My Nursing Journey
By Jody Yank, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse at Doane University
In the winter of 1984, my boyfriend of a year developed leukemia and passed away before he could get a bone marrow transplant to save his life. At that time, those procedures were still considered “experimental” and, therefore, not covered by insurance. Chemotherapy made him very ill and didn’t cure the leukemia ravaging his body. Side effects eventually killed him. This was the defining event that led me into medicine. “There has to be a better way, better medications, better treatment,” I thought.
Fast forward to undergrad…I couldn’t decide between medical research or nursing. Ultimately, it was the patient interaction as a CNA and a phlebotomist that led me to nursing. I graduated from UNMC and started my nursing career in Crete at the hospital. In a small-town hospital, you work in all areas of nursing, including medical, surgical, ER, OR, labor and delivery, and nursery care for all ages of patients. My favorite was labor and delivery. Feeling the rush of helping a mom bring a new life into the world was very rewarding.
I spent a few years at Bryan-LGH West and then another year at Advanced Medical Imaging. But I was longing for more…more education, more expertise, more SOMETHING. I decided to return to school to obtain a Master of Nursing. While I was in graduate school, I continued to work as a home health nurse. I wanted a wide variety of experiences before I became a nurse practitioner. My passion was women’s health, so that was the focus of my education. Graduating in 2008 was a challenge as no one was hiring women’s health nurse practitioners, or any nurse practitioner for that matter. I went back to Crete labor and delivery while I returned to school for a post-Masters in Family Practice. I could tell becoming a nurse practitioner wasn’t going to be easy. The medical community was still “on the fence” about nurse practitioners, as many physicians preferred PAs over APRNs. But I was up for the challenge.
I signed on with CVS MinuteClinic in Lincoln as an APRN. This was an urgent care setting that I really enjoyed. Like most medical environments, caring for the patients was my favorite part. I still wanted to use my women’s health background, so I signed on with Family Health Services, a local family planning clinic, as a side job to provide reproductive health care to women and men. This fulfilled my mission to provide quality healthcare to young adults so they can have a choice regarding when and if they want to start a family. I eventually became the Executive Director and APRN for that organization for several years.
When nurse Kelly decided to leave Doane University, it was an opportunity to reinvent Student Health Services. She understood that an APRN could be utilized so much more effectively to provide an expanded scope of services to the students. I was hired to fill this role and have drawn on all my past experiences as a nurse and APRN to provide Doane with quality, caring healthcare services.
The blog posts in Forward. Together. are intended to foster an inclusive community of empathy and curiosity at Doane University by providing a glimpse into various individual identities and worldviews. These are community members’ unique stories and should not be presumed to be the experience of all who share the same identity.
