Interview with Noel Peckinpaugh

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

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1862

PECKINPAUGH, NOEL

PECKINPAUGH, NOEL (1948-)

Interviewed: 2019

Interviewer: Lea Goldstone

Index by: Lea Goldstone, Sophie ClarkTranscribed by: Teresa Bergen

Length: 1 hour, 8 minutes

First Interview Session (May 1, 2019): Digital File

00:00:00

LG: Okay. So today is May first. My name is Lea Goldstone. And I'm interviewing Noel Peckinpaugh. This is a phone interview. And this is being conducted for the Madison General School of Nursing Alumni Oral History Project, spanning 1905 to 1982. And for sound quality purposes, could you please say your name and spell your last name?

NP: Noel Peckinpaugh. P-e-c-k-i-n-p-a-u-g-h.

LG: Perfect. All right. So just describe for me a little bit of your upbringing.

NP: Grew up on a farm. Rural Indiana. Small school, 200 kids in the school. Graduating class of 65 students. Worked on a farm, as usual. Lots of sports, big in baseball and basketball. And I went to Ball State University, a local university here in the area. I got a degree in biology/chemistry/general science. And so that's kind of how I got started.

LG: And did anything in your upbringing kind of guide you towards like a nursing education?

NP: Well, I suppose. You know, guys, guys certainly were never thinking about nursing. That was not something that my mom or dad thought I should become. (laughs) But I did grow up with my grandmother in the same house. And she was a schoolteacher and an educated woman, so I think she was pretty influential on me. And then when I was probably eight to ten years old, she was pretty sick. And I was involved with some of her caregiving and things like that. And certainly was living around her, because we took care of her in the house at times. And then she got better. And lived quite well up until about 82. And then she had a sudden arrest, and died in my arms at that time. And I was about 22 00:02:00years old at that time. But that would be about it for any kind of experience that would indicate nursing was in my future.

LG: Mm hmm. And you said that nursing wasn't really common for boys. Around what time did you, I guess, graduate high school. That would be helpful.

NP: Nineteen sixty-seven.

LG: Oh, okay. And what year were you born in?

NP: Pardon?

LG: What year were you born in?

NP: Nineteen forty-eight.

LG: Okay. All right. Perfect. So was nursing popular in your community among just women? Or did you know other boys who kind of wanted--

NP: I knew, yeah, actually our neighbor, neighbor lady was a nurse. But I really never saw her in practice or anything. But she was a nurse. Out here in the country, we only have a few neighbors. But I never really--certainly "nurse" had a female connotation to it. So again, there was no other guys, or no guys that 00:03:00were thinking about being nurses. We were either going to be dentists or doctors or something like that.

LG: And so what was your perception of nursing school prior to your going?

NP: I had no perception of it. Didn't even know it existed, really. (laughs) I might tell you that I stumbled into nursing. I was trying to get into the physician's assistant program in Madison, Wisconsin. And because I had so little experience, well, I had no experience in the medical field, they said, "Well, if you go get a job in the hospital, then next spring you can probably get into the physician's assistant program." I said okay.

So I walk across the street to the hospital. I said, "I'd like to get a job here as an orderly or something like that."

And they said, "Well, we're only hiring nursing students."

I said, "Well, where's the nursing school?"

So I walked back across the street. And it was two to three weeks before school was starting. There's a little lady sitting behind a table that she'd set up inside the door. I think she was, I don't know, I guess she was waiting on me to walk through. And I said, "I'd like to, I was thinking about joining your nursing school."

She said, "Sit down." About a ten-minute interview. She says, "Well, we can get your paperwork from Ball State and you'll start in three weeks."

(laughs) I said, "Okay. I'm going to nursing school." I told all my buddies about it, and they called me Nice Nurse Noel, or Noel Nightingale. Because no one, no one thought about a guy being a nurse. It was still female. You know, I was called a male nurse, not a nurse. But one year into it, instead of applying for the PA program, I just decided to stay in nursing because I liked it so much.

LG: Wow. That's really interesting. So what year did you attend nursing school?

NP: That would have been, I graduated in 1980. So I guess, that was a two-year program there at Madison General. So I would have been '78. I was fortunate because I'd had all the prerequisites. And I'd even been taking classes at Madison school. I think in general, I wasn't using my degree. And so I started just taking classes at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. I took physiology and child psych. I mean, I took a bunch of classes. It just happened to line up for nursing, by pure accident more than anything. So when I applied, I had all the prerequisites.

LG: And why Madison in particular?

NP: Well, I moved there from Indiana with my first wife. She was getting her doctorate in philosophy. So I got up there from Indiana. I moved there in '73. So I'd been there about, what, three or four years before I stumbled into nursing.

LG: And what was Madison like for you during that time?

00:06:10

NP: Well, it was exciting. I mean, it was still the most liberal school in the country. Full of intelligent, intellectual people. I mean, you couldn't get a sandwich delivered from somebody that had less than a PhD. (laughter) So for me, coming from the farm, small college, it was fantastic. I hope I don't lose you with a battery or something. I hear some beeping so I hope it's not my phone. I might have to switch phones. If we do, just call me back and I'll start over on a different phone.

LG: All right. Yeah. No worries. So how large was your class size?

NP: At the school?

LG: Yeah.

NP: Yeah, each class was approximately 100 people. At that time, I think I 00:07:00remember there was 100 girls and two guys.

LG: Wow.

NP: Yeah. And the class before me I think was the same. It was 100 girls and two guys. And those two guys the year before, they were kind of groundbreakers. They were the first two. And when I went to school there, several of the instructors were a little bit hesitant in having men as nurses. Particularly the older counselors or instructors didn't believe that men could be nurturing. They thought it was the wrong profession for anybody who was a male. So one of the first things they handed me was a questionnaire. And the first question on there is what makes me think a man can be nurturing. And I was a little offended. I gave them the thing back. I said, "I just don't understand where you're coming from that a man can't be nurturing. I'd rather you not have questionnaires like 00:08:00this." I said, "I think you'll find that men can be quite nurturing, and there's no reason to give just the two guys a question like this. (laughs) And they took it back.

LG: Wow.

NP: Yeah, so it was real rough. A lot of the older instructors were not happy with men getting into their profession. It just kind of threw them off guard, I think.

LG: Wow. What was that experience like for you? That's--I've never heard of something like that. That's incredible.

00:08:35

NP: Yeah. When I hear about schools, like engineering and so forth, being a little bit prejudiced against women, well, I have no problem with that. I understand exactly how that all works out. That's how it was. You could put yourself in that position where you go into maybe MIT or someplace like that a few years ago. It's not so bad anymore. But it just, people called you a male nurse, and they didn't include you as a regular nurse, even at that time. So the 00:09:00instructors were the same. Well, 100 girls, actually 200 girls and four guys. The girls were kind of hard to get along with. And the guys, it was hard for me to understand how to get along with 100 girls. And all these female instructors. There were no male instructors, of course.

So I remember they were challenging me. They were trying to figure out if I was okay. They didn't trust me as a male. And I remember when we were practicing CPR, one of the most attractive of the young nurses took me into a small room, closed the door, and we were going to practice CPR with her being the mannequin. I to this day will never, I have no idea. But I still think to this day, I don't think she did that with anybody else. (laughs) I don't remember anyone else 00:10:00having that experience. I think they were continuously challenging me.

LG: Wow.

NP: That's right. And there were several incidents like that. So I had to be a little extra special. I had to really watch my Ps and Qs, because I just felt like they were looking for any chance to tell me it wasn't my profession.

LG: Mm hmm. And how did that affect, do you think that had like any effect on your relationships with the professors? Like were you able to kind of create bonds with them? Or was it mostly just like professional?

NP: Well, the younger ones. The youngest of the, the ones who were just out of school themselves and wanted to get into teaching, they got along with me real well. They were quite liberal. They're happy to have a guy. And they were happy to mentor me and help me be successful. They got me a job in the emergency room as an aide. And all those people were extremely accepting. So it was just kind 00:11:00of an older tier of, you know, the older nurses. And I'm talking between 50 and 70, they were a little reluctant.

And then there was one or two nurses that were, that had just retired. And I think, again, they didn't judge me at all. So there was probably 50/50 on how they saw a male being a nurse.

LG: And I know this is kind of speculation, but did you come up with any reason as to why they were so upset about that?

NP: Well, they didn't relate to men very well at all. They had, most of their experiences were either with their husbands or doctors. Now the reason I say that with no hesitation is that they gave us a lot of doctor stories. And at that time, nurses were kind of like handmaidens. And doctors were rude. And they 00:12:00treated nurses fairly poorly. Particularly as these older nurses probably grew up, it might have even been worse. So they didn't particularly like men in general. (laughs) And they were afraid to talk about, you know, they'd give us lectures and stuff. We had a lot of classes where they talked about how we were to relate to doctors, and how we were to relate to people. And it was pretty obvious that they were preparing these young girls for the worst. (laughs) So I think I was kind of, you know, they just weren't that crazy about men in general.

LG: And what kind of things, like you said that they taught you kind of how to have relationships with doctors. What were the kinds of things that they would teach you?

00:12:59

NP: Well, actually, you had to remember, most of the gals in this class were 00:13:00just out of high school. And there was a two-year waiting list, basically, a two-year waiting list to get into this school, it was so popular. So most of these people, one to two years out of high school. And I think they saw us as fairly naïve. So a lot of the lectures were on human relationships and how you're going to have to grow up. How nursing school is your first grownup thing in your life. You're not going to go home and see your boyfriend every weekend. You're going to stay here and study and all that. We had a lot of lectures like that. And I think they were trying to prepare these young girls for what they were getting into. And then the relationship between the doctors and the nurses followed right up with that. You're going to walk into situations where you're not comfortable. Or you're not being treated quite right. And they would try to prepare us for that.

LG: Mm hmm. And do you feel like you were treated as a student nurse any 00:14:00different from the women?

NP: Well you know, once I was in the clinical setting, I was not treated any different. For instance, I'm not sure if you're that familiar with Madison General at the time, but I forget the number of hours we spent, I think it was 20 hours a week as nurses in the hospital. And particularly the second year, we were the nurses in the hospital. We didn't get one half a patient for two hours of the day. We went to work in the morning, we took patient loads and we were the RN for the entire shift. So we had to really have our stuff together quickly. And at that time, of course, I think I was pretty good at it. I was also co-president of the class. I was president of student council. I don't know how I got that. I think they just picked me because I was, I stood out somehow. 00:15:00(laughs) So I had a good rating right off the bat. And the people in the hospital treated me really well. And as I succeeded, and got pretty good grades by the way, I got As, I was tutoring a lot of the girls who were just wildcats. You know, they were not very good students. And I convinced them how to study. And so we'd go to the library and I convinced them how to concentrate on their books for longer than 15 minutes. And I think put all that together, I was pretty much good to go. But I was treated pretty much the same. Particularly the second year.

I think there were some times when I still think they were trying to flunk me out right at the end. They set me up with a group, this one gal didn't like me very much. She was a psychology person. And she tried to set me up with this group. We had a group project where we went out in the community and we did, I 00:16:00forget what our, we were working with the homeless. And trying to figure out all their healthcare needs. And then we came back and we write a paper. And I remember being with these four students. And they just didn't want to do it. They didn't want to work at it. You know, they just wanted to take the easiest way they could. And I kept telling them, I said, "This is not going to fulfill the requirements." And I got outvoted.

So we got a really bad grade. I think we pretty much flunked it. And it was like 20 or 30 percent of the grade in the class. And I know she put me with these four girls. I think she just knew we were going to do poorly. It was really a selection I think was well thought out. And so we all, we got such poor grades. It got to the point where in order to graduate I had to get an A on the final. I knew that going in. And out of the five of us, I think, four of them didn't 00:17:00graduate because they had such bad grades in this class. And I, I got a perfect score on the final. And I remember I was standing, I forget what it was, they'd gone to the office because they were freaking out because they were not going to get to graduate with the rest of us. They were going to have to take the class over. I remember walking into the office, and they were all standing in front of her desk, and she's sitting there. And they were crying. And they asked me to come in. And I said yes, I said, "It just wasn't fair, we didn't have a group that could work well together, and I don't think it should keep them from graduating."

And she got mad. She stood up, she looked at me, and she goes, "You are," then she said, "You are the one," and then she sat back down and didn't say what she was going to say. (laughter) I realized right then and there, I think she was 00:18:00mad because I did well. (laughs) So there are those challenges. But those are things that stand out in your mind, of course, when you look back and reflect back.

00:18:19

LG: So kind of back towards just like regular student life, I'm guessing kind of, you have a very unique situation. But did you live in the dorms in any way? Or did you kind of live on your own on campus?

NP: Yeah, no, I guess I could have lived in the dorm, but I'm not sure where. It was pretty conservative. You have to remember, back in the '70s, we're still pretty conservative. I'll give you an example. They were trying to decide if they're going to wear their hats for the composite picture for graduation, the class. And here I am, the president, and I was standing in front of 100 girls in a big auditorium. There's 50 girls on one side of the auditorium that wants to wear hats, and 50 on the other side that said I'd rather die than wear those 00:19:00hats. (laughter) And I'm like, oh, God, what are we going to do here? And I don't know where I came up with this. I said, "Okay, if we wear hats, I'll wear a hat."

And they all went, "Okay." All hundred of them voted for hats. (laughs) I had to get my picture taken with a hat on. Which my mother thought was wonderful. She sent it out to all her friends. (laughs)

?: And we still have it.

NP: And we still have that picture. Yeah. So, yeah, it's different. It's different being a guy in a situation like that, for sure. But you know, I remember that first year I had to learn how to actually learn how to work with women, girls. It was a good education. Because as I found out, I'd be one of two or maybe the only guy in very job I ever had. So I had to learn how women think, how they react to men, how they react to each other. It's a lot different than 00:20:00the guys on the basketball team. So I had to grow up quite a bit myself at that time.

LG: So that gets back to the main question. Where did you live on campus?

NP: Oh, I lived with some, the guys that called me Nice Nurse Noel. I lived with those guys a couple blocks away from the school.

LG: I got you. Mm hmm.

NP: Yeah, I walked to school. I rode my bike to school.

LG: And what kind of, did they, were they also pursuing science-related stuff? Or was it completely separate?

NP: The guys? Oh, yeah, actually two of them are engineers. One of them is in the newspaper business now. [unclear] English and grammar and that kind of stuff. One of them is teaching special education. But just various things there at the school in Madison, Wisconsin.

LG: Got you. And what were just some of like the social or recreational 00:21:00activities you and your friends did?

00:21:07

NP: Well, as far as the guys were concerned--

LG: Or just in general.

NP: --we were all athletes. So we participated in sports and drinking beer, that was pretty much our recreation. (laughs) We all ran. I ran two or three miles a day, that kind of thing. We all skied. I mean, very active, very physical people, good athletes. And as far as the school people go, I started running around with a lot of them right away. And we'd go to concerts and bands, and go out at night and go do things. Yeah, we hung out quite a bit together.

LG: Mm hmm. And did you make any close friends from your nursing school class?

NP: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. I'd say five, six, ten people all became close. I lost track of them all the time, but we stayed in touch with each other for a few years afterwards.

LG: Mm hmm. So gearing towards your education, can you just describe some of 00:22:00like the lab skill education that you guys had?

NP: The last what?

LG: Like kind of your technical education. Just like what your classes were like, basically.

NP: In the School of Nursing? Oh, yeah. Well, after the first year, after you pass your bed bath class, and how to make a bed, and all that stuff, (laughs) why elderly people are not necessarily crazy about you feeding them, that kind of thing, when we learned that type of stuff, we went right into the hospital. So we had to learn everything from chest tubes and how they work and how to set them up and how to work with them, how to problem solve them. We had to learn trauma. We delivered children. I delivered three or four children myself. Babies.

LG: As a student? Wow.

NP: Yeah, as a student. (laughs) Yeah, I mean, they gave us no mercy. We were in the hospital. I'll tell you an experience that gives you an idea. I was in the surgery. And fortunately at the time my instructor was there. And I was setting 00:23:00up the blood pressure cuff and the tourniquet, and it was a knee surgery. And I put the blood pressure cuff on the leg. And the tourniquet on the arm. And when they started to cut into the patient, the blood spurted all over the place. The doctor started to come across the table at me. I mean literally, across the table to get at me. And the instructor--wonderful lady she was, by the way, she was one of the older ones, she'd been around forever, she was fantastic--she stood between me and the doctor and said, "Now, now, he's a student." (laughs) And saved me. So I mean, they had us right in the line of fire our whole second year of school. Everything was like that. Yeah. I mean, we worked floors.

I remember working the floors where there'd be four nurses. And 36 beds, 40 00:24:00beds. Maybe more. I forgot how big these floors are. And there'd be these two nurses, and they'd have these piles of charts. All paper, of course. All the bottles were glass. We had very few pumps. Every drip had to be drip factored and counted and drip factored. So you had to do your math on the spot for every medication or any kind of an IV. And at the same time, we'd have these piles of charts, all these orders. Just so high you couldn't look over the top of them. That was every day. Every day, that was their job. And I thought right away, I don't know if I can multitask this well. I'm probably not going to be a large-floor nurse. (laughs) I mean, I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they did it.

But that's where they had us working. Of course, they were happy to have nurses 00:25:00there, and that's why we got to do everything. I mean, we put the NG tubes in. We put the folies in. We tied the IVs. We set them up and we did the work, because they depended on us.

00:25:10

LG: Would you say you learned those skills mostly in class? Or did you learn a lot of stuff just kind of on the fly as you were going?

NP: Well you know, that's the good part about the school at that time. They had a laboratory set up in the school itself. Right across the street. So we'd go over there and practice everything. Putting tubes in or setting up the IVs, drip factors, all that stuff. We'd go across the street, and then do it. So everything we learned, we would practice or get told how to do it, practice, and then go across the street and do it. That's one of the reasons I stayed in the program. After one year, I said, shoot, I've never had an education this good before. It was perfect. See, what was it? Hear, see, practice and do was the 00:26:00whole thing. By the time you got out of that second year of school, every hospital in the country, every hospital in Wisconsin had a red carpet waiting for you because they knew you were ready to go. You didn't need, you know, orientation and go. (laughs) I found out later, over the last 35 years, that that wasn't the case in most schools.

LG: So were there any particularly challenging aspects? Oh, actually, before I ask that, I was wondering, did you have the rotations between hospitals outside of Madison General?

00:26:49

NP: We did not. I don't believe we did. No.

LG: I was just wondering, because that had come up in some other interviews. But okay, cool. Then were there any particularly challenging aspects of your education?

NP: Well, multitasking. I mean, I do believe that some, most men have a little harder time with multitasking. (laughs) Certainly as I went through all the years and started working with lots of men in nursing. Finally, you know, over the years, certainly a lot more men nurses. I think we all admit that sometimes multitasking is something that we are challenged with. I mean, that's one thing. But delivering babies, teaching breastfeeding, those are challenging. (laughs) Psychology was challenging.

Dealing with mentally ill people for the first time in your life. Very challenging. I remember having a young man that was, he was 16 years old, he comes in with his first symptoms of schizophrenia, or bipolar at the time. We were trying to figure out which one it was. And he became a friend. And it was so hard to see him suffer the way he did. And I remember, they came up with, one 00:28:00of the conclusions was that his father had a, he had a--what's the word they used? Non-therapeutic self. His father was non-therapeutic. So it kind of led to a lot of the difficulties. You know, they were trying to figure out some of the reasons why he was bipolar. But of course, that was before we knew as much about the brain chemistry and all. We didn't have scans of the brain and all that kind of stuff back then. So we were always trying to figure out the psychosocial aspects of all these diseases. But that was tough. Watching people suffer was tough.

LG: Mm hmm. And was there any section, or I guess any class of medicine that you found most intriguing?

NP: Well, you know, the emergency room work was exciting. Because I worked 00:29:00there, and I was right there starting the IVs. Or I did all the bandaging and I did all the, putting all the stuff on all the athletes that came in there with their twisted ankles or whatever. And I found that very much fun, but it wasn't challenging. It was better for a student. So when I graduated, I interviewed every aspect of the hospitals. They didn't like us starting off in ICU. But other than that, I was willing when I interviewed for orthopedics, I interviewed for cardiology, you know, the step-down units, as they call them now. And I interviewed for all these different aspects. But I just got lucky. And I interviewed in this hospital in Milwaukee, Deaconess Hospital, it's not there anymore. But it was an old hospital, and it was recently fixed up. So I'm 00:30:00walking down this aisle where she's interviewing me, one of the head nurses, the head nurse of that area. And it was beautiful orange, brown, and just really felt good. Comfortable environment. And there were three nurses sitting behind, they were all brand new nurses, they're all sitting behind the nurses' station doing their charting, smoking their cigarettes. And I said, "Hey," I didn't smoke, by the way, I said, "Hey, I think I want to work here." (laughs) So that's how I picked my job. So no, there wasn't one particular area that was more exciting than the others.

And then, just so you know, it was six months later that all these new nurses that were just picked to work in that unit, one day they come in and said, "You're going to be ICU nurses tomorrow. So show up in the ICU tomorrow." They 00:31:00put scrubs on us, and off we went as ICU nurses. (laughs) There was no warning, whatsoever.

And I loved that. I just absolutely fell in love with intensive care. That was my place.

LG: So kind of back to school. Do you remember any faculty who played an important role in your education?

00:31:25

NP: Well, I would say several. I mean, the gal who, well, they all taught general subjects. But different types, parts of the floor. We broke up everything into medical, surgical and so forth. I don't remember names. But there was three or four that was definitely mentors, people who were right there at my side, people who supported me, people who were there for me at every turn. I don't remember a single name. (laughs)

LG: That's all right.

NP: Well, you know, long time ago.

LG: And were there any practices or methods that you learned that would be kind of unusual in a nursing school today?

NP: Well, of course I don't think you'll find too many nursing students practicing drip factors on their IVs. (laughs) I don't think, I'm not sure we used gloves at first. I think back, I don't know that gloving was all that important, unless you're really going to get messy, of course. I don't think handwashing was like it is now. I'm pretty sure that you washed your hands before and after work kind of thing. (laughs) I mean, there must have been a little more to it, but not anything like now. I mean, now you can't walk in and out of a room without washing your hands a few times. Back then, I don't think we wore gloves, again, unless it was going to be really messy. So, yeah, there 00:33:00were lots of things if I thought about it that were a lot different. But that's a long time ago.

We didn't have monitoring. We just didn't have the monitoring, either. Everything was by cuff and stethoscope. (laughs)

LG: Do you think that added almost more benefit to your education in that it was so challenging? Or was it kind of just standard?

NP: No, no, it was fantastic. That particular school, teaching the way they did, having us in that setting, the ability to do the job like we did. I mean, today I can just feel a pulse for ten seconds and tell you how many beats per minute you have, and if it's regular and what rhythm it is. I mean, I have no problem with a cuff and a stethoscope. We learned our breath sounds and our heart sounds and abdominal sounds. We assessed. We were good at it. So, yeah, that carried on 00:34:00throughout my career. The younger nurses coming out of school, which I started teaching, had none of those skills when they came in. The Madison General Hospital is the most incredible experience I ever had.

LG: And is there anything else you'd like to add about Madison General, just before I move on kind of to your post-Madison life?

00:34:32

NP: Well, it was a shame. It was a shame that they stopped preparing nurses like that. We went into, in a way, in some ways it was good for nursing that we stopped the two-year programs, the diploma programs. But it was incredible, they turned out incredible nurses that really knew their job and were really good at what they did as soon as they walked on the job. And when they stopped those schools in 2000, or what am I thinking, 2000, 1980, I think that was the last 00:35:00class. And they just stopped them. Everybody had to go to the four-year program. And they didn't have the community schools that gave two-year programs or anything like that at that time. That came later, when they figured out that we're not going to have enough nurses. You can't send that many people to college.

So at that time, we had a terrible nursing shortage immediately afterwards. And I realize that the nurses coming out of the four-year programs were not ready to become nurses. They were smart. They could make great care plans. But as far as walking on the floor and taking care of people and relating to the patient, they had a big learning curve, a lot of them. So Madison General was incredible for preparing us for what we were going to do.

LG: So what was the transition like when you graduated nursing school, going 00:36:00into professional nursing?

NP: Well, that's just it. I mean, it wasn't much transition. We had a head nurse, or our charts nurse, instead of an instructor. But other than that, we were ready. I mean, we just went to work. And I had to learn my rhythms and I had to learn some quick reactions to what I was doing in the heart business, but there wasn't much transition. That's just it.

LG: And what was your first, can you describe just like your first couple of years as a nurse?

NP: Well, it was fun. I was single. All the new nurses were single. (laughs) So after we worked, I think we were working 8-hour shifts or 10-hour shifts. I think we started working 10-hour shifts almost as soon as I got out of school. And as soon as that 10-hour shift was over, we'd all head out to the nightclubs or the bars or someplace. (laughs) And we had a blast as far as that goes. 00:37:00Because I got thrown into the ICU, it became a challenge right away. You know, I don't think you understand, they didn't really have ICUs when I went into the ICU. The nurses were not allowed to do anything without calling a doctor. So if the patient was in V-tach, I was supposed to call a doctor and get an order to treat the patient. We didn't have ACLS yet. We didn't have advanced critical life support yet. So it was quite the experience. (laughs)

LG: So how long did you work as a nurse?

NP: I retired in '14, 2014.

00:37:49

LG: Oh, wow. Okay.

NP: So, yeah, I worked pretty much fulltime that whole time. In the ICU.

LG: And what were those years again?

NP: Pardon?

LG: What were the years again?

NP: Nineteen-eighty. Went right from school to work. Of course remember back 00:38:00then, fortunately we had grants. So being a single guy, I didn't have much money. So the grant covered my education. And all I had to do was work, I think I had to work fulltime for the next five years, and the grant was paid for. So my education was paid for. That's another thing that really, really was, I think education misses today. That was another reason why we all did so well.

LG: Was there a name for that grant?

NP: For the grant?

LG: Yeah.

NP: I don't remember it. I think it was specific to nursing. I don't remember why. It was a federal, I think it was federal, but I can't tell you the name of it.

LG: That's all right. I was just curious.

NP: Yeah, they stopped that after a while.

LG: Mm hmm. And so what were some like examples of challenges that you faced in 00:39:00your career?

NP: Well, when you're an intensive care unit, the challenges are just the severity of every day. Every day is just an incredible challenge. I mean, you go to work and you're lucky to get a break. You're lucky that you get to eat. Alarms are going off all the time. And everything's hectic, helter skelter. And at the end of the day, you'd go to the locker room if you were lucky to have locker rooms, and you'd sit down and go, well, no one died today. (laughs) I'm not joking. It would just be, deep breath. Tomorrow we'll do it all over again. So just the general intensity of the whole situation was challenging.

Of course, then we were learning, we were making our own care programs. We were 00:40:00designing our own rules of taking care of a Swan-Ganz catheter. We were writing our own stuff. We literally went and researched our own, what a Swan-Ganz does, wave forms, what they analyze, how we measure them, how we do means, what would be the best accurate numbers. We had to research that ourselves, as nurses, and then write it ourselves into our programs. That was where I came in pretty good, because I had that background in chemistry and biology. So I was able to think through those things and help them. But you can imagine the challenge.

LG: Yeah.

00:40:37

NP: Nothing was written out for us. There were no rules. (laughs)

LG: So do you feel that your like group of, like I guess your generation of nursing graduates really kind of paved a path for future nurses?

NP: Yeah. I can't even begin to think of some of the other fields. I mean, I'm sure labor and delivery was very similar. I mean, things changed so rapidly 00:41:00after that period of time. But intensive care, it was, we just started doing open hearts at that time. And we just started having ventilators in our, we didn't even have ventilators. We had three or four ventilators for the entire hospital. So we'd bring these little ventilators in, these like little things that they used in surgery. And that's how we started. And then they started bringing in the ventilator that had the bell that goes up and down. We'd have to throw powder in that because it would get caught. (laughs) I mean, it was archaic. But, yes, the nurses at that time, as we stayed in, it got easier. All of a sudden we had protocols written out for us. We learned our ACLS. The doctors stopped having to give us all the orders. They had to give up power to the nurses.

So those first nurses, knowing where we came from, knowing where we were and 00:42:00where we're going, we really appreciated the responsibility that we had accrued.

LG: Mm hmm. And so what was that like, kind of going through the decades of your nursing career? Like the advancements in technological everything in medicine. (laughs)

NP: It was exciting. It was actually exciting. Every time they bought new monitors. Every time they bought new IV machines, every time they bought new ventilators. As soon as the computers came in with the microchips, once we got microchips, all of a sudden the ventilators are timing--can you imagine that, I don't know if you know much about ventilators, but the original ventilators were strictly all controlling the breathing. So we'd have to knock out the patient if they were going to be on a ventilator, because the ventilator did everything. Well now, by the end of 35 years, the ventilator assists the patient, improves 00:43:00their ventilations, times their ventilations, corrects their ventilations. It's all, it's totally a different ballgame by the time I retired. So in between was all those stages of those improvements. Of course the IVs, you know, instead of the drip factors, all of a sudden the IVs are programming and telling us our mics, and all we had to do was plug in the mics per kilogram per minute and it would give us all the information and set up a machine for us. So, quite a difference. (laughs) Made it a lot easier.

LG: And were there any memorable moments that stood out to you in your career?

00:43:49

NP: Well, that's almost like every day, every week. Memorable can be some of the letters I still have from patients. Or their family members. I get a little 00:44:00teary-eyed, sometimes. But oh, man, you create such a bond. When people almost die, and then they're in your arms or in your hands when they live, and then they come back to the hospital later, there is a bond there that you can't imagine. So you know, those are the kinds of experiences that most nurses thrive on. That's what makes up for all the stress.

But you know, I taught, I started my own hemo dynamics class. I taught the balloon pump and I made up my own class. It was called hemo dynamics and the intra-aortic balloon pump. And it became and it became such a popular class in the hospital, I had to start teaching it three or four times a year.

LG: (laughs) Wow.

NP: Yeah. And it was like an eight-hour class. We got a couple of breaks in there. But I lectured, I used the board. I drew all the heart pictures, drew all the diagrams, drew everything on this big board around the room. And then it was 00:45:00kind of like from that point on, we just became part of that heart. (laughs) I mean, those kind of things, you can't forget.

LG: So did you ever return to Madison?

NP: Yeah, well, I went from Madison to Milwaukee. So that next ten years, I worked in Milwaukee. So I returned a lot during that time. But you know, of course the school's gone. Yeah. And Madison General, didn't probably have very many reasons to go back there. But Madison, I did, yeah. I had lots of friends there.

LG: And is there any advice that you would give nursing students who are graduating now?

NP: Well, I'm not very good at giving advice. I remember when I was on these panels that would interview nurses. Of course it got to the point where there would be 30 people trying to get into the ICU and we would select two or three 00:46:00of them. And I was never as good at that stuff as some of the other nurses were, for some reason. I always got too esoteric. I got too involved. (laughs) I was trying to convince them that we were going to teach them how to be, who they were going to become when they walked into that ICU room. Everybody else was more involved in you know, life experiences and stuff, and things like that. (laughs) So I was never very good. But what I did a lot of give advice, there were two types of nurses that came in. And the ones that we were looking for were the ones that were wanting to get their master's and get their doctorate. And I kept saying, "These are not really the ones that we want in the ICU. I mean, they're wonderful. But they're only going to be here a few years. As soon as they get their escape route, they're going to be out of here. (laughs) By the time we make them into really," it takes about five years in the ICU to become the nurse that you want to be that first day. About five years. And maybe even 00:47:00longer. And so by the time we get them really sharpened, really good, then they'll want to go get their master's or their doctorate. You know, they wanted to wear real clothes. They didn't want to wear scrubs. They wanted to wear high heels and be pretty. So I would go after the ones that were not so ambitious. (laughs) But that was my advice to people is now you have to get in here with me and work with me and think. At the moment, you've got seconds to make decisions. You have to understand why every decision is made. You have to be able to calculate and analyze and critically think in seconds or minutes. And that's what we do. It's so different than sitting in a university setting where you're, you know, promoting the quality of nursing. (laughs) You know what I mean.

The nursing process came in handy. It's still how I run my life. I do the nursing process, whatever I do. I live on a farm now, so I'm using my nursing process all the time. Reassess, redo. Assess, redo. (laughs) And so that's what I try to explain to the nurses, that they have to have that ability and think through things like that in seconds and minutes every day.

LG: And so is there anything else that you'd like to include in this interview?

00:48:44

NP: Well, I'd just like to restress the fact that they no longer call me a male nurse. (laughs) That the fact is so wonderful over the last, I'd say 15, 20 years, I don't know if it's been that long, but certainly the last 10 years, that when I tell somebody I was a nurse they don't look at me in a strange way. 00:49:00And they don't say, "Oh, you were a male nurse?" The word "nurse" now includes men, generically. That is probably one of the neat things that I'm so glad, I got to watch that, be a pioneer and watch it evolve.

LG: Well that's great. Well, perfect. Then I'll conclude this interview for now. And I just want to have on the record that we'll be sending you a release form that just kind of like lets you know where this interview is going. And you get a couple of options as to like when you want it to be put online or anything to be used by researchers. And then I'll also send you, we might be contacting you for a follow-up interview. Because I have a lot more questions, obviously, always. (laughs) But thank you so much.

NP: That's good. Now what is it, by the way, what's your, you're in school yourself?

LG: Yeah. So I'm just, for this part, this is just the, we're funded by like a 00:50:00larger program that's trying to get historical accounts from like individual people who graduated from Madison General in that time. And so I'm just interviewing.

NP: Are you in nursing?

LG: No, actually, not at all. (laughs) I'm more on the--

NP: Not at all.

LG: Yeah.

NP: So when I say "drip factor" do you know what I mean? (laughs) Those little IVs next to you when you're in the hospital and it goes drip, drip. (laughs) We didn't have a machine on those. We had glass bottles and we had to just time them so that the drip came out just at the right rate per minute.

LG: Yeah. Once I go back through this interview I'll definitely find a lot of terms that you'll probably need to redefine for me.

NP: I bet you will. (laughs)

LG: But otherwise, thank you so much for your time.

00:50:48

End First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (July 11, 2019): Digital File

00:00:00

LG: Okay. So could you just clarify your birthdate and then the years that you attended Madison General?

NP: Noel, N-o-e-l, and then what years was it? That would have been '78 through 00:51:00'80, something like that?

LG: Mm hmm. And then your like year of birth, just so I can have it down.

NP: 11-1-48.

LG: Perfect. Okay. So were there any like world or like community events that like you remember from the news like while you were in school? That maybe like you and your friends like talked about?

NP: You're asking a lot there. (laughs) I'd have to think about that for a while. Seventy-eight, '80. God, nothing that I can, nothing that really pops up.

LG: It's all right. I was just wondering. And if anything pops up for the rest of the questions, just let me know.

NP: Okay.

LG: So you mentioned in the previous interview that you felt like Madison when you were there was like very liberal and educated, that kind of thing.

NP: Uh huh.

LG: Could you just explain kind of more like what that meant to you? Just so 00:52:00like I have a better kind of definition of that?

NP: Well you're talking about the school, or the city itself? Of Madison?

LG: Yeah. Just like the environment, yeah.

NP: Yeah. Well, Madison itself was, and still is, I think, but was even then, policemen didn't have guns. They rode around on bicycles in their shorts and they looked like you and me, friendly people. And that was the entire police force, by the way, not just the campus police force. Pot was a 50 dollar fine. So up in the nightclubs you'd get a scent of some pot floating around. Nobody was worried about being arrested. (laughs)

As far as, you know, they had a Labor Party, a Communist Party or a Socialist Party or whatever at the time on the city council. The mayor was one of those. (laughs) So, yeah, it was a pretty liberal area. Kind of a little liberal haven. 00:53:00You talk to people, about half the people serving the tables had master's degrees or doctorates, or some kind of degree or another. So the conversations were usually pretty enlightening. So that was kind of the story back then.

LG: Interesting. All right. Well, that makes sense. And then you also mentioned in the previous interview that you had some interesting run-ins with doctors in your student experience. Did you think that like throughout your career that the relationships between doctors and nurses changed in any way? Or did it mostly stay the same?

NP: Well, that's a good question. I think I got in on the beginnings of when nurses decided they were actually a profession, not a servant to the doctors. Jobs stopped, you know, we started having bedpans that we didn't keep in the 00:54:00[walls warm?]. We didn't have to fetch everything for them. We didn't have to sharpen their needles. So it was less and less a hand servant type position. So then that kind of changes the relationship.

And then when, at that time, too, we started having advanced life support. So the nurses started getting educated in rhythm detection and all kinds of stroke detection and all that type of stuff. So as we became more educated and more honed in on that stuff, and the doctors allowed us to have more and more responsibility. And along with that responsibility came more respect. A different type of working relationship. And I know for instance when men got more and more involved, again, the relationship kind of had to change a little 00:55:00bit because the doctors were still pretty bad. There were several doctors that were still very derogatory toward female nurses. They would say really horrible things. I wouldn't even want to say it to you on the phone. And that was not that uncommon, by the way. And then but as over that period of time in the early '80s, the nurses, everybody just stood up and said, "No, we're not going to do that anymore." (laughs) So yeah, things did change right around that era.

LG: That's good. And when you said advanced life support, was that like just the machines? Or was that like a technique that you guys learned?

00:04:51

NP: Yeah, ACLS. It was, you know, CPR. The advanced CPR, where we would treat V-tach, we would treat somebody who's dropping with hypotension or substance. We would be able to treat them in an emergency way before the doctor was involved. We found out we weren't saving anybody's lives until we did that. We would put 00:56:00them in an expensive setting, and intensive care setting was intensive, all right. But we weren't saving any lives. And we were just building intensive cares at that time. We were just getting ventilators. We didn't have ventilators at the ICUs at first. Can you imagine that? We didn't have the technical support. So when they said well why would insurance pay for all that expensive care if the people were dying at the same rate that they were before. So what they did was when they taught us how to save lives on our own, and then you know, get the docs involved as soon as we can, of course, then the outcome started to turn around, and the insurance companies would start to reimburse you in the hospitals for that type of intensive care. So yeah, that was when all that happened during the early '80s.

LG: Hmm. And so, yeah, was that all kind of introduced at the same time? Like it all kind of just came in a wave?

NP: Yeah, it all came in that way. Yeah. Exactly. It was '76 through '80. Let's say '76 through '84 was the beginning of the open heart surgeries. So every hospital wanted to get in on that. And bypass surgery. And we were starting to get dialysis machines and ventilators and things. So it all happened about the same time.

LG: Mm hmm. And that kind of like feeds into my next question. So you mentioned that your generation of nurses were really like pioneers when it came to that new kind of stuff. Could you just describe kind of more instances in which like you really had to teach yourself along the way, and kind of how you did that?

NP: Yeah, we did. The nurses at that time, we in the intensive care unit, there was no, really there was some literature, there were some books written, technical books. But they weren't integrated into the hospital protocols. So 00:58:00there were no protocols for what we were going to do. So the nurses themselves, in our individual units, wrote our protocols. We wrote the techniques and the protocols that we would operate under. I'll give you an example. We had, we were starting to get catheters that would measure pressures. But we didn't know how to read them. We didn't know what the accurate way of getting the numbers were. And so we looked it up in the literature. We got our books out and made up our own, well, we didn't make it up, but we determined, how to read the numbers appropriately so that we could treat it appropriately. So the nurses themselves, ourselves, I was one of those that had a little background in math and science, so I helped a lot with that, and determining how to interpret the technology that we were using.

LG: And did you ever share that--

NP: Go ahead.

LG: Oh, sorry.

NP: That's all right.

LG: Did you ever like share those protocols with other hospitals or like receive protocols from other hospitals?

00:08:22

NP: You know, I don't believe we did. Now later on I think as, you know, I think there were plenty of brighter minds than myself deciding that it was all nice and handy that we were able to do it. But I think once the National Heart Association, for instance, groups like that finally got involved and organized all the hospitals so that we were all on the same boat. So that we were all doing things in the most approved way. I think those organizations probably got on board about that time, too. But as far as the nurses at that time, the only way we would have shared it is if we were working registry, or going from one 01:00:00hospital to the other and saying, "Here's how we do it." Actually, we did do that. Nurses that would go from hospital to hospital for one reason or another would share how each hospital did it and how they preferred to do it. And we would incorporate that as well. But that was really informal.

LG: Hmm. Interesting. So were there any aspects of nursing that you feel like that the everyday person wouldn't really know or experience?

NP: That would not know?

LG: Yeah. Kind of like is there anything that they like don't see that like really kind of is a big part of your career? Like we only really see, as patients we see what you do. But is there other stuff kind of behind the scenes that people don't really get to know about?

NP: Well I would assume, I would assume most people do see whatever happens with their family members. But it was only lately that we allowed family members to 01:01:00stay in the ICU during any kind of a crisis. It was only in the last, I'd say 20 years that we allowed families to stay there while a family member might be dying or we were doing things that we had to do. Up until let's say around 2000, somewhere in there, we weren't allowing family members to witness what we did at all. So from 2000 on people, to have family members in the ICU or in that type of setting will be a lot more informed on what nurses do. I've heard that really does make the appreciation for what nurses do, that really elevated it, big time. But before that, no. Almost everything we did, they had no idea how much the nurses were involved in the actual saving and care and outcome of their loved ones. Yeah, it was pretty in the dark. And I think that was, I don't know 01:02:00if we did that on purpose. I think one way or another we found out that families do a lot better making decisions and helping us make decisions when they are actually part of the, can see what we're doing. Then they have less questions, they have less, you know, a lot of times families would think what did you do? What did you do to my loved one? You know, and if they're allowed to be around at the time, then they know. (laughs) So, yeah.

And then as nurses got more educated, then we could actually explain to them what we're doing, and tell them what we're doing. And up until the '80s, nurses didn't do a lot of teaching family members on this stuff, because we were just, again, handmaidens. But as nurses became more and more educated, technically more educated, as well as all the classes that they had to take, then we were able to explain things more and more to the families. And of course it was the 01:03:00nurse probably doing most of the explaining and most of the talking.

LG: Right.

00:12:17

NP: So families became more and more aware of what nurses do. So I think that's really changed since I was, big time. But as far as the other thing that you don't understand is back when, we really didn't have a lot of technology. So we couldn't smoothly do things as we do now. Place catheters and do things in a way in which the ICU can be a lot less hectic. For instance, like going to work seven in the morning and barely able to get a report because there'd be patients trying to die and we'd be performing CPR. We'd be rushing to get things. We'd be doing all these hectic things all day long for 8, 10, 12 hours, whatever the shift was. And we'd all be like a teamwork. We'd all be pitching in just working 01:04:00as hard as we could, helping each other. At the end of the day, we'd all meet up in the lounge, exhausted, totally emotionally drained, physically drained. Just like if you were in some kind of a big sports contest or something. (laughs) And that was almost every day we were at work, it was like that. So you had to have incredible camaraderie and compassion for the other people that were doing that work. A lot of people didn't know that. They would never have known the level of stress and the level of intensity that the nurses and doctors and assistants and anybody else that was involved. We were all exhausted at the end of every day.

LG: So I guess my last question, you kind of mentioned something earlier, when, especially I guess this would be more in the '70s, I know that kind of you were saying before that a lot of nurses were taught kind of just to be like handmaidens, and that it really kind of changed over the years. Was there any 01:05:00like, I don't know, not like tension, but was there any difference between the generational nurses? Like some who had been working in the like the '50s and '40s versus the ones of your class? Like was there any kind of educational difference there? Or did everyone kind of just evolve together?

NP: Well, it was kind of funny, because I think by the time we came around in the late '70s, I think most of the nurses were ready for the change. The older nurses, the instructors, I think they were the ones that taught us that we no longer have to be those handmaidens. Actually I think they already had seen the light. (laughs) And they were happy young blood was coming in. And they influenced us by how they taught us. You know, what our role was, who we were as people. All these young girls, they taught them how to respect themselves. And I 01:06:00don't think that had been necessarily taught in the same way in earlier years. So I think it was actually handed to us by a lot of nurses who had gone through the earlier days, and they didn't want us to go through the same thing. So actually it was well represented. That was in Madison, anyway. I don't know about the rest of the country. I can imagine there's parts of the country that might not have been that progressive. But in Madison, I think it probably was a little more progressive on that type of behavior.

LG: Mm hmm. Well, great. Well, is there anything else that you'd want to add kind of about your experience at Madison General?

NP: Well, I guess I told you quite a bit about the fact that being a male was always a challenge. But no, it was, like I said before, it was an incredible experience. And if it hadn't been such an incredible experience, I probably, I 01:07:00might not have even stayed in nursing. But they got me off on such a good footage that it was worth staying there the rest of my life. Staying in nursing the rest of my life. So I credit Madison General School of Nursing for all that.

00:16:28

Second Interview Session

Total time = 68 minutes