FIVE MINUTES WITH...
RON KEMP, NEW MEXICO STATE ’77 What drew you to a career in healthcare? What drove your decision to become an RN? After I graduated from New Mexico State University, I went to work in the oil business, then the real estate business. I wanted to make a difference, and contribute to humankind, but the oil business and real estate fields were not that contribution that I desired. Although those fields are still a big part of my life, and although I am still fascinated by both, I was looking for a different type of person-to-person interaction. I was called into the nursing profession and my career in healthcare has allowed me to have an impact on humankind and to touch many lives. After all, how many careers in our world allow us to have a lasting impact on lives several times per day? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your field over the past two years? The pandemic has caused nurses to re-assess their passion for the career of nursing. When we know all the dangers which exist, a definite passion must be present for nurses to remain active in the profession. Nurses have husbands, wives, children, aging parents, and family members with comorbidities, and the nurse could predispose them to the COVID virus. Therefore, in their profession, nurses have had to do a lot of soul searching to determine whether the benefits of the known and unknown outweigh the risks. Everyone calls nurses heroes, but we, as well as many professions, [12] THE LAUREL || MAY 2022
New Mexico State 1977 Associate Class
aren’t heroes. Nursing was my calling and I signed up to take care of patients whether in a pandemic or not. Another change occurred when hospitals were not allowing elective surgeries. In addition, many patients were not able to maintain current appointments for pre-existing problems, so patients were delaying many essential procedures and assessments. This has caused another increase in patient census, because after this extended time with no treatment patients are now “sicker”. As a nurse manager, things changed for me because I have learned to be a lot more tolerant and compassionate of staff’s issues and concerns. Children couldn’t go to school, so parents had to stay home and teach them, which caused staffing challenges in an already physically and emotionally taxing profession. Emotions were flying through the roof! Nurses were emotionally distraught, thus needing compassion, time to vent, and to be listened to. At several points along the journey the “curve appeared to be flatting”. Finally, nurses were able to take a breath, and the pandemic appeared to
be lessening. However, soon on the heels of the “flattening” the additional surges began again; an emotional roller coaster! What nursing unit do you work with? What compelled you to work with this specific unit? Practice-wise, I am a telemetry nurse, which is the monitoring of the electrical activity along with the efficiency of the cardiac system. When I was in nursing school, I found the system that most fascinated me, and I was always drawn to patients with cardiac problems. As a manager, I have managed various departments (i.e., Telemetry, Ortho, Cardiac ICU, Interim CNO, Staffing Office, Employee Health, Med/Surg), but the ones I like the best are Cardiac Related. Have you been affected by the current nursing shortage? If so, what challenges has that presented in your field? All hospitals and Healthcare in general have been impacted by the staffing challenges during the pandemic due to an exploding patient census. As stated previously, there were