珍妮·斯塔丘拉 (BSN 08年, MSN ’13) was less than a year into her current role as vice president for patient care services at CHI 健康 St. 伊丽莎白. But nothing about her demeanor conveyed inexperience as she welcomed you into her office. 而不是, she shook your hand and you detected something already battletested in her smile—something that neither a KN-95 nor a warm disposition could mask.
Jenny Stachura经历过. 在圣15年. 伊丽莎白和CHI健康内布拉斯加州心脏. Working her “three twelves” on the floor in progressive care. Coordinating services for patients with failing hearts. 担任重症监护主任. The last two years spent in COVID-19’s exhausting fury. 尽管如此，斯塔丘拉仍然保持乐观. 被问及疫情的影响, she answered with a veteran’s understatement: “You do learn to stay flexible.”
但这是2022年1月19日. And some things about the omicron wave belied understatement. 在全国范围内, COVID-19 infections crested five days earlier, 在808左右,000 daily cases— those eights and zeros hanging open like a row of astonished jaws. 在美国的每一天，华盛顿州的西雅图.,被感染的.
In Nebraska on January 19, the curve tracked somewhat behind the nation’s, with cases still rising. And hospitalizations, by their nature, tracked behind cases. Together, that meant omicron’s strain on St. 伊丽莎白’s intensive care unit promised to stay white knuckled into February. “Never in my career have I seen an ICU stay completely full for so long,” Stachura said.
She and her colleagues had contingency plans. If things got still worse, they could transition St. E’s ICU from 16 beds to 24— something the hospital had never done before. Stachura described this contingency with lifted eyebrows, as if to say St. E’s also has the ability to turn on all its fire sprinklers. 这并不意味着它想这么做. 在一些手术室中, the hospital’s capacity to continue elective surgeries teetered on what happened the night before. One patient’s admission for surgery hinging on another’s release. The system, she said, has been that strained.
“I think a lot about our strategic planning,” Stachura said. Planning to get the hospital and her nurses through the pandemic. 同时，他们也在计划着超越它. “接下来呢?? 接下来的策略是什么? Over the next six months, what can we do to grow our skills and elevate the practice of nursing?”
Missing from Stachura’s vocabulary were the typical buzzwords of the institutional planner—the jargon about “value added” or “upgraded process innovations.” That might be because Stachura’s mindset as a hospital administrator stayed remarkably close to her mindset as a floor nurse, 一个同事, 一个家长. “It’s important for us to continue looking forward,” she said. “你仍然有目标. 这些并没有消失.” For countless nurses, those goals involve education—and the career doors a degree can open.
"Working on the floor, you have to look for the wins. 你必须分享它们."
“I didn’t have a real plan when I started my MSN,” Stachura said. “护理教育或管理? 我不确定. But I loved being a student, and Wesleyan made it easy to plan my week. Small classes made for great discussions, and I’ve had so many good mentors.”
Those classes and mentors expanded her range as a nurse. And while she may not have had a plan heading into NWU’s Master of Science in Nursing program, she came out of it better able to create one. “And when that opportunity opened up, I was ready to jump.” Stachura felt a similar positivity running between Nebraska Wesleyan’s learning environment and St. E’s working environment— especially through the pandemic’s hardships.
“Working on the floor, you have to look for the wins,” she said. “你必须分享它们. When that family member sees what you do and shows you gratitude—it’s so important that you share that with your team. 因为你们在一起.”
她说，在一次转变中展现了如此多的东西. “在一个房间里，有人心烦意乱. 隔壁房间:有人快死了. In the next room, someone needs help getting to the bathroom.斯塔丘拉的眼睛透过面具露出了微笑. “You get good at shifting gears and putting on that face.”
Another thing the pandemic taught her: You can’t wear that face all the time. “People in the medical field can be the worst at asking for help,” she said. Then she uttered the most strategically important sentence a hospital administrator can say to anyone—inside or outside a hospital. She said, “We need to prioritize taking care of each other.”
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