Great Stories
Montana Campus Corps:
College Students Meeting Critical Community Needs
To be a Student Nurse by Cleyone Talbot

As a member of Americorps, the majority of my service hours came from the time I spent in the hospitals in Missoula. I worked on the Medical-Surgical floor, the OB unit, and the Pediatric floor at Community Medical Center, and I have been spread throughout St. Patrick Hospital. My experiences have varied tremendously in these different areas, and while I have been a student throughout all of it, I have learned that to the patients I have been more than a student nurse. As a student with one to two patients, I have had the time to sit and talk with them. I was not in a rush to get out of the patient's room as soon as my work there was finished. I saw the people I cared for as more than just patients.
On the Medical-Surgical unit, I gave one patient a back massage, another a foot massage. In OB, I spoke calmly with new moms and suggested interventions that none of the other nurses had mentioned to them. I colored with pediatric patients and played games with them while they awaited their operations. Most recently, I sat and spoke with patients and their families about the course of their illness. This required speaking calmly and responding thoughtfully, answering questions, and showing them that I genuinely cared about the health care that they were going to receive from me.
I have found that the nurses I have worked with all have good intentions, but they do not have the time that these thoughtful gestures require. Being a member of Americorps has helped teach me the type of nurse I want to be after I graduate. I want to be the type of nurse that I have been as a student: one who has had the time and availability to care for the people in the hospital as more than just patients. I got into this nursing program because I wanted to provide genuine care to people who were in need, and I am going to be the nurse who does just that.

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