Ingram’s February 2023

Nursing

Heroes in Healthcare 2023

LORIE HALLIER University Health The images Lorie Hallier still carries from her youth did not suggest a career in nursing—quite the opposite. “My mom was an ICU nurse who worked nights, and I remember growing up, she was always tired. Honestly, she was very proud of what she did, and dad was proud of her. But I didn’t want to be a nurse.” Fate intervened in the cruelest of ways. Her younger brother was killed in a car accident, and the loss was profound. “That is why I became a nurse,” Hallier says. “I felt that pain—I hadn’t even lost a grandparent yet. The only experience I’d had with death was losing a dog I’d grown up with.” That pain allowed her to tap into the kind of empathy that patients and their families need. “I knew I could be very joyous with those who survive,” Hallier says. “And I could truly empathize with people when they’ve lost someone, and not make it about me, but about them.” Changing career paths also was a source of pride for her father, and Hallier dived in as a new parent, with a husband working two jobs, and taking on part-time ICU work while going to nursing school at Johnson County Community College.

“It was hard with a baby and working, but I made it through.” She’s worked at Overland Park Regional, The University of Kansas Hospital and Providence Medical Center along the way, and joined what is now University Health five years ago, helping anchor the surgical nursing unit. “Part of my job is not only caring for a patient, but their family—holding their hands through this major illness of a loved one,” Hallier says. “The hospital is my milieu, but not theirs—they don’t want to be there and they need that compassion and empathy through that time.” Compound ing that challenge since early 2020 has been the pandemic, which Hallier says brought on “a terrible time. I can’t tell you, from my heart espe cially, how hard it was to watch people lose someone they loved and not be able to be with them, watching through the glass or sometimes not even being on the unit. I can’t tell you how many times I came home and just cried.” If someone is able to say goodbye to a dying relative— something she couldn’t do with her own brother, “that’s the way you properly, as a human being, are able to accept a death,” she says.

SUSAN LININGER University Health

DAWN WHEELHOUSE North Kansas City Hospital Growing up in various hamlets across the Canadian province of Ontario, Dawn Wheelhouse had an early influence that steered her to ward a career in nursing. “I always wanted to be a nurse, even in kin dergarten, and I think I got that idea because my older sister wanted to be a nurse, and I wanted to be whatev

If caring for trauma patients is what inspires you to be a nurse, you’ll want to work where the ac tion is. For Susan Lininger, a St. Jo seph native not long out of nursing school, that would be Kansas City’s General Hospital. Not familiar with that, you say? That’s because it hasn’t operated here since its

successor, Truman Medical Center (now University Health) opened on Hospital Hill in 1976. Lininger started in the emer gency room there, and after finishing nursing school moved to surgical intensive care for nearly a decade, then shifted gears. That put her in neonatal intensive care, tending to the tiniest patients, for roughly 10 more years. At that point, she moved up the ladder as assistant corporate director of clinical education. “I love what I do,” Lininger says. “It’s not always glamorous, but I find satisfaction in it. It’s so rewarding.” Across that 50-year span, she has cared for patients directly at the bedside, and im pacted the care of so many more by educating nurses. Her first steps into the field came as a candy striper at her hometown hospital, and there, she says, “I found my passion of helping people and knew immediately that I wanted to be a nurse.” The beauty of her field, Lininger says, “is there are so many career paths within health care. I have had many opportunities afford ed me. Much of my focus now is on new hires, new graduate nurses, and keeping our staff current with advanced skills and knowing who their resources are to support them. The passion and commitment that have always been trademarks of success ful nurses, she said, helped embrace innovation in care when the pandemic beset the world in 2020. “Now we need to rebuild our foundation and core values; focusing not on the problems, but the possibilities, opportunities and resilience,” she says.

er my big sister wanted to do.” There was just one small hitch in that plan: Her sister went off to nursing school—and didn’t like it. “I thought, ‘What if I don’t like it!” Wheelhouse recalls. Turns out, she did. “I love being able to make a difference in someone’s life,” she says, “knowing that you’re part of that care team that spends quality time with a patient and making them better.” She began her career in Canada, but the national health-care system began laying off nurses in large numbers 30 years ago. Wheelhouse was recruited by a small community hospital in Poplar Bluff, and came to Missouri at that level before arriving at Saint Luke’s as an ortho pedic unit nurse, taking on additional duties as a charge nurse. The transition to a big-city academic/research hospital, she says, “was definitely a beautiful change, having the resources available and additional knowledge and ability to keep growing in your career,” including leadership classes that would provide entrée into orga nizational decision-making. From there, she joined North Kansas City Hospital, again looking for new growth opportunities, includ ing duties as nurse manager, responsible for working with multiple care units. Each day, Wheelhouse says, presents fresh validation of her career choice. “When patients come back on campus, or some times when we treat their kids or grandkids, some will come up to the floor and say, ‘Do you remember me? You helped save my life,’” she says. “It’s so cool to have them recognize me and thank me and say ‘I’m alive today because of you.’ That’s pretty impactful.”

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February 2023

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