By Christina Orlovsky, senior staff writer
It’s 7 p.m. and all is well on the fifth floor of Pomerado
Hospital, in Poway, California, where travel nurse Heather Peden, RN, has just
begun her 12-hour night shift tending to mothers, fathers and their brand new
bundles of joy.
Peden, who has “been a nurse forever,” or 34 years and
counting, used travel nursing to help her move from Canada to Southern
California in 1988 with her consultant husband and her then-young children.
Experienced in labor and delivery, postpartum and neonatal intensive care, Peden
is the ideal travel nurse for a new hospital setting, able to assist in all
areas of the maternal-child unit.
“I’m one of the more experienced nurses, so they want me to do
a lot,” Peden explains. “As a new nurse and traveler, you often have a lot to
prove. Being older, I don’t feel I have to prove myself as much.”
In fact, on her current assignment with travel nurse staffing company American Mobile
Healthcare, Peden blends right in with the staff nurses at Pomerado Hospital, as
well as the few other travel nurses on her unit, and seems to feel right at home
in the hospital’s comfortable Birth Center.
On this summer night in the 107-bed acute care facility
nestled on a hillside in northern San Diego County, Peden is honing in on her
skills in postpartum care and tending to four patients, three of whom gave birth
in the morning and one who is preparing to take her newborn home.
After introducing herself as the night nurse to a celebratory
family visiting with new parents, Peden answers a question from an unsure mother
about her child’s feeding and whether she’ll know if the baby is hungry.
“They like to suckle,” Peden assures her, as she politely
leaves the family to their visit and proceeds down the hall to another of the
LDRP rooms, equipped for labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum. Mothers spend
the entire length of their stay—typically one or two days for a vaginal delivery
and two to three days for a Caesarean section—in the LDRP room.
Each private room on the unit has wood floors, a soaking tub,
pullout sofa for expectant dads and a television with VCR. Once babies are born,
they remain in the room with the mother the entire time—unless the mom requests
some quiet time.
“I try, when I can, to take the baby to the nurses’ station to
watch it while the mom gets some rest,” Peden says. “And I encourage everyone to
have someone stay with them—sometimes it’s better when it’s their mom or a
friend, instead of the husband, who will sometimes just sleep through the
night!” she adds, with a laugh.
Moving down the hall, Peden enters the room of a tired new mom
who gave birth by Caesarian section this morning and is weary, but recuperating.
Her newborn son is sleeping soundly in his cradle next to her bed. Peden
introduces herself, offers a glass of water and explains that she’ll be here all
night.
A night owl, Peden prefers the night shift to any other
schedule. As a travel nurse, she was able to request the night shift and her
preference to work six 12-hour shifts in a row.
“I have worked nights by choice for my entire career,” she
says. “I find that there’s a lot more teamwork and a lot less politics. Plus, I
sleep just fine during the day!”
Moving back down the hall, Peden enters a room where a couple
is preparing to leave the hospital. The mom, dressed in a “Baby on Board”
t-shirt, signs discharge papers handed to her by Peden saying, “I certify that
you’re my kid!”
Peden instructs the mom and dad on discharge, telling them not
to feel like they have to wait to come back if they think anything is wrong.
“I love to teach,” Peden says, after explaining jaundice to
the new parents and offering the tip, “the best way to fight it is with the
sunshine,” and removing the security device—the “baby Lo-Jack,” as the parents
call it—from their newborn daughter’s tiny ankle. Peden requests a wheelchair
from a nurse’s aide, who she had previously worked with on a different travel
assignment in Santa Barbara, California, and reminds the aide to check for a car
seat in the parents’ car before allowing them to leave.
“It’s their responsibility to have one, but it’s our
responsibility to look for it,” Peden explains.
Throughout the night, it will also be Peden’s responsibility
to do reporting and charting; perform weight checks and hearing screens on
sleeping newborns; pay attention to monitors at the nurses’ station and help
moms on the road to recovery.
“The most important part of my job is making sure the whole
thing is a positive experience for the mom, dad and the baby,” she says.
Just as travel nursing—and obstetric nursing in general—has
been a positive experience for Peden.
“I was born a nurse,” she says. “I was the kid that brought
home strays!”
A nursing natural, Peden is also an adventurous type who
enjoys seeing new places, meeting new people and encountering new ideas about
nursing—all of which she has been afforded the opportunity to do through travel
nursing.
“Travel nursing has really opened up nursing,” she says. “We
travelers bring new ideas from one hospital to another, talk and share
experiences with each other. It’s been fun.”
So much fun, in fact, that Peden’s daughter, who was a child
when Peden brought her to the United States on a travel assignment, learned by
example and is now attending nursing school in Seattle. Another adventurer, the
former Peace Corps volunteer plans to use her inherited nursing skills to aid in
developing countries.
More comfortable herself on home soil, Peden plans to remain
at Pomerado Hospital through the fall and then set roots down in Riverside
County, California, leaving travel nursing behind—for the time being, at
least—to enjoy living in her purchased home.
“It will be really hard to give up traveling,” she says. “I
have been with American Mobile for a few years now and have been very
satisfied.”
Whether or not she continues traveling, one thing that Peden
knows for certain is that she will always be a nursing professional.
“I have been a nurse for 34 years and have never once
regretted it,” she says. “I will never be without work—it really is a great
career.”
© 2006. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.