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Release Date: 7/15/2009
Chris Seeley Chose Nursing So She Could ‘Make A Difference’
Chris Seeley, R.N., a nurse manager at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, visits with patient Luella Hope during rounds.
While many nurses tell heart-warming tales of how they were inspired by family members in the healthcare field, Chris Seeley, R.N., admits to a different sort of story.
“I was inspired by total strangers I met in a bank,” she said with a laugh. “My grandmother was a nurse and my grandfather was a cardiologist – but my future hung on the answers given to me by people I never met before!”
Seeley, 43, was working as a bank teller, when she decided she needed to do something more meaningful with her life. So, she began asking her customers at the bank about their careers. Two of them were nurses.
“I wanted a career that was more fulfilling,” Seeley said. “I listened to the nurses telling me about their satisfaction in serving other people and I decided I would like that. As a student nurse, when I started applying my nursing skills, I knew I’d made the right decision.”
It turns out that nursing was Seeley’s true passion – but not in the area she expected. “When I was in nursing school, all I wanted to do was be a Labor/Delivery nurse – I was crazy passionate about it,” she said. “After one year working in telemetry, I spent the second year in Labor/Delivery – and I hated it! I realized I really loved geriatrics, so I went back to telemetry, where most of the patients are older.”
Seeley graduated from Maryville University with a BSN degree in 1998. She spent most of the first eight years in telemetry and intensive care, and the past three as a nurse manager at St. Mary’s Hospital. She joined St. Anthony’s Medical Center two months ago, where her husband, Mike, has worked as a nurse in St. Anthony’s Cardiac Catheterization and Electrophysiology Labs for four years.
“Because my husband works here, I had a more personal view of St. Anthony’s,” Seeley said. “It attracted me because the people who work here try to live the hospital’s mission in their daily lives.”
Compassionate care is what nursing’s all about, Seeley said. She recalled one patient brought to the ICU who had lost brain function and was in respiratory distress. He was placed on a ventilator, but died a week later. “I took care of him every day and developed a strong relationship with his family,” Seeley said. “His mother still sends me Christmas cards and his brother still e-mails me. When a patient is that seriously ill, an important part of what you do is provide spiritual care for the family.”
Seeley sees her role of nurse manager as an opportunity to coach, mentor and develop other nurses and to impact and influence care for all patients on the hospital floor. She describes herself as a very “hands-on” manager.
“I still get a lot of patient contact through rounding,” she said. “In fact, I just gave a patient a bath this morning,” she said. “The first thing you need in order to be an effective manager is for the staff to trust you. They need to know I won’t ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do. My goal is to see every patient on the floor every day, but that isn’t always possible. So, to be successful, there must be good collaboration and teamwork among the nurses.”
At St. Anthony’s, Seeley works in the 7-East medical/telemetry unit, where half of the 40 patient beds are dedicated to patients who have had strokes or other neurological problems. The other 20 beds serve patients with a variety of medical problems, from pneumonia to a diabetic crisis.
“It’s a very diverse patient population, so we need very strong nurses who excel at knowing all of the different medical responses,” Seeley said.
On a typical day, Seeley begins by checking in with the charge nurse and the night staff, to see if any patient issues need to be addressed. She then attends “bed meetings” with other managers to monitor patient flow. “Since the unit is full 98 percent of the time, we need to manage the patient flow well,” she said. “Another patient always is in the wings, waiting, so we need to be sure we move patients out appropriately.”
Next she completes rounds, where she says she “puts outs fires” if there are any patient care issues, either from a nursing, physician or patient satisfaction standpoint.
“Nursing is a difficult job, and only people who truly care about helping people should consider it,” Seeley said. “People who enter this field just for the paycheck – they’ll crash and burn. But I love it, every day. I really believe in my heart that we can touch people’s lives and make a difference. What could be more fulfilling than that?”
Seeley and her husband, Mike, live in Eureka and have three daughters.
For information, please call our Health Access Line at 314-ANTHONY (268-4669) or 800-554-9550 or visit our find a physician online.
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