Karen has been a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) since 2002 and a Continuing Care Assistant for three years before that. Every day, she looks forward to coming to work to assist in bringing babies into this world. She absolutely loves her job. She works in Labour and Delivery in Swift Current. Her team has seen an increase in babies since December, they now deliver 40-45 babies per month!
She loves taking care of people and was working towards this career since she the age of 12 years, when her friend’s mom signed her up as a candy striper. As a candy striper, she started by reading to the residents and assisting at meal time with feeding residents. Through her teenage years, she ended up helping every Sunday to assist the nursing staff in getting residents to bed. After graduating, she took training to be a Medical Office Assistant but didn’t feel like that was the right job. She ended up going back to get her CCA course; with a later upgrade to take the LPN course shortly after it was offered in her city. She worked in Long Term Care (LTC) for 11 years before finding her home in the Women’s and Children’s unit. She enjoys looking back and seeing how she’s cared for people at every stage of their lives. Loss takes a toll on her team but she has a great relationship with her co-workers and new manager that understands the value in having a debrief of tragic events together as a team.
COVID has definitely added stress to acute care. Karen’s team tries to be as honest as possible with all patients. It’s challenging to have to limit visitors to delivery rooms and protect babies from COVID. When she helps out in emergency and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) she sees how her colleagues are stressed out fighting the pandemic.
Karen would love to see added staff. Staffing ratios are lower on the night shift, but the needs are just as high. There is an unpredictability in acute care that really does require enough staff to be available to assist patients in their time of critical need.
Karen, thank you for your support to those that come to you for help. Thank you to the LPNs across this province today on LPN day and every day!