Shannon Westfall, PCT
Growing up, Shannon was all too familiar with the strains the nursing profession can put on a family. Her mother was a nurse at a hospital in their hometown of Hurricane, West Virginia. While Shannon's mother modeled the empathy and perseverance it takes to be a nurse, her devotion to her patients sometimes wore on her family.
"My mother was never home because she worked long hours at the hospital," Shannon recalled. "She often got home and was torn up about a patient who wasn't doing well, so I saw the hours and the emotional toll, and I thought there was no way I'd become a nurse."
As she neared the end of high school and began to consider her future, Shannon weighed the conviction that she was meant to be a difference in people's lives against persisting doubts about following in her mother's footsteps and becoming a nurse. She enrolled in nursing assistant classes at a local trade school, but she remained unconvinced that her future would be in healthcare.
Then, both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer.
"Being in my position and watching my parents get sick made me want to be the difference in someone's life," said Shannon, who is now a unit secretary and monitor technician on 4 East at Parkridge Medical Center. "I had just started working at CAMC Teays Valley [a community hospital in Hurricane, West Virginia] when my mother got sick, and although I was always driven to make a difference, her diagnosis pushed me that much harder to be the difference as a nurse. I wanted to be there for people during the good times and the bad."
Being the Difference
CAMC Teays Valley is a small hospital, and when a code is called - even in the ER - all employees respond. Shannon, who was performing clinical rotations as part of her nursing assistant coursework, responded to one such code in the ER and found a former classmate whose baby had stopped breathing. ER physicians tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the baby for an hour. Shannon found herself in the challenging position of asking the mother to leave her baby.
"The mother wouldn't leave her child, and I don't blame her," Shannon said. "I was the one who comforted her and walked with her out of the room."
Shannon's future crystallized in that moment.
"I knew that if I could handle that, I could be a nurse," she said. "That was a turning point for me because I saw that I could really be the difference in a challenging situation."
Shannon recently spearheaded a supply drive to generate donations for a community homeless shelter.
The Parkridge Family
Shannon moved to Chattanooga to be with her fiancée and found work at Parkridge Medical Center. Her unit leaders schedule Shannon's work shifts around her classes at Chattanooga State, where she is completing the coursework necessary to become a registered nurse.
"My bosses have been great," Shannon said. "'I've been blessed to have nursing leaders who encourage me to pursue my education and accommodate my school schedule."
Her colleagues on the floor play a critical part in her education. Experienced nurses take new nurses like Shannon under their wings and teach them the nuances of nursing that can't be learned from textbooks.
"I couldn't work with a better team," Shannon said. "I'm blessed. We all work together, and I know that my patients are in great hands when my shift ends because the other technologists and nurses are amazing."
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