic counselor, doesn’t manipulate genes to create monsters nor is she able to pull out a scanner and read your DNA.

“Basically genetic counseling is an education process,” she said. Sawyer works at the Miami Valley Hospital South campus in Centerville. Breast cancer is one topic that she covers frequently.

“(Genetic counseling) is designed to translate a lot of the basic science and medical information specifically related to genetics and inheritance to people to whom it’s relevant,” she explained. “We help to explain things that are often found in ultrasounds, help (patients) understand some of the screening test results.

“Often if there is a family history of a genetic disease, we can calculate the odds that (the disease) will occur in a baby.”

She added that most genetic counselors have spent some time in a pre-natal — usually a high-risk pre-natal center — where they help interpret test results and review family history to look for a genetic risk. “For instance, if there is a family history of cystic fibrosis or sickle-cell (anemia) or even if somebody had a particular ethnic background like African or Jewish — there can be certain conditions that can be more prevalent (to those ethnicities) and we can discuss those conditions and the testing options to screen for those,” she said.

Whereas it was more common to find genetic counselors in pre-natal and pediatric settings — such as working in children’s hospitals — counselors have been expanding into other areas and venues.

“Probably in the last 10 to 15 years, genetic counselors have been branching out into other areas of genetics such as cancer. (They are) working in laboratories helping design testing panels and interpreting test results and even in things like marketing and PR from commercial testing laboratories and things like that,” Sawyer said.

“My work here is working with women who have an increased risk for — primarily — breast and ovarian cancer,” Sawyer explained. “There are a couple of genes that were discovered in the mid-1990s called BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 that are related to breast cancer risk.

“So those genes, which we all have, can be inherited in some families in a damaged form and they are not providing the health benefits that they should,” she continued. “In those situations, women (and men) are at increased risk for breast cancer.”

To study a patient’s family history, genetic counselors usually construct a family tree. “Usually at least three generations — sometimes four or more,” Sawyer said. “(We draw) in all the closest relatives and make a little graph with squares and circles to look at their family to see who has what health problem. We look for patterns. We look to see if it is something that seems to be passed on from parent to child or is it hit-and-miss here and there? Does it seem to be coming from both sides of the family?

“That can help us get a sense of whether or not something is genetic and how it might be inherited,” she said.

The counseling part of her title then comes to the forefront.

“Patient care usually involves a pretty long discussion where we review the person’s background information. After all that is done, we talk about — in cancer counseling — what cancer really is and the relationship between cancer and genes and (we talk about) the difference between sporadic cancer (which is always genetic) and inherited cancer risks (which are actually fairly uncommon,)” Sawyer explained. “Cancer always involves our cells and our genes but is usually something that happens over time in a person’s body — in their own cells — and not what they inherited from their family.”

Inheritance, however, is the setting that makes some families more susceptible to develop cancer than others. “That is what we test for — that inherited susceptibility.”

She added that, when a person is determined to be at higher risk, then the patient may decide to have more frequent diagnostic procedures. “More frequent mammograms, MRIs and things like that, particularly for breast cancer risks.

“I think this is where the value of genetic counseling is — helping people decide whether or not that testing is right for them. They have a lot to think about. It is not just a test from themselves, it is a test that could imply information about their parents, their brothers and sisters and their children,” she continued.

“It is not a simple decision.” She added that at-risk patients might want to have surgery to prevent the cancer from forming. There might also be questions about health and/or life insurance. She added that genetic testing is usually very costly.

Sawyer said that she enjoys meeting the families — not just the patient but often other members of the family as well. Their discussions are unlike being in a physician’s office where you are told something in a few minutes with the doctor and are expected to remember all of it when you get home.

Her job is to make sure the process is understood so that it can be remembered.

Sawyer, a native of Marysville, got her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from The Ohio State University. She then worked for a couple of years and went to the University of Cincinnati where she received her master’s degree in medical genetics.

Dental Hygienist

By Ken Mosier
For What2Be

WHO AM I?
Name: Sheranita Hemphill
Title: Registered Dental Hygienist, professor of dental hygiene
Affiliation: Sinclair Community College
Education: Associate degree, Sinclair Community College, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, University of Dayton, master’s degree, Ohio State University, working on doctorate, Ohio University

WHAT’S 2 LIKE ABOUT DENTAL HYGIENE?
• Excellent employment prospects
• Excellent earnings
• A great deal of autonomy in your work
• Able to see the outcomes of our work

WHAT’S NOT 2 LIKE?
• Public perception that dental assistants and hygienists are the same
• Lack of reciprocity between states may mean retaking exams when moving

Quote: “(Dental hygienists) are the best educators in the world in terms of oral health.”

A common perception of a dental hygienist is that they clean teeth and hand you a toothbrush at the end of your appointment.

That’s not the entire story, according to Professor Sheranita Hemphill of Sinclair Community College’s Dental Hygienist program.

“In order to practice as a dental hygienist, you have to have a degree from an accredited school, you have to have a state license, you have to take a national examination and sometimes, in some states, you have to take what we call a practical or regional examination,” Hemphill said. “The regional exam is a hands-on practical clinical situation where you actually work on patients and some non-biased judges from the dental hygiene profession come in and they evaluate your work.”

The regional exam is not currently required to practice in Ohio but that situation could change in the near future. Hemphill warned potential students to be certain that the school is accredited — students from unaccredited schools are not allowed to take the state exam.

Dental hygienists are a separate profession from dental assistants and do much more than just scrape plaque off teeth.

“First of all, a dental hygienist can assume several roles,” Hemphill said. “They examine the patient’s head and neck region. They examine for cancer — oral cancer screening and they remove deposits from teeth. They examine the patient’s oral cavities or anything that is unusual.

“We assess the patient’s oral hygiene status. In other words, we use different types of instruments (and equipment) to gauge where each individual patient is on the oral hygiene scale and we can asses the presence or absence of gum diseases or abnormalities. We are educators — preventative educators.”

Sinclair’s program has a large clinic where advanced students get to practice their skills on real patients — some students, faculty and staff of the college itself and the general public. There is also a radiology lab.

“They are taught how to take radiographs (X-rays) and they are taught how to polish teeth and operate a myriad of tools and equipment,” Hemphill explained. “In the pre-clinical training, they learn how to do things as simple as adjusting the overhead light to actually learning how to use the instruments. That is very detailed work, and it takes at least two quarters. We actually teach them how to sit and how to hold each and every instrument, as they are held differently based on their design.”

Hemphill said that, in some states, dental hygienists can administer the local anesthetic (Ohio is considering allowing that) and in some others, they can fill teeth.

“They can actually put the restorative material into the prepped tooth,” she said. “The doctor has to drill to prep the tooth but then the hygienist can actually fill the tooth.”

Job opportunities are plentiful. The majority of dental hygienists work in private practice, but opportunities exist in several other arenas, including public health and teaching for those with advanced degrees.

Hemphill said that her original intention was to become a physician and was enrolled at Wright State University. Then her daughter was born.

“I recognized that, in order to be a good doctor, you are working all the time and other people are raising your children.”

She thought about the lost time with her daughter and started perusing the Allied Health programs at Sinclair. She selected the dental hygiene program, graduated and became a Registered Dental Hygienist. She has since earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Dayton, a master’s degree from UD, a second master’s degree from The Ohio State University and is pursuing her doctorate from Ohio University.

Medical Technologist

By Ken Mosier
For What2Be

WHO AM I?
Name: Lynn James
Title: Laboratory Manager/Medical Technologist
Affiliation: Wilson Memorial Hospital
Education: Associate degree, Indiana Vocation Technical College, bachelor’s, Capital University

WHAT’S 2 LIKE ABOUT LAB WORK?
• Variety of work — especially for generalists
• Good pay and growing job demand
• Being a big part of diagnosing patients
• Challenging work

WHAT’S NOT 2 LIKE?
• Work can be stressful at times
• Laboratories operate 24/7, weekends and holidays
• Lack of direct patient contact

Quote: “There is a big demand in the laboratory field especially.”

They work behind the scenes in most hospitals and yet their work is vital to the well-being of the patients. Medical laboratory technicians and medical technologists provide physicians and nurses with information to diagnose and treat patients by analyzing patient body fluids.

“Basically we process all blood and body fluid specimens that are sent to us,” said Lynn James, a medical technologist and the laboratory manager at Wilson Memorial Hospital. “It can be a wide variety of specimens. We do sputum and stools and blood and spinal fluid depending on what department you are in.”

She explained that the lab has four major departments: blood bank; hematology; chemical analysis; and microbiology. Those working in hematology do CBCs (complete blood counts), counting the white and red cells and measuring hemoglobin to check for infections or anemia. They also do coagulation tests for people taking blood thinners.

“Chemistry is where we have instrumentation out there to do lipid testing — high cholesterol and glucoses and electrolytes,” she said. “Also the PSAs that people are familiar with for prostate cancer.”

Microbiology takes specimens such as a swab or throat culture to check for diseases such as strep throat.

“We have plated media that has nutrients in it so that the organisms will grow, and we can look at it the next day and say, ‘OK. They do have strep throat,’” she explained. “We can actually mix the bug into some broth and put it in this instrument which will give us a definite identification — such as e. coli — and it will also tell what antibiotics they can use.

“(In the blood bank) we check the antigens and antibodies. If you are going to give a transfusion, you want (the blood) screened to make sure that the blood is not going to cause (the recipient) problems. So we do cross-matches,” she said.

A medical laboratory technician requires an associate degree while the criterion for medical technologist is a bachelor’s degree. Some states require licensure of LMTs and MTs, but Ohio is not one of them. Both degrees prepare the lab professional to work in any area of the lab.

“There are some specialty certification exams they can take,” James said. “So you could have a specialty in blood bank or a specialty in microbiology.”

She said in smaller hospitals MTs and MLTs work in all the different departments of the lab.

“We call them ‘generalists,’” she said.

James said she always wanted to be in a medical field and began her career as a phlebotomist — someone who takes blood samples from the patient — at Wayne Hospital in Greenville.

“I really liked that work and I was intrigued by what the techs were doing back in the lab,” she said. “I thought it was really interesting work.”

She continued working as a phlebotomist while getting her degree and certification as an MLT. She then worked as an MLT while she worked on her bachelor’s and MT certification.

She said that MLTs and MTs can be found in a variety of places from research institutions, clinics that have their own labs, even larger doctors’ offices sometimes hire lab techs.

For those considering the field, she recommends science and math courses and job shadowing to be sure that the MT/MLT career is the right choice.

Dietetic Technician

By Ken Mosier
For What2Be

WHO AM I?
Name: Nicole Erdelyi
Title: Registered Dietetic Technician
Affiliation: Miami Valley Hospital
Education: Associate of Applied Science, Sinclair Community College

Quote: “The reason I  became a DTR is because I could work at a good hourly rate while I am finishing up school to be a (licensed) dietitian. I really do like my job.”

WHAT’S 2 LIKE ABOUT THIS JOB?
• Interacting with and educating patients.
• A field that is always changing.
• Knowledge obtained in the field can be used personally.
• Eight-hour days, Monday through Friday.
• Flexible schedule (in some locations).

WHAT’S NOT 2 LIKE?
• Dietetic Technicians are not at top of pay scale.
• Doctors sometimes ignore recommendations.
• Much computer work at times.

While attending Wright State University on a vocal music scholarship, Nicole Erdelyi realized that a career in music is sometimes an iffy thing.

“I realized that there is not a whole lot of stability in music — if you want to be a performer. So I decided to take (music) on as a hobby,” the Stebbins High School alumna said.

“My sister was always into nutrition, and it was always something that I loved to learn about,” she continued.

Since Wright State had no program, she transferred to Sinclair Community College, where she received her Associate degree in Applied Science.

“I don’t think I knew what dietetics was when I first stepped foot in class,” she said. “When I started studying nutrition, I never thought I would be working in a hospital — I never thought it was going to lead me to a medical field.”

Erdelyi is a Dietetic Technician, Registered, at Miami Valley Hospital. She received her certification from the Commission On Dietetic Registration — which is the credentialing body for the American Dietetic Association. The certification requires an associate degree from an accredited college or university.

“I received (my diploma) at Sinclair,” she said. “It is a two-year degree, and there are practicum hours (450 minimum) involved in that. At Sinclair, it is incorporated (into the program) rather than an internship.”

Erdelyi said that her typical day would start as she comes to her office and begins clinical nutrition assessments on the patient list.

“I just gather as much information as I can to create an assessment of whether I believe that they are a low-risk, moderate-risk or high-risk nutritionally,” she explained. “Low- or moderate-risk, I get to complete the assessment,” she said. “If I find that they are high-risk (such as kidney problems), I would refer them to a (licensed) dietitian.”

A dietetic technician’s job in a hospital has a great deal to do with education of patients.

“That is probably my favorite part of the job — getting to come out of my office with my information and to be able to talk to the patient and to teach them something,” she said.

She has the chance to become familiar with some of her patients — those in rehabilitation are sometimes there for three or four weeks.

“I get to keep working with them and to see them grow.”

A hospital setting is not the only place you could find a DTR.

“As long as you are under (the supervision of) a licensed dietitian, there are the food banks, the wellness centers and there are specialties such as working in a dialysis center,” Erdelyi said.

She added that certification in dietary management is also part of the training.

“It is managing kitchens — a lot of times in nursing homes — that kind of thing or you could manage restaurants,” she said.  “We are qualified to do that.”

As with most professions, continuing education is a requirement.

“We have a portfolio that we have to complete every five years. We submit our goals and learning plan at the beginning of that five-year period, and we obtain education credits through reading journals and going to seminars,” she explained.

Advanced degrees are also possible. Erdelyi is currently finishing up her general education requirements at Sinclair and will transfer to the University of Dayton to pursue her bachelor’s degree so that she can become a Licensed Dietitian. A master’s degree program is also available in the field.

Surgical Nurse

Jason Kesling, RN > Springfield Regional Medical Center

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

A placement test at Sinclair Community College showed Jason Kesling that nursing was a good career choice for him.
“So that is what I chose,” the Dixie High School graduate said. “My aunt and my grandmother were nurses.”
Kesling, a graduate of the nursing program at Sinclair, is now the orthopedic team leader in the surgery center at Springfield Regional Medical Center’s High Street campus.
“Orthopedics is just my charge area,” he explained. “I am also involved in general surgery.”
Working in the operating room is different from working on the floor although the necessary degree is the same.
“When you get down here, you have to learn certain things that other nurses on the floor wouldn’t know,” Kesling said. “That is why working down here is sort of a specialty.
“In school we were basically trained to work on the floor — we weren’t trained to work in surgery,” he continued while adding that each nurse in the unit has to go through an orientation period — sort of on-the-job training — to learn the procedures of the OR.
He said an operating room nurse could be performing in two different roles.
“One role is I am scrubbing,” he said. “(As the scrub nurse) I am assisting the doctor with instrumentation — handing him instruments, assisting him with retraction, draping out the legs or extremities or abdomens if I am in general surgery,” he explained. “I hand him the instruments and do everything I can to help him.”
On the days when he is not scrubbing, Kesling could be working as a “circulator.”
“The circulator is a nurse — always,” he said. “They are officially in charge of the room. You are in charge of the patient, positioning him/her correctly and having all the supplies that are needed — if the scrub needs more supplies, you go get them.
“You are also helping with the anesthesia any way that you can and you may get the patient prepared for surgery. You make sure everything is sterile and done the correct way,” he continued.
Kesling said that on a typical day of surgery, he will arrive at 6:30 a.m. He will then get the supplies that are needed and see if there is any last-minute instructions from the doctors. “I then maybe go and check on the patient to see if they are heavy or if there is some other problem that we might anticipate in the room.
“I make sure that I have the right team members in the room and go into the OR about seven o’clock and set up my case on the back table,” he continued. The back table is one that has all the instruments, drapes and anything else that is sterile. Between surgeries, Kesling takes care of his charge duties or may confer with surgeons about upcoming cases.
For those contemplating a nursing career, Kesling says to choose the field for the right reasons.
“Make sure you want to do it. Don’t just do it because you think you will make a lot of money,” he said. “Do it because you care about patients or you want to help people.
“School is very hard and, if you don’t care about what you are doing, you won’t make it through or you won’t be happy if you do,” he said.

Sonographer

Gretchen Prine, sonographer > Good Samaritan Hospital

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

Gretchen Prine said she had always been attracted to the medical profession ever since she was a little girl.
“I had an X-ray and that just fascinated me. So, from that time, that was what I wanted to do,” she said.
Prine attended Sinclair Community College and graduated with an associate degree in Radiology. She then took X-rays at Good Samaritan Hospital for 20 years before deciding that she needed a change.
“I was not really tired of doing X-ray but I wanted more of a challenge in my life. I felt I was stagnating and not using my brain by doing the same thing all the time.”
She enrolled in Kettering College of Medical Arts and graduated with an associate degree in Ultrasound — a procedure that uses high-frequency sound waves to create visual images of organs, blood flow or tissues in the body.
Prine currently works as a sonographer at Good Samaritan where she faces busy days at work.
“We have outpatients that come in, we have in-house patients that come down from the floor and we have emergency room patients that can get added on at any time of the day,” she said.
Although she works a normal day shift, other sonographers work various shifts and weekends.
She said that hospitals are just one of many places that a sonographer can find work.
“Some (obstetrics) doctors have (a machine), some neurology doctors have a dedicated ultrasound person in their office.”
Other places besides hospitals include the wave of outpatient care centers being built around the area and working for yourself.
“You can actually buy your own ultrasound machine and go mobile with it and go to nursing homes if you want,” she said.
She described a normal day as making sure the machines are running correctly and are clean, checking linen supplies — sonographers use a lot of towels, washcloths and sheets — and spending a lot of time on the computer reviewing the images and arranging for patient billing.
“We also fill out worksheets with every study to give the radiologist an idea of what we see on the ultrasound,” she explained. She added that one critical part of her job is making sure that the images that the radiologist sees are the best available.
“The radiologist can only go on the pictures that I take. I see the entire exam but I am only taking certain pictures so I have to make sure that my pictures are good enough that the radiologist is going to be able to pick out what is going on. It can be tough.”
There are four modalities to ultrasound: abdomen; OB; echocardiograms; and vascular. She added that Kettering College is the only school in the area and one of the few that trains the student in all four modalities — most require students to choose two.
Students quickly become familiar with the equipment and procedures through their clinical experience.
“You do on-the-job training. You are in the hospital actually scanning patients three days a week (under the supervision of a sonographer) and you go to school two days a week,” she explained.
For students that might be considering the profession, she recommends studying chemistry, physics, anatomy, physiology and math.
“You need to have a good, strong math background,” she said.

Pharmacist

Melody Eppley, PharmD > Wilson Memorial Hospital

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

Melody Eppley got her start as a pharmacist because of one simple reason.
“I needed a job and they had an opening as a (technician) in a pharmacy department,” she said.
The fact that it was in a medical field was even better.
“I always wanted to wear a white coat,” she quipped.
Under current Ohio law, there is no educational requirement to become a pharmacy technician and on-the-job training is the norm. Those who wish can sit for the certification exam and become Certified Pharmacy Technicians.
Eppley decided that she wanted more.
“I thought, ‘I kind of like this.’ So I went back and got my pharmacist’s degree which, at the time, was a five-year degree and started working as a practicing pharmacist,” she said.
Pharmacists are in great demand, so Upper Valley Medical Center provided scholarship funds for her to get her degree in pharmacy.
“I said I was interested in being a pharmacist, and I was a pharmacy tech so they sent me through school. I had to work for them for so many years afterward,” she said.
She said she gets recruiting calls and information daily from those looking for pharmacists.
Eppley worked at Upper Valley and then Miami Valley Hospital and then went into the retail end of the profession for a few years. After obtaining her doctorate (PharmD), she came to Wilson Memorial Hospital in Sidney as the Director of Pharmacy.
Eppley said there is a big difference between working in the local drugstore and working in a hospital.
“Retail pharmacists will take the prescription and fill it,” she said. “They will check for any drug interactions and check for drug disease interaction, counsel the patient and make sure the patient understands how to take the medication properly. Most will also tell them about any side effects.
“In a hospital we do things a little differently. We make IVs or we make chemotherapy agents, plus we dispense the medication in units of use versus a 30-day supply,” she added. “You get just what you need for each day. One of the reasons is that (medication orders) can change so often in an acute situation in a hospital.”
She adds that hospital pharmacists also check for the interactions of drugs as well as adjust dosing of the drug according to a physician’s orders.
“We use a lot of lab reports (to check the drug’s effectiveness),” she said.
Hospital pharmacists also provide some education to nurses and doctors and answer their medication questions.
It is difficult to become a pharmacist (the program is now six or eight years), but jobs are plentiful in many venues.
“They could do research, they could go into pharmacy law — they could go on and get their law degree in pharmacy,” she said. “They could work as drug (representatives). It is wide open and changing very rapidly.”
Since hospitals are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, shift work is possible in the pharmacy field. Other options include part-time work or even writing from home for pharmaceutical journals.
The need for pharmacists — and pharmacy directors — is likely to increase in the future.
“As our population gets older, there is an increase in medication use,” she said. “All the pharmacy graduates that I know had jobs before they graduated.”

Surgical Tech

Kassandra Kaiser, ST-C > Miami Valley Hospital

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

Kassandra Kaiser said that her friends were dubious when she told them that she was going to become a surgical technologist.
“They said, ‘You get kind of queasy.’ That is true,” she said with a laugh. “When my daughter had her tonsils and adenoids out, the doctor was telling me in the recovery room what he did and I had to sit down. I was passing out.”
Kaiser now works at Miami Valley Hospital assisting on all types of surgeries — although she is assigned to the neurosurgery team.
“As a student I thought, ‘I have to get through this.’ I would eat a good breakfast and go in there and not pass out. I discovered that, if I was actually doing something, it was fine and it was exciting.”
She arrived on the medical scene after a somewhat circuitous route. She graduated from Miami University with a degree in English education but decided she really didn’t like teaching.
“It’s a great field as long as you don’t mind grading papers all night,” she said. After a divorce, she worked in the insurance industry for a while.
“I started dating somebody who had sisters who were nurses and he said, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a nurse?’ I said that I had always wanted to do that so I started in nursing (classes),” she said.
“In one of your initial classes, you have to learn about all the other jobs in health care. I didn’t even know what a (surgical technologist) was but I was reading through this and I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
She graduated from Sinclair Community College with an associate degree in Allied Health. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in health administration from Central Michigan University.
Surgical technologists — commonly called scrub techs — have the choice of being noncertified or certified by passing an exam.
“Certification earns you a little bit more money and it allows you to travel to any state (to take a job),” Kaiser said.
“Our primary job is setting up the equipment, opening the instruments, setting up the table and assisting the surgeons — your whole purpose is to assist that surgeon,” she explained. “I get here about 6:45 a.m., check my cart to make sure all my instruments are there,” she said.
After scrubbing and putting on gown and gloves, she returns to the OR. “I open all my instruments. For a big case (such as a lumbar fusion), it takes about 30 minutes to get set up.
“By this time the patient is coming into the room. When they make the incision, I have to know what the doctor is going to need. My job is to be three steps ahead and have it ready for him,” she said. “There are a couple of hundred doctors who work here and we are expected to know every (surgery) specialty. In training we go through a rotation and go through everything from open-heart to bellies to backs — everything. I was a big note taker (on what surgeons want). When you get to your job, you are on a team — a neuro team, an ortho team, a heart team — so I primarily work with the same surgeons.
“I love my job. I go home at the end of the day feeling as if I have helped people,” she said.

Physical Therapist

Lauren Mothot, DPT > Miami Valley Hospital

By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be

A back flip during a gymnastics floor exercise introduced Lauren Mathot to the world of physical therapy. The then-high school junior landed wrong while performing for Magnificat High School.
“I injured myself fairly bad and I had to have reconstruction on my ankle,” she said. “So I was in physical therapy myself for about three months trying to (rehabilitate) and go back for my final year of gymnastics.
“I loved my therapist — he did a great job with me and, the more I was there, the more I thought, ‘Hey, I could do this.’”
Mathot enrolled at the University of Dayton and took her bachelor’s degree is Sports Science and Education. She then went straight to Ohio University and received her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree.
“You can bypass the master’s (degree) and go straight to the doctorate. It is a three-year program,” she said.
Mathot said one can become a physical therapist with either a master’s or a doctorate. She said that may change in the future.
“There is a movement toward the doctorate, and the American Physical Therapy Association is hoping that all schools are going to move toward the doctorate by 2020.”
In a hospital setting, most physical therapists work day shift only — albeit seven days a week.
“We usually do eight to five or something along those lines. Usually by dinner time, most people aren’t wanting to get out of bed and do things,” she said. “And that is the time when visitors come in. We do do treatments and evaluations on weekends.”
Physical therapists are often aided by Physical Therapist Assistants, which is an associate degree.
“PTAs work with the physical therapists and kind of carry out the plan of care that we set for the patients,” she explained.
Mathot goes to patients’ rooms in her position. The variety of patient ailments is just about anything found in the hospital.
“We have a large spectrum of patients. You can get everything from orthopedic to patients that came in from traumas to patients who came in from a stroke or pneumonia. Some have had surgeries or complications from surgeries. So you have some patients very short term and some for a very longer term,” she said. “It is a large variety and a large age group.”
The PTs also work with cardiac and respiratory patients and even maternity patients.
Evaluating the patient in his/her room is one thing that Mathot does.
“We check out how their mobility is in terms of how they are doing getting out of bed and are they able to stand or walk,” she said. “In the room we do treatments, have them do the exercises in bed or at the side of the bed.”
She said they will also do training of the patients for such devices as wheelchairs or walkers and they work with the doctors and other caregivers on discharge plans for the patients.
Other therapists can be found in the rehabilitation room working on various exercise equipment.
“The difference is that they do a more intensive therapy and it is very regimented. It is intended for when the patients are done here they will be going home,” she explained.
A wide variety of jobs exists in the physical therapy arena outside of hospitals.
“You have sports medicine, brain-injury clinics, extended-care facilities — there are just so many different places you can work,” Mathod said. “The demand (for physical therapists) is very great.”