Interview with Diane Ciucci

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1952

CIUCCI, DIANE

CIUCCI, DIANE (1947-)

Nursing student 1967-1969

Interviewed: 2020

Interviewer: Faith Hoffmeyer

Index by: Sophie Clark

Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen

Length: 91 minutes

First Interview Session (January 28, 2020): Digital File

00:00:00

FH: Today is Tuesday, January 28, 2020. And my name is Faith Hoffmeyer. And this is a phone interview for the Madison General Hospital School of Nursing Oral History Project. Diane, can you please state and spell your last name for an audio check?

DC: Yes. It's Ciucci. C-i-u-c-c-i.

FH: Great. I'm just adjusting the audio. Do you mind spelling your first name as well?

DC: Diane. D-i-a-n-e.

FH: Great. Okay. To start, can you please give me a little background on your early life, where you grew up?

DC: I grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And lived the summers in Chippewa Falls on Lake Wissota.

FH: And when did you live at all these places?

DC: Oh my gosh. Lived in Minnesota from the time I was born until I was twelve. 00:01:00And then I lived in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls until I moved away to California after I graduated from nursing school.

FH: And did anything in your background guide you towards a nursing career?

DC: It's kind of funny. My aunts had a neighbor who was a nurse. And I always liked her as a person. And so I don't know if, I had conversations with her about nursing. But it was kind of just something I just was interested in since, I don't really know when. Probably the time I was fifteen, sixteen. And I don't know what interested me.

Well, I take that back. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I had to have emergency surgery. So that was, strange as it sounds, a positive experience with the nurses. A positive experience when I was in the hospital. So I think that led me a little further into nursing.

FH: Definitely. Was nursing a popular career choice in your community?

DC: Hmm. That's a good question. I think that at the time when I went to nursing school, probably it was a time when females were teachers, nurses, cosmetologists. I don't think there was as many avenues for people, for women to 00:03:00work in as there are now. So I think that might have been, so there probably was more interest in student nursing then because it was, I think, one of the few fields that we knew about that women worked in.

FH: And what did your parents do?

DC: My mom was a stay at home mom. And my father owned car dealerships. So he was a business owner.

FH: And did you grow up with any siblings?

DC: I have two younger brothers.

03:45

FH: I see. And what did they go on to do with their careers?

DC: Both of them actually went into the car business.

FH: So what, if any, was your perception of nursing school prior to attending?

DC: I really didn't have any. I really didn't know that much about it. I guess I really didn't have a very good perception. (laughs)

FH: So which years did you attend nursing school?

DC: Well, I was at Madison General from '67 to '69, because I only spent two years there.

FH: Okay. And what prompted that decision not go to Madison specifically?

DC: I don't know that I really had any preconceived notions for why I wanted to go there. I think that I probably went down for a visit at some point. But it was probably after I was accepted. So, I don't know. It was in the same state I 00:05:00lived in and far enough away from home that you weren't going to run home every weekend. You know, you had to be kind of on your own and independent.

FH: What were your first impressions of Madison?

DC: I loved Madison. I think I had good friends at school and we had a good time.

FH: How large was your class?

DC: Hmm. I don't know. Maybe forty, fifty people, if that. I honestly don't know.

FH: Do you remember at all the male to female ratio?

DC: We had in my class two males.

FH: Did you live in the dorms?

DC: Yes.

FH: Can you tell me a bit about that experience?

DC: The dorms, probably very atypical for a dorm, the building was old. It had beautiful old furniture. And for the most part, they were all private rooms.

FH: Did you have a private room?

DC: Yes. You only had a shared room if you requested to live with certain people.

FH: I see. And had you known anybody going into the school at the time you were?

DC: No.

FH: What about the food in the dorms and the hospital?

DC: Well, we ate at the hospital. We didn't have any food in the dorm. So we ate hospital food for two years, breakfast, lunch and supper. (laughs)

FH: How was that?

DC: Um, I don't recall being either in favor or not in favor of it. So I think 00:07:00overall it was probably okay. I mean, you had choices when you went through the cafeteria line. So it's not like you had to eat what was prepared.

FH: And what were some of the social or recreational activities that you and your friends engaged in?

07:33

DC: (laughs) Let's see. Typical college engagements in terms of going out and meeting people and socializing. Drinking beer. I think, you know, we were so, 00:08:00this school was also, I think, atypical from going to one of the college programs in that we all lived in the same place. So we socialized with each other. And my group was part of a group that played cards almost nonstop. So we'd quick, rush home at lunchtime, play cards and then go back to the hospital. And the same thing in the evenings.

FH: is there anything else that you'd consider atypical about this school?

DC: Well, I think all your classes were taken in the basement of the dorm. We only took, the first summer we took whatever prerequisite, there was always like 00:09:00one prerequisite you needed to take over the summer. So we went to the U for that class. But otherwise, our instructors were all our nursing instructors that were our clinical instructors. And we either had classes in the dorm or over at the hospital, depending on what we were rotated into.

FH: And what were some of your classes like your first year?

DC: The first summer was just like fundamentals and pharmacology and nutrition, and then your course at the U. And then we rotated, I think our rotations were like three months. So first you had med surg. I think everybody probably went through med surg the first three months. And then we broke off into OB, 00:10:00pediatrics, psych. And then you did a shorter rotation on the neurosurgical floor in rehab orthopedics. So like neuro and ortho and rehab were probably all part of a three-month rotation. Kind of hard to remember back that far.

FH: Of course. Were there any rotations that stick out, or that you preferred more than others?

DC: I went into the psychiatric nursing rotation. We went up to Mendota at the time. [unclear] other side of the lake and we lived there. And I went into it thinking this is going to be the worst experience of my nursing career. And it actually was one of the best. And it was one of the best because the staff at 00:11:00Mendota treated us as staff. And not students. So we were part of everything that went on in the unit. And so it was a little different than being in some of the other rotations.

FH: What were the other rotations like?

DC: Well, how do I explain this? I think that the psychiatric rotation, we were much more involved with the, I can't think of what the meetings were called, but like with the one-on-one meetings that maybe their psychologists would have with the patients, or like I'm going to say group therapy, but like there was a group 00:12:00of patients and a staff member. And then if your patient that you had was in that group, you went to that group and you just were more involved, I think, on a day-to-day basis with what was going on. Not just with who you took care of, but in the overall unit you were on.

FH: How would you describe your relationship with those patients?

DC: The patient that I had was really an interesting patient. She was a young woman, probably in her thirties, who was there for depression and suicidal thoughts. And so I think we had a close nurse and patient relationship. She 00:13:00ended up having electroshock therapy because nothing was getting her out of her depression. So it was very interesting.

FH: And do you mind talking a bit more about the class setting as well? And what those classes were like in terms of your professor and your classmates and how that was structured?

DC: Overall, you're saying, in the program?

FH: Sure. Or specific. Whichever.

DC: You know, it's funny. I can't remember a lot of detail. And I can't remember if like when we went through like our med surg, if we stayed with the same group throughout our whole nursing, or if we changed, you know, we were, what do I 00:14:00want to say, mixed up, it wasn't the same group that we went with, or that we were assigned to, I guess. So it probably changed, the mixture of each rotation changed a little bit, which was good. Depending on the rotation, the rotation depended on what, I guess I would call it theory classes you took, the clinical classes that you took where the instructors taught. So for instance in our OB rotation, we were assigned to labor and delivery. We were assigned to the nursery and we were assigned to postpartum. But we only were at the hospital for like half a day and our classes then were in the afternoon, because there wasn't a whole lot that went on in the afternoon for OB.

Pediatrics, we rotated shifts. So we worked both the day shift and the PM shift. I know, I think we probably had six to eight hours of lecture a week in pediatrics. And that's probably what we had most rotations, probably anywhere from eight to twelve hours of classes related to that rotation. And then, of course, if you were in one of the rotations that you had to go to the three different settings, your clinical wasn't necessarily based on the setting that you were in for those two weeks. You just had a general education in terms of OB 00:16:00or peds. And we weren't encumbered, probably is a nice way to say, we weren't encumbered with having to take other classes, because we had taken all our prerequisites before we got there.

FH: I see. So which did you prefer--oh, I'm sorry.

DC: Go ahead.

FH: Did you prefer lecture over rotation, or rotation over lecture?

DC: I think that depended on the instructor. And how dynamic they were. Our OB instructor lectured us with her eyes closed in the afternoon, so it was very hard to stay awake. Our pediatric instructors, there were three of them. And they taught a little differently. And instead of really lecturing, we just all sat in a big horseshoe and they went around and asked each individual questions 00:17:00about whatever topic we were learning about. So the presumption was that we had read all the information, you know, and were ready to answer questions about the topic.

Med surg, we worked three full days, so three day shifts, and then we had two days of lecture. So we probably had 16 hours of lecture for that.

So it just depended. I thought all of it, both on the unit and the lectures were good. I enjoyed learning about everything, really, there wasn't anything that I didn't like.

FH: Do you remember other faculty who played an important role in your education?

17:55

DC: I think one of the first instruction I had in med surg, we were on, it was a 00:18:00unit called 2 East. And it was really a big teaching unit for a lot of the medical students. And our instructor was phenomenal in terms of her knowledge base and her expectations of us. And I think her background was more critical care and cardiology and whatnot. So I think she was able to offer us a lot in terms of education, training. We also got to do a lot. Probably more than, as I look at some of the programs that are available now or have been available for the past twenty years or thirty years, we got a lot of clinical experience. And 00:19:00we took care of the sicker of the patients. We didn't have a critical care unit at that time at Madison General. So the patients were out on the floor, on the regular floor. We had a cardiac unit, a CCU, where the sicker cardiac patients were. So I think we got a really, I just came out of nursing school able to function.

FH: And can you describe some of the clinical experience that you were engaged in?

DC: Wow. (laughs) It's hard to remember everything. I guess I could go back to, we got to do things like learn how to start IVs, which doesn't happen now. We 00:20:00were able to manage different, I'm going to call it central lines. I know that's not what it was called then. I think it was called a CVP, a central venous pressure. And normally, I think, had there been a critical care unit, a lot of those types of patients would have been, at least the ones with the different lines and stuff, would have been in the critical care unit, which you may or may not have gotten experience in. I think we were lucky in terms of, for sure med surg and the unit I was on, because it was a really strong teaching unit, was medical students rather than, we were included in a lot of education that we may not have gotten if we weren't assigned to that unit. The residents taught us 00:21:00things, the interns. So it was a little, I think we had a more diverse clinical piece for the medical part.

When we were in the surgical, post-surgical floor, I also think that the surgeons, I remember them having a lot of faith and trust in what we did. And we were able to take care of the sicker of the patients there as well.

And actually, I'll just, it's kind of a blanket statement I'll make, I felt that the relationship that the nursing educators had with the hospital staff lent 00:22:00itself to us being trusted and taking care of the patients. Because our instructor was always on the floor with us, which also didn't necessarily happen in other programs. They may have had students on several different floors, and they would go from floor to floor. That was my experience after I graduated and was working in teaching hospitals with nursing students.

So I felt it was a very different, I don't know, different program. We got a lot of, I don't know, just able to come out and function. I was hired in a critical care unit because the director of nursing at the hospital knew where I went to nursing school and what, this is when I moved to California after nursing school. And she took me and said you graduated into the critical care unit. Because she knew the nursing school, Madison General, and how we were trained. I 00:23:00thought that was a good, I saw that as such a positive.

FH: Was there anything that you learned from hospital staff that maybe you wouldn't have learned if they hadn't had such a close relationship with your instructors?

23:23

DC: That's a good question. I mean, we were very involved with the staff because they never shortchanged, say there were seven nursing students on the unit. They would still have the same amount of staff there as if there weren't any nursing students. So, if one of our instructors, say, was with another student in another room or something, you always had that staff person that was assigned to a group of patients. And had you one of those patients, they would be available 00:24:00to you to ask questions, you know, to help you with whatever needed to be done.

FH: And what about with patients at the hospital? How were your interactions with the patients while you were in the hospital?

DC: Well, typically, this is kind of trying to think back, I think typically we were assigned two patients. And so we did what you would call total care on those two patients. You bathed them, did their treatments, gave their medications. You called the physicians if you needed to. So I think we had a really close relationship with the patients. And we typically, like let's say we 00:25:00were there for three days that week. You usually had the same patients so three days so that you had some continuity, and you could see how they progressed or didn't progress. And I think you had more, we had interaction with the families. Which I think was good.

FH: Are there any moments with patients or with staff at the hospital that really stand out as a vivid memory that you carried with in your career?

DC: There's probably a lot of them. I'm trying to think back to particular ones. One of the things that sticks out is when I was in my first med surg rotation and we were on that unit that I described, 2 East. That was the big teaching unit. Both I and another student walked in on a patient that was unresponsive. 00:26:00And so, you know, we called the code. The staff came in, the physicians came in. And I'm sure the person was already passed away. But they allowed us to do the things that needed to be done. So to do the CPR, to bag the patient, to administer the medications. I'm sure it was a teaching moment, you know, that maybe had it not been a teaching hospital or a teaching floor, you wouldn't have, you know, it would have been somebody we probably wouldn't have done anything for. But them giving us that permission, I guess, to do that was, I think, very invigorating in terms of nursing practice and not being afraid to 00:27:00step into things and take an active role. At least, that's what I thought after graduation. It took some of the fear away of making decisions and it benefited me in working in critical care right away. As did a lot of the other patients who were pretty sick that we took care of. I don't know how to describe it. I mean, I think we just were allowed to do a lot of things that I look back when I work with student nurses in other nursing programs or hospitals that they didn't really get to do that much. And so they came out of nursing school pretty unable to do a lot of nursing clinical things that were needed to be done. So I think we had much more time we had to spend orienting and training new nurses than 00:28:00they'd had to spend orienting and training the Madison General graduates.

I didn't really answer your questions about patients without, I mean, each rotation we had one patient that we wrote a paper on. So it was, I think it was called our contact patient or something like that. So we had to do all the research into what was wrong with them, you know, the other diagnoses and you know, what the anatomy and physiology of that area looked like, depending on what it was. And if they had surgery, you know, describing what was done during surgery. And the physiology related to that, and just taking them through the whole course of that patient's hospitalization. And so I think that's, you 00:29:00learned a lot during that process as well because you had to do so much research into the clinical aspect of that patient. And you know, write it and memorize it. So I mean, you know, it was hard to do, but it was worth it.

FH: Were there any other particularly challenging aspects of your education?

29:51

DC: I don't know how to say this. When, well I'll just say it, when I was in my exit interview for the nursing program, I don't know if you've heard the name Alice D. Schmitt, but she was our director of nursing. So you had to meet with 00:30:00her director of nursing. And so you had to meet with her before you exited. And she said to me, "You know Diane, I was worried about you in the program because I didn't think you'd do very well." And I can't remember why she said that. But she said, "Based on where you were and where you are now, you're probably one of the best students that we had in your class." And I thought, it's probably because I really liked nursing school. And I liked all the things we were learning. So, I don't know. But I was like kind of shocked when she said that. Probably shocked that she said she wasn't sure how I was going to do in the program. (laughs)

So that was a good learning experience for me, too. Because I didn't know any of 00:31:00that before I started the program. And had I had some inkling of that, it might have been much harder for me to have confidence going through the program. So I was glad she kept it to herself till the end.

FH: What do you think makes a good nurse?

DC: I think, what makes a good nurse. First of all, you have to want to be a nurse. You have to be in it for the right reasons, which are not your salary or you know, being able to work anywhere in any city. I think you have to know what you're doing. You have to understand the clinical aspect of whatever it is you're doing. But you have to have compassion. You have to be willing to be a patient advocate. I think you have to be willing to communicate with physicians, 00:32:00whether they're right or wrong. And you have to be able to point out when they're wrong and do it in such a way that doesn't take [unclear] away, you know it kind of has to be their decision. kind of has to be their decision. But I think you have to be a patient advocate. Because there are, there's aspects of nursing, if you did what the physician told you to do, the patient might be dead. But you had the common sense to call the physician and say, "This isn't going to work."

And I have several physicians in my family. And they kind of all agree with that, that they want a nurse that is an advocate, that knows what she's doing, 00:33:00that's able to articulate what's going on and make suggestions for what you need to do. And you have to love what you're doing.

FH: Going back to your education, were there any resources available outside of your rotation, or outside of your clinical or your lectures, where you could seek help if you needed it?

DC: Hmm. I honestly don't know. I never really needed it. Well, I think we had, I think because the nursing program had a good relationship with the hospital, 00:34:00we were able to use a lot of the hospital staff as resources. And if you utilized them, you learned a whole lot.

FH: How did you study and prepare at home?

34:24

DC: (laughs) Well, my classmates would tell you that I slept on my textbooks and the night before a test. Because every time they came in, I was sleeping. How did you prepare? Well, I guess there's two different answers to that. One is how are you preparing for the clinical patients that you're going to have for those three days? And so what you did was you got your assignment. And then you were at the hospital. You looked at all the charts and medications, diagnoses, 00:35:00everything that needed to be done for them. Then you went back to the dorm. And using the library and the research materials we had then, you developed a [unclear] and a plan of care that the nursing staff had developed. Then you made a plan for what you were going to do with that patient for that day. You had to know, you had to make out medication cards for each medication they were on. So you'd do the drug, the dose, the side effects, any of the untoward effects. You know, so you knew what you were giving and doing. And the same thing for any of the treatments or procedures. So you had to learn everything about the patient before you took care of them.

And then things could change because you'd get to the hospital and that patient 00:36:00wasn't there that day. So then you got assigned a new one. So you had to sometimes do that on the spot. And that was a good learning experience, because you may not have had a chance to look up everything other than being on the unit and doing it while you were there taking care of them. But again, the staff was so good. The instructors were good. So I guess I never, I certainly never felt that I wasn't prepared for a patient. Because the instructors had very high expectations. You didn't have to, how am I going to say this? You didn't have to have everything memorized, but you had to have your resource with you. So I don't know, say you were going to change a dressing. You had to know what the supplies were you were using and why and what the procedure was for that 00:37:00dressing change or that clinical procedure. But you also didn't have to have it memorized. You could have it written down. So I think that took some of the fear out of doing things.

37:19

FH: Are there any practices or methods that you learned that might be considered unusual today?

DC: Say that one more time.

FH: Were there any methods or practices that you learned that might be unusual today? During that time.

DC: Oh, good grief. We were in the archaic system then. One of the things they did was, and I don't even know if they still do it, electro, what do you call it, when they give you electrical stimulation to their brain when they're trying to change their, like the lady that had the depression where they couldn't get 00:38:00her out of the depression. We had when I was in the clinical rotation in psych in the boys' unit, we had a child that was very difficult to control. And the psychiatrist there, I will never forget him. He did what he called, it's a type of therapy where you make the patient really angry and got them to get everything out. So he'd almost entice like an argument. I don't know how graphic you want me to be.

FH: As open as you'd like to be.

DC: Okay. Well, for instance, this child would call the psychiatrist a prick. And then the physician would say, "Well, I bet mine is bigger than yours." And this would get this kid to get all his aggression out. And at the same time they 00:39:00were doing that, we wrapped them in these sheets and we put him in ice water. And I'm sure that it's never done today. I don't know if it was an approved practice then. But what it did is, after this kid did all his yelling and screaming and he was in this cold water and everything warmed up, then he was all relaxed and able to participate a little better in his therapy.

FH: Wow.

DC: Yeah. Yeah. And that psychiatrist, I absolutely loved. He, in fact, he gave a lecture at a hospital that I worked at in Oregon to the psych unit. So I went to that. I wasn't working in psych, but just because I wanted to hear him speak 00:40:00and what not. So he was kind of way out there. But I don't know if it was normal practice. I don't know if they did that in other psychiatric institutions or not. I don't recall anything being too out of the ordinary or too, well, I can go on. We had glass syringes. We had non-disposable needles. We had non-disposable everything. And when you talk to nurses now and say we reused needles (laughs) we sterilized all the suction catheters. You know what I mean, it's just endless because they didn't have disposable things then. All the bedpans, all the urinals, they were all washed and reused and sterilized. So, 00:41:00you know, nurses working nowadays, when you tell them this stuff, they just hysterically laugh. Or they're almost like, what?! But that was fifty years ago?

FH: Yeah.

41:17

DC: You know, so things change.

FH: Well, moving on to after graduation--

DC: Yes.

FH: You said you moved to California and you worked in critical care?

DC: Yeah. What I did, first when I first graduated, I lived at home for six months and I worked in pediatrics in Eau Claire, at Luther Hospital. And then I moved to California with two other nurses. One was a new graduate and one was an LPN at Madison General. And then I worked for a very short time at a hospital in 00:42:00Long Beach. And I hated it. So I applied at Saint Mary's Hospital in Long Beach. And it just happened that's the one that the director of nursing was from Eau Claire. And she knew my school and whatnot, and she hired me immediately. And that was an awesome learning experience. It was a great critical care unit. And that was probably my most favorite job in terms of learning it. Well, I probably had a high learning curve, too, so I learned a lot.

FH: What made it your favorite learning experience?

DC: Well, I think because I probably, everything I did was new. So you learned all the cardiac, the pulmonary, the neurological. I mean, it was a multipurpose ICU with a separate coronary care unit. So we had cardiac surgery patients. We 00:43:00had medical cardiology patients. We had all sorts of surgical patients, all sorts of other medical patients. And it was just, you had to learn all that. And I think, I think there was a critical care course that was taught by, I don't honestly remember. Must have been some class we took. And then you got tested, you know, periodically. But I think that was probably my highest learning curve initially throughout my nursing career, so that probably stands out the most. But you know, I worked for a long time in critical care.

FH: How long?

44:02

DC: Oh, I was afraid you'd ask me that. Let's see. Hmm. Probably, maybe twenty years.

FH: Wow.

DC: No. We, after I got married, we moved around a lot with job transfers with my husband, so I worked in different critical care units. And that was good because again, you learn more things. worked in a neuro trauma unit, coronary care unit, multipurpose ICUs.

FH: Did you have a favorite?

DC: I think I liked probably working coronary care. I loved anything to do with the heart. But I also loved the multipurpose ICUs where you had such a variety.

FH: What did you like about the variety?

DC: Well, that you know, one day you might be taking care of a critical neuro patient. Another day you might be taking care of some surgical patient. One of the multipurpose units that I worked in did not have a coronary care unit. So we had, in the regular multipurpose ICU. So we had kind of everything. So I think I just liked the variety. I also, you were always on the code team at the different hospitals. So you got to go out to, you know, if there was code 00:46:00outside the unit. And participate in that. You were usually the person that kind of led it. So that was fun.

FH: Yeah. So--oh, I don't mean to interrupt.

DC: I was just going to say, I enjoyed being busy. I enjoyed having critical patients and that aspect of it, and being busy all the time.

FH: When do you think you learned that about yourself?

DC: Probably, I worked in the hospital that I didn't like right after I went to California. And what it was, was a female surgical unit in the postpartum wing. 00:47:00And I just found that very unsatisfying that you'd have 25 or 30 patients that you're responsible for and you're packing all the meds and doing all the IVs. And I felt that you didn't get to know the patients. Whereas working in critical care, you might have one, two or three. And so you got to know them and their families. And so I think that was more rewarding.

FH: So that was at, are you contrasting with Eau Claire? Or with the first hospital in California? I think I missed that.

47:41

DC: Oh my gosh. (laughs) I worked in a lot of different critical care units. I worked in Milwaukee in a 24-bed unit. I also worked in a neuro trauma unit there. I also worked in a coronary unit there. I did work on a floor in Oregon. 00:48:00It was a medical floor, and it was just a small, 25-bed unit. And that was fun. I had a great manager. And we were, the critical care unit was there, the stepdown unit, and then our unit. So we got all the people coming out of those units. And so it was busy. But again, it was a lot of variety.

FH: I'm backtracking a bit to your time in Eau Claire. What was that like starting off as a new graduate working in peds?

DC: Well it was very interesting. The head nurse went out on maternity leave. And so we had a new graduate. I was a new graduate, and we had a--so I'm a diploma nurse, you're going to hear all my angst. And then there was a girl that 00:49:00had graduated with a BSN. So they made her the acting manager because she had her bachelor's degree. And this person, I usually worked the night shift with some rotation to days and whatnot. But in the mornings before I left, I had to teach her whatever procedure she had to do that day. Because she had never done it. And I was just like, you know--(laughs) It was not fair. You know, she wouldn't let, she wouldn't seek advice from the nursing supervisors. So she had never put in a catheter, she had never started an IV. She really hadn't done anything. So that was very frustrating that they left her alone on a unit. But you know, again, that was out of my control. But I loved peds.

FH: What about it did you love?

DC: The kids. Kids are, they're hard to take care of because they can't always tell you what's wrong. They also can get very sick. But they also get better quickly. It was a general pediatric unit. It wasn't any kind of specialty unit or anything. So. And then we also got adult overflow patients that they didn't have anywhere to put. So it was kind of an interesting unit. And we had a lot of great CNAs that worked on that unit. And when I spoke about having surgery at sixteen, that's the same unit I worked on then when I moved to Eau Claire.

FH: Oh, it was the same unit?

DC: So there was a lot of CNAs that I knew from when I was a patient.

FH: Wow. Full circle.

DC: So it was kind of fun. Yeah.

51:13

FH: And then the first hospital in Long Branch, you mentioned that you didn't like it. Why was that?

DC: In Long Beach? That was the one that had this huge female surgical floor.

FH: Oh, okay.

DC: And then postpartum. So you had postpartum patients, you had all these surgical patients in. I just didn't like it. I knew in my heart I wanted to work in critical care. And this hospital, it was in Long Beach, California, it didn't allow you to go work in critical care as an undergraduate. So you had to put in your time. Which I understand. I just felt like it was a real rigid hospital. And you know, when I applied at Saint Mary's in Long Beach, I felt like she was 00:52:00able to give me a chance to do what I wanted to do without having to wait a year or two years. So that's what I did.

FH: What were some memorable moments in your career as a nurse?

DC: Wow. There are so many. I worked so many different places. I think memorable moments for me are the first critical care unit I worked in had an awesome staff. And we worked with, it wasn't just an all RN staff. So there were CNAs 00:53:00that worked in there, there were LPNs, and then there were RNs. So you could learn, there are many things you do as a nurse that an aide can teach you how to do it the best way, because that's what they do. Or the LPN. Because they come with all, their experiences are different than an RN. So you learn, yeah, what's the easiest way to transfer a patient, or the easiest way to get them dressed if they're going to get [unclear]. Which you didn't necessarily learn in nursing school. So I thought that working in a unit that had these various levels of staff, we all worked together, but you were able to learn from each level. Then 00:54:00we had the residents and the attending physician and all that, too, there. So it was a really great place to learn.

My favorite memory from that unit is we didn't have enough critical care beds, ever. And there was a new procedure which is now fifty years old, called TPN, total parenteral nutrition. When it first came out, the patients had to be in an ICU. And then they also, in the off hours, had to recover patients. Like if they need emergency surgery at night, there wasn't a recovery room staff on call. So they had to bring the patients to us to recover in the ICU. So one night, we had a 14-bed unit, they're all full. And we had two patients in our nursing station 00:55:00area. One getting TPM that none of us had ever done before (laughter) and the other one was a recovery patient. And we thought that we shouldn't have either of them, because their beds were cold. So the assertive nurses that we were, we took pictures of it and all the electrical cords running all over, because everybody had monitors and IV pumps, and we sent it to the fire department.

FH: Wow.

DC: So that we could get some changes made. So that worked.

FH: What happened?

55:41

DC: The anesthesiologist had to keep the patients in the recovery area and recover them.

FH: And did the fire department come?

DC: Oh, yes. (laughs)

FH: Wow.

DC: Another interesting thing that happened there--not interesting, it was sad--but I was working in coronary care. And we'd usually spend a week there and 00:56:00we were with the same person all week. One of the nurses that I was working with, you know, patients got morphine for pain. She said, can you, it was just a tiny little nurses' station, you know, big enough for two nurses. And it was glass-enclosed and we had five beds. So it was a small unit. And she said, "Can you hand me a," what were they called, Tubex of morphine. And so I did. And she said, "Okay, quit joking. Can you hand me one with something in it now?" So what happened is, we had a night nurse who was addicted. And there were all different levels of narcotics in the Tubexes. So the night nurse had been going through and removing part of the medicine.

FH: Sorry, Diane. I think the phone cut off for one second. The last thing you said, that she was removing--

DC: Oh, she was removing little bits of the medication from those Tubexes so she could take them. So that day when we looked, this nurse and I went through all the narcotics, because you don't normally look at, you know, you count the, Tubexes are little syringes full of a narcotic or some medication. You always just count how many are there. You don't look at the level in each Tubex. And when we started checking that, they then were like, oh my God. So it was very interesting. We had everybody up in our business. We had whoever the 00:58:00governmental agency is that comes. It was a good learning process. But yeah, that was probably a very interesting thing that I've never, ever had to go through again. So I don't even know why I went down that avenue. I forgot what you asked me.

FH: It's a memorable moment.

DC: (laughs) Okay. I guess that was a memorable moment. Probably one of my big memorable patients for me is when I was working in Eau Claire, I moved back to Eau Claire. And I worked at a different hospital. I worked at Sacred Heart in their multipurpose ICU. And there's this disease called Guillain-Barré. G-u-i-l-l-a-i-n, capital B-a-r-r-e. And it's a neurological disorder. And you 00:59:00see it mostly in the Scandinavian type of individuals. So, Eau Claire was a big Scandinavian population. And it seemed that we always had one patient in the ICU with it the whole five years I was there. But one of them was our age. So we were, let's see, how old were my kids? In our thirties. So most of the nurses, you know, we were all roughly the same age. And we had, his name was Burt. And he lost, it's a disease where it first starts like periphery, on the periphery, where you lose some of the function in your fingers. And it works its way up till it hits your central respiratory function and things like that. And you need to be intubated and put on a ventilator. And sometimes it stops midway when 01:00:00it starts. Other times it takes the patient where they have no movement whatsoever. And we had this thirty year-old gentleman in there that could barely blink his eyes. And that's the only way we had to communicate with him. So you had to ask him all the yes/no questions. And then he'd blink one for yes or two for no, or one for no and two for yes. And he was in our unit for probably six or nine months. And he works in a factory. When he went back to work, he worked in a factory and was on the evening shift. So I and another nurse, on the weekends we worked, we met him after work. We would always go out to breakfast and whatnot. And he would tell us of all his memories of being in the ICU. It was quite interesting. Because some of them were really hilarious. And some of 01:01:00them were sad that it happened. But he was able to recount that. Which probably doesn't happen very often. People don't remember usually when they're that ill. They don't remember all the things that happen. So it was quite fun. And we had a nice long-term friendship with him.

FH: What were some of his memories? If you don't mind me asking.

1:01:33

DC: (laughs) Well, we had a male nurse. Actually, I went to high school with this guy. And he was taking care of him. And the nurse was hungover. That's the only way I can say this. So he wasn't paying attention what he did. And I don't know if, you know what Desitin is like?

FH: No.

DC: Okay. Let's see. So it's a cream you put on kids' butts that's real pink. It's thick. It's got zinc oxide in it. And so it sticks to everything. But you use it for skincare, like to prevent breakdown and whatnot in people. And kids, 01:02:00you use it on their butts for diaper rashes and whatnot. Well anyhow, this guy Mike picked up the tube of Desitin and squirted it on his toothbrush and brushed Burt's teeth with Desitin.

FH: Oh my gosh. (laughter)

DC: It's hard to get off. I don't know. He had a lot of those stories, you know, where just funny things happen. But that's the one that I remember, and remember vividly him telling us.

And then we had a, in this same hospital, in the same unit, we had another patient with Guillain-Barré. And he's a memory for me because he was young. He was in his twenties. He was never on a ventilator, but he lost some arm function and leg function, but he could talk and everything. And he thought he had tight 01:03:00gloves on his hands the whole time. And every minute, probably, he'd yell out to us, "Somebody take these gloves off!" So it was a real challenge, because nobody wanted to take care of him because you were always going in there like once every sixty seconds to show him his hands and that he didn't have anything on them and whatnot. So he didn't recuperate as well as the other gentleman. He still had some weaknesses. But he came back to see us, I don't know, probably three, four months after he was discharged out of our unit. And maybe he wasn't even in the hospital then. But somebody wheeled him in the unit and he yelled out, "Take off these white gloves!" And he remembered all that. He remembered, you know, that we all thought he was a pain in the butt.

So those were two good experiences that came with patients that were really, 01:04:00really sick. I mean, I've had patients who have told me when they had a cardiac arrest that they were watching us from above running the code and everything.

FH: Wow.

DC: Yeah. So those near-death experiences, we had a couple of patients tell us about those. So those are a lot of good memories. We did a lot of, we had a big neuro trauma. The other hospital did all the cardiacs and then we took all the neuro traumas. And so a lot of those ended up braindead. And we had to do organ harvesting, so we had to keep them alive till the team could come from Saint 01:05:00Paul, which was about a hundred miles away. And that was hard, because many times these patients coded. And they're braindead, but because they were donating their organs, we had to keep them alive. So all the profusions straight through their kidneys. So that was, it was kind of a hard thing to do, to have a good outcome for someone else, you know. So those are some things that stand out.

1:05:42

FH: What about challenges that you faced in your career?

DC: I think one of the challenges, and again it's the good news/bad news, the challenges was that we moved a lot. So I worked in many different places. But I 01:06:00always had a job when we moved. I never worried about getting a job.

FH: Do you feel like that's at all part of your record with Madison General? Or why didn't you fear job scarcity?

DC: Well, because there was always a nursing job available anywhere. It might not have been the job you wanted or the shift you wanted. But I didn't fear moving. Say, like a teacher. If you move, you know, you may or may not find a job. Well, now you'd probably find a job. But in those days, there wasn't as great a teacher shortage, but there was a good nursing shortage. So I never moved anywhere where I wanted a job that I didn't have a job.

FH: I see.

DC: So, I mean, that was the benefit, I guess, to being a nurse. So I didn't 01:07:00fear moving. Does that sound right?

FH: Yeah.

DC: Okay. Because I knew as a nurse I could always find a job.

FH: So I'm sorry to backtrack--

DC: That's okay.

FH: So, but back to Madison, just thinking about you being there from 1967 to 1969, what was that like? Or can you recall a bit about the social or political climate while you were in Madison?

1:07:34

DC: I know the social and political climate was bad, because that's when I think there were a couple of issues at the university with protests. I feel like there was even a bomb that went off then. But we were kind of far removed from it. We didn't really have anything to do with the university. So I don't think we were 01:08:00involved in the political unrest that was going on then. And maybe that's just me being naïve. But I think we were kind of not surrounded by it. We were far enough removed. It was not that far from the university, I mean, just blocks. But we didn't really have anything to do with the university other than when we took our summer class there. So I felt like after the fact I learned more about it than when it was going on.

FH: Well then, returning to Madison in your career, how did you become involved in the Madison General Hospital School of Nursing alumni organization?

DC: This is really, so I was retired when we moved back. And so I thought well, I'm right here in Madison. Because I never really lived close, well, I guess I did when I lived in Eau Claire, and I lived in Iowa. But I never felt I was close enough. It wasn't worth the trouble to go to the annual meeting. And then when I moved back is when I got involved. And the first year I attended, they wanted a committee to do (laughs) redevelop, they wanted to do something to commemorate the alumni. And there really wasn't anything. So we developed a 01:10:00plaque that's housed right now in the old dorms. Do you know where the dorm was? Have you ever been there?

FH: No, I don't think so.

1:10:16

DC: Okay. Well, it's kind of kitty corner from the hospital. But the entrance where we all went in, there was a curved wall when you came in, it always had artwork on it. So we designed the plaque and worked with a person to create it. And then one of our committee members had a son that did some kind of graphic work. And so we had this plaque and it had a little brief history about how many nurses graduated, and how long the nursing school was open. And then he did a 01:11:00beautiful metal, I can't remember, etching or some kind of creative on the bottom that we added onto this plaque that was the picture of the front of the dorm. And so that's kind of how I initially got involved.

And then I think the second year somebody said, "The president doesn't want to do this anymore. Would you be willing to do it?" And I was like well, I guess. I don't know, I don't even know what they do. Go in there naively. So here I am.

FH: And what year did you get back to Wisconsin and get involved?

DC: Hmm, let's see, I've been here a year and a half. About four and a half or 01:12:00five years ago. So, 2014.

1:12:08

FH: So what do you do as president?

DC: (laughs) As little as possible. Basically it's changed a lot. I think the organization has certainly shrunk in size a little bit. So a year ago, let me back up a little bit. We had two types of funds. We had this fund called Ida Collins. And it was a fund that our alumni donated to over the years for education of alumni if they wanted to go back and take, if they were going to college, if they wanted to take a CEU class, they could apply for these funds. And nobody ever did it. They hardly ever. So we had all this twenty grand or 01:13:00more sitting, doing nothing. And so the first, and nobody on the board, so when I became the president, none of us really understood how the money was used, what the difference was between the different funds that we had. So we were like struggling to figure out what to do with this money. Because nobody, probably two people a year requested money.

So at the same time as we were struggling to figure out what to do with this money, then the foundation, the Meritor Foundation, asked us to work with our alumni and raise $150,000 for education. And so the first year that I was president, that's what I spent my time doing. You know, trying to figure out how to get the money. We had meetings with the foundation with different people to 01:14:00see where we needed to go to get money, and who our rich alumni were. Things like that.

So we raised 130 of the 150

FH: Wow.

DC: So then we had this twenty thousand dollars in this fund. So then we worked the next year educating our alumni why we wanted to use this money to donate to the foundation. Because we didn't want to manage this money anymore. Because we weren't using it. So the second year was spent doing that, and then getting permission from the alumni to donate it to the foundation so we met our $150,000 goal. So that was a big project for all of us. And maybe it was more eventful because you were always struggling, I don't know what to do, how am I going to get this money? So it was always in the back of your head. So I thought that's 01:15:00the big accomplishment that we did. So that took the first couple of years. And now it's really just planning, so we don't have that fund anymore. We don't really have to worry about it. We don't have to worry, you know, what to do with it once there is no more alumni association, etcetera. Now we really, all the board does and all I do is January through May is get organized for the annual meeting and try to find a speaker. Get the agenda out and the invitations and whatnot and then you know, have the annual meeting and pretty much are done until the next January. So it's pretty easy now.

FH: Why is being part of the alumni organization important to you?

DC: Well you know, it wasn't for all those years. So I don't know why it became important in the last years, you know. I mean, my non-working years. And I think it's because I got there and went to the meeting, felt that there was camaraderie there, that we all could relate to things, the same things. And when we were trying to raise this money--did you ever know Marilyn?

FH: No.

DC: The old president of the foundation. Okay. Well, we were trying to figure out, because during the course of these couple of years that we were raising this money, we always put something else to put money in. So they could put 01:17:00checks or just donate whatever cash they were willing to donate that year. And so Marilyn, the president of the foundation, said, "I think we should put out a bedpan and a urinal." And everybody else on the foundation freaked that wasn't a nurse. So we got the old, old, old bedpan out of the archives. What's it made out of? That's white and metal and hard as a rock. And the urinal that matched it. And so we set it on the table, asking for donations. And everybody in there who was a nurse had a great laughter about it and whatnot. And everybody that wasn't a nurse that was there was like, "Oh my God, what is it?" (laughter) So it's that kind of stuff that you understand, and everybody's used that equipment, you know? (laughs)

And now, this is going to sound, I don't know, now it's a matter of staying 01:18:00involved and trying to find some new leaders for the board. Because the alumni are aging. I can't remember when our last graduates were, but it was like in the '70s, I think. And so you know, as this alumni association ages, you don't have a whole bunch of new people coming in that want to do things. So this is our challenge now is to try to figure out how do we pull in some people that maybe didn't attend, and haven't attended. You lose track of them. Because one of the things that alumni association did is if people didn't pay their dues, they just 01:19:00didn't keep track of them anymore. Rather than keeping a list thinking oh, we might want to contact people. So it's hard now to go back and find people.

And then, you want to try to find somebody in Madison because it's, I think, it's easier to do if you're local. But none of us are local now. But we kind of feel like, I don't know if you've interviewed anybody else from the board. But now we're feeling like we either have to make it or break it as an alumni association. The same people can't be on the board for the next ten years, you know? I mean, right now there are two people on it that are eighty. And one's coming off. I don't want to be president again after this. This is my third 01:20:00year. So I have next year to go. And the secretary's been doing it for like six or eight years. So our dilemma now is, we don't want to give it up. But at the same time, if we don't find somebody to take over, some younger new blood, I don't know what's going to happen. And so that's, and we're all struggling because that's sad for us. But you know, it's just, I mean, we're all getting older. Everybody. And that's why, we still have good attendance at our meetings and whatnot. But nobody really wants to take on any additional responsibilities. So that's our challenge for the next couple of years is to try to find some 01:21:00people that may want to do that. So it kind of keeps us going right now.

1:21:12

FH: Had you stayed in touch with your nursing school peer before coming back to Wisconsin?

DC: No. And I really, my best friends from nursing school, I mean, we lost touch within a few years. I mean, I was in California and somebody was in Texas. You just lose touch. Last year was our fiftieth anniversary. We saw the better ways of publishing things, like on Facebook and whatnot. So people are trickling in with looking at a Facebook page. So we were able to recruit ten people from my class to attend. But it's never hardly been anybody else at the meetings but me from my class. And so that was exciting, and I'm hoping that some of them will 01:22:00maybe come back this year and want to be involved. But it's hard, I think, as everybody ages, it's hard to keep people involved. So that's the struggle right now. But I will say, working with the foundation, I mean, they have been, I think they're part of what keeps us going. Brianna. And we don't know the new president. We're going to meet her, actually, if I get back to Madison before the meeting, meet her. Because Marilyn, the old president, was very involved with us and supportive. And made sure we got whatever we needed.

FH: That's great.

DC: And so it's fun to have that relationship with the foundation. So.

FH: Definitely. So what advice would you give to future nursing students?

DH: Future nursing students. It's so hard for me because I've been retired for over ten years now. I think the same thing I said before when you asked what do you think makes a good nurse. You know, these are the reasons you should go into nursing. This is what, from my perspective, makes you a good nurse. And if you're not committed to that, I think you would get burnt out and frustrated very easily. I think they have, when you think about the volumes of medical 01:24:00knowledge that has changed from when I graduated to now, I mean, it's like being in a foreign land. They all carry cell phones with all the patients' medications on them, or some kind of electrical thing. And I think they have to do so much with so much less available to them financially in terms of how the units are staffed.

So they have to be prepared for that. And I don't think nursing school does a very good job of that. I think there's a lot of culture shock when kids graduate. You know, when they go through the first six months or year. I think 01:25:00if they can make it through the first year, then they probably will make it. But a lot of people quit before a year. I shouldn't say a lot. That sounds dramatic. But I think there's a lot of dropouts after a year, and go on to do other things. Maybe, maybe a different job within nursing, or completely removed from it.

I am amazed. I had a daughter who was in the hospital a couple years ago for surgery at the U. And I was just like totally in awe of what they were responsible for and what they knew and what they had to do.

FH: What were some of those things?

DC: Well, I think just they're all working mostly 12-hour shifts, so it's a long day. They don't get out after twelve hours. They're probably there thirteen, maybe. They have, and again, depending on the unit, a lot of people transferring in and transferring out. High volume of surgical patients. And I just think they have to know so much. They have a lot of specialty units, like at the U, which is nice, because you can specialize in somebody that just has vascular surgery. Or you know, it's much more, the university itself has a lot more units 01:27:00available. That's not necessarily the way it is around everywhere. But I just think they have to know so much. And I think they have to do with a lot less. And they have to be responsible, much more financially responsible for the items that they're using on their patients.

You know, this is going to sound crazy, but okay, I grew up in the days when we didn't have any electronics in nursing. So if we used a supply, we were supposed to take the sticky off and put it on a card. Well at the end of the night, when you went home, you maybe had twenty stickies on you, and you just tore them all off and put them in the garbage. So patients didn't get charged for that stuff. Now it's all, when you take it out you have to use your electronic device to be 01:28:00able to get it out and use it. And so it's a whole different way of doing business, I guess, because of what's going on in the healthcare industry.

FH: Well, those are all my questions. But if you have anything else that you'd like to add in this interview, please go right ahead.

DC: I think I've probably talked your ear off.

FH: Not at all!

DC: I have no idea. I guess I'd like to know when these oral histories are done, what's going to happen.

FH: Sure. I will fill you in after I turn the recorder off.

DC: Okay. That's fair.

FH: But if that's all for the interview--

DC: Yeah, I mean, I think it's not knowing the reason for it, it was kind of 01:29:00hard for me to say oh, sure, I'll do it, Brianna. But I really did it for Brianna.

FH: Oh, we're so glad that you did.

DC: Because she's just so awesome and you know, I've just worked with her for the last two years. And again, she didn't tell me what was going to happen, either. So you're doing it kind of, you know, I was doing this for her, because I didn't know what the rationale was for it.

FH: I will fill you in about everything. But is there anything else you'd like to say on the record?

DC: I'm trying to think. I don't think so, other than the fact that looking back on nursing school, I think I got probably the best nursing education that was possible at that time. We were not derailed from nursing at all, because we 01:30:00didn't have to take any other classes that had nothing to do with nursing. We didn't have to worry about writing a history paper, an English paper, you know. And you just got to focus on nursing. I thank, and I'm not a highly religious person, but I have thanked God for that experience every time you'd start a job. I guess that's all I have to say.

FH: Well, thank you so much, Diane.

DC: You're welcome.

1:30:47

[End Interview.]