Name: Kay Campbell

Place of work: Kettering Medical Center

Job Title: RN (BSN, BC)

Hours worked: 7am - 7pm, 36 hrs p/week

How many yrs/months in profession: 10 years

Where you received your education: Sinclair Community College and Indiana Wesleyan University

What degree did you earn: Associate to BS in Nursing

How many yrs/months for your education: 5 years

A Typical Day: I arrive to work and receive my assignment. I get report from night shift concerning my patient status and needs. I then review medications for the day, review labs and start assessing and providing care to my patients. It is necessary in my profession to be flexible due to patient needs and changing needs of the unit.

What was your inspiration: I had cared for my father for 6 years during an illness and my mother encouraged me to be a nurse considering my recent experience.

Best Advice you ever received: Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. When you encounter a problem, you must help to find a solution and institute a plan.

What would you tell someone interested in going into health care: Don’t enter nursing based on money. Do it because you care about people and want to make a change.

Name: Sarah Conover

Place of work: UVMC

Job Title: Physical Therapist

Hours worked: 20 hrs a week

How many yrs/months in profession: 22 1/2 years

Where you received your education: University of Evansville & University of Indianapolis

What degree did you earn: BS in PT and MHS

How many yrs/months for your education: 4 years + 2

A Typical Day: Desk work & getting the day’s schedule set, see patients & write notes throughout the day, taking a break for lunch. Finishing up with paperwork at the end of the day and phone calls.

What was your inspiration: Interest in how the human body works & wanting to impact the quality of life for individuals.

Best Advice you ever received: Listen to your patients.

What would you tell someone interested in going into health care: In addition to having an interest in people, it’s critical to be a strong student in math and sciences.

One interesting anecdote about your career (optional): Every day I learn something new.

Name: Renee Schmitz

Place of work: UVMC

Job Title: HIS Analyst

Hours worked: 7:30 am – 4:00 pm

How many yrs/months in profession: 16 years

Where you received your education: Sinclair Community College

How many yrs/months for your education: 3 years

What was your inspiration: I wanted to do something with healthcare, but knew that nursing was not for me.

Best Advice you ever received: As far as coding goes, to always do it as specific as I can. Garbage in the record is garbage out of the record.

What would you tell someone interested in going into health care: You should like to read. Coding is like short stories/mysteries.

Name: Karen Scott

Place of work: Kettering Medical Center

Job Title: Staff Nurse

Hours worked: 7pm-7am

How many yrs/months in profession: 6 years

Where you received your education: Sinclair Community College and Indiana Wesleyan

What degree did you earn: Baccalaureate

How many yrs/months for your education: Minimum of 2 years

A Typical Day: Get my patient assignment and introduce myself to my patient and their families. I then perform a nursing assessment, pass medications and perform any treatment that is ordered. Working in an intensive care department, I see a wide variety of patients. Some patients are recovering from surgery and others are stroke patients. Some patients are so sick that despite our best efforts and advances in medicine we are unable to save their life.

What was your inspiration: My grandmother was a nurse and I always knew that I would work in health care. I started as a medical assistant and worked in a doctor’s office while attending nursing school. After working on a medical surgical unit for a year, I wanted more of a challenge. I transferred to the ICU where I have worked for the past five years.

Best Advice you ever received: Always be compassionate to your patient and their family.

What would you tell someone interested in going into health care: Work as a nursing assistant to make sure your heart is in health care. Nurses will never be replaced and there will always be jobs available.

One interesting anecdote about your career (optional): As a nurse, you have many options for career moves. You can work in doctor’s offices, a cruise ship, a hospital, home care agencies, school nurse or an insurance company.

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.

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.

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.

I’m just going to cut to the chase:

Tips to Survive in College (this is for any college)

1. Study
2. More Study
3. Did I mention Study?

—
Hopefully, I’m making my point.
In any health care field, studying isn’t an option, it is a necessity.

To offer quality healthcare to a patient is essential, and the only way you can be prepared
to do this is to, you got it, Study.

My Anatomy & Physiology teacher put it this way on the first day of college “…while I may be a nice guy, I need you to know that my class is very difficult. You need to put in the hours of studying now. If I were to be sick and come to the Emergency Room, I want to know that you know what you are doing!”

You may spend a large portion of your next few years in college studying, but in all honesty, the
reward you will experience of “a job well done” is totally worth it.

Live strong and live to do your best!

Danny

The scrubs I’m wearing are hanging damp and heavy. My limp hand is starting to go numb from the squeeze my wife is placing upon it.

The obstetrician, her forehead drenched in sweat, yells for more light and to for my wife to push harder. The monitor starts to show the baby’s heart rate falling more frequently into gullies and canyons, dropping off.

My wife’s blood pressure suddenly surges, her eyes roll back into her head, and she starts seizing. My mind races with the possibilities.

“Oh God,” I think, “it’s eclampsia.”

Her neck stiffens, and I fear aneurysmal rupture. The obstetrician calls for the nurses to start rolling her into the operating room. As we move down the hall, my hand is now squeezing hers, which hangs limp, lifeless.

Tears stream down my face, and a nurse stops me as they take my wife into the OR.

“We’ll do everything we can,” she said. “Please stay here.”

My mind reels. My hopes surge for the best outcome, but the physician in my mind whispers to me, “They’re gone.”

I sit up, and my head falls into my hands as I reorient after the nightmare. My eyes move to the baby monitor on the bedside table. The red lights jump with each of my son’s cries. He’s been teething for three days now, each ivory challenge presenting itself at night. At least, that’s what I hope it is, and not something sinister.

My wife moans, “Can you get him tonight?”

I get up from the bed, my back aching. “This is what happens when you turn 30,” I mutter.

I climb toward the nursery. Standing there in the crib, my son has tears streaming down his face. He sees me towering over him and outstretches his arms. I pick him up, and he buries his face into my neck, breathes deep and stops crying. I rub his back gently as we rock.

Earlier, my wife had asked me about giving him some ibuprofen. I refused, fearful of an allergic reaction, something I have had the unpleasant experience of seeing firsthand. Now, sitting there with him at 3 a.m., I think I might have been too hasty.

Over a year ago, I remember a visit to the obstetrician at 30-something weeks. I sat there while he asked my wife all the regular questions about swelling, nausea and weight gain. Afterward, he turned to me and spoke the only four words he said to me that day: “Don’t treat your wife.”

I appreciated his advice but never thought much of it.

Our pregnancy and delivery went as smoothly as any other. When we got home from the hospital, however, the worry began and never left. Every cough or sneeze became a rare, incurable condition in my mind.

At six months, my son developed mucus and blood in the stool. I feared the worst. After a visit to the pediatrician, we cut out dairy from his and (much to her chagrin) my wife’s diet, and his symptoms resolved. Just a milk allergy. Since starting a family, I have seen how this knowledge of all that can go wrong, all the terrifying diagnoses sneak into your mind with each symptom. These “zebras” are driven into our minds to make us into vigilant diagnosticians, but this enlightenment becomes a curse. The fear of horrible diseases befalling those you love is always in the back of your mind.

My son is sleeping now. I stand, move quietly to his crib, and lay him down amongst the soft liner with images of farm animals. The sound of rain outside lulls him asleep. I rub his back for a few moments and realize how vulnerable life can be. Then I tiptoe down the stairs and crawl into bed.

But my ears stay turned towards the monitor with the perpetual vigilance of a parent, made worse by the knowledge of a physician.

Jason Faber, M.D., is a resident in the internal medicine program at Kettering Medical Center. He graduated from the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in 2008 and holds an honors Bachelor of Arts degree from Xavier University.

It’s 4:30 a.m. and already I’ve been up for half an hour, taken a shower and had my breakfast. Most people are still fast asleep, but as I have begun to learn these past few weeks, sleep is a luxury that those of us in medicine are rarely afforded.

Never having been one to roll out of bed before noon if I could avoid it, I’ve been surprised by my ability to awaken before sunrise and be functional. But then, I’ve also been waiting two years for this chance, to actually use what I have worked so hard to learn. Time seems to be moving very quickly all of a sudden. Boards are over, and I am in the middle of the first of my third-year clerkships. My days are full of new challenges, but in a lot of ways, they represent a refreshing change from the tedium of the past.

As it happens, I have chosen to begin my journey with the beginning of life. I will admit that I had more than a few misgivings about starting my obstetrics and gynecology rotation. I’ve always been a bit on the squeamish side, and the birthing process is known for being rather messy.

Luckily for me, the first birth I assisted in was as amazing an experience as one could hope to have in my situation. About two weeks ago, under the guidance of a midwife whose calm, efficient and confident demeanor I can only hope to achieve someday, I helped deliver a beautiful baby boy to a truly wonderful couple.

As first-time parents, this couple was thoroughly engaged in every step of the process and graciously allowed me to be a part of their life-changing experience. As expected, there were a few moments of panic, when I wondered if I was ready for all of this, if I would just be in the way, if I would be able to overcome my weak stomach.

The thing is, I didn’t really get a chance to indulge in those moments of self-doubt. Unlike a multiple-choice test, with ample time to ruminate and second-guess, I now had a woman looking at me for reassurance, depending on me to take care of her and the baby she was about to bring into the world. A powerful feeling exists in the delivery room, when a wanted child is preparing to make its entrance. The love and excitement on the father’s face as he looks at his wife, the words of wisdom from a mother about to become a grandmother, but more than anything, the sheer awesomeness of the woman in labor, her fierce determination.

I have to tell you that for me, there has been no greater experience than making that connection with my first mom-to-be, coaching her and encouraging her to find those last reserves of energy. I know that I will never forget this couple, the baby I helped to be born or the midwife who was such a wonderful teacher and who let me take such an active role.

The past few weeks have made it clear to me how much I still have to learn, but I look forward to the challenge and a year filled with many new experiences.

Jacqueline Collins is a second-year student at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. She studied Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Chicago, where she earned a B.A. with honors in 2005.