Elaina Turner, MSN, RN, CNOR, T-CSCT

I attribute my success to a deep passion for patient advocacy that was first sparked at the age of 16 when I witnessed my grandmother, who had MS and was in a wheelchair, develop a bedsore during a brief stay at an assisted living facility while my grandfather recovered from neck surgery. That early experience made me say 'not anymore, nobody else's grandma, not while I'm alive,' and it inspired my commitment to ensuring patients receive safe, respectful, and high-quality care throughout their healthcare journey. I was incredibly fortunate to have exceptional mentorship early in my career. During my final semester of nursing school, I completed an internship in surgery, which ultimately led me to specialize in the surgical field. My director at the time, Colleen Keith, told me 'however far you want to go with this, that's how far we'll let you take it. Whatever you want to learn, we'll help you learn it. Whatever you want to go, if you want to go to a conference, we'll send you to it,' and they absolutely did, over and over and over again. I had just the best director and VP of surgical services that you could have ever asked for. The moment I went to surgery, I instantly said 'this is what I'm supposed to do with my life,' and I've been in it ever since. I'm driven by a strong focus on creating a patient-centered environment where every patient is treated with respect, like it's your mother on the table. I believe that when chronic pain patients come to us, they're looking for a solution, not medications, and they are 100% there to fix what is causing their problem. I expect my staff to come in with zero judgment in their heart or mind and to treat every patient and co-worker with respect. I also believe strongly in validation through certification and accreditation because while I can say I'm great all day long, if somebody else says 'hey, you're pretty great,' then it makes you feel better. A very smart man told me that if you can do what you love to do, and you do it for free, then you found the right career, and obviously I found the right career.

The best career advice I ever received came from my director, Colleen Keith, who told me early in my journey that 'however far you want to go with this, that's how far we'll let you take it. Whatever you want to learn, we'll help you learn it. Whatever you want to go, if you want to go to a conference, we'll send you to it,' and they absolutely did, over and over and over again. She said there is always room to grow in surgery, and that no matter how far I wanted to advance, I would be supported along the way. I was also told by a very smart man that if you can do what you love to do, and you do it for free, then you found the right career, and obviously I found the right career. That guidance helped me stay focused, motivated, and committed to long-term professional growth, and it gave me the confidence to pursue opportunities in surgical settings and continuously expand my skills within that field.

I would advise young women entering the nursing and surgical leadership field to first and foremost make sure they have the experience under their belt, because a leader, specifically in surgery, has to know how to operate within the realm of your license and the scope of your practice to get that respect from your employees. When you go in and you don't know what they do, you don't have any idea how to do their job, it's very difficult to gain their respect when you're telling them how to do their job that you don't know how to do. So first and foremost, make sure you have the experience to say 'look, I'm not just gonna talk the talk, but I can walk the walk. You put me in a circulator role, a scrub role, put me in SPD, it doesn't matter where you put me, I can function as long as it's within the scope of my practice.' But I would also say to any young woman who wants to be a leader, you do not have to lay down and be a doormat. You are allowed to have your own boundaries. You don't have to say yes to everything. Just because somebody who may be above you, or maybe is a man, or maybe has more experience than you, if they don't know what you're doing, they should not be asking you to do things you're not comfortable to do, they should not be telling you how to do your job. I would urge them to advocate for themselves as wholeheartedly as they do for their patients. And make sure that they're people people, because by far, the hardest part of any leader's job is managing people. If you can't manage people, if you aren't a people person, maybe management is not necessarily the way to go, because you're going to get frustrated and so are they.

I think the biggest challenge in my field right now is that reimbursement rates for surgery centers, especially independently owned, self-standing surgery centers that are not part of a gigantic surgery center group, are declining. They just don't have that backing that a huge group does, and so they're kind of a dying breed, but they are absolutely magnificent to work at, and you have total control over your culture, you have total control over your patient satisfaction, and what you'll bring in there. Just like with everything else, costs are going up for everybody, not just surgery centers, but everybody. We're not getting raises that can compete with inflation, just like in surgery centers, Medicare's not giving you an inflated rate just because your supplies are going up or something. So I think that's probably the biggest problem for surgery centers. To mitigate that, you just have to make sure your cost comparison, that you're not wasting, that we're very efficient in how we schedule people. You know, we only use an anesthesia provider on days that we have to have an anesthesia provider. The rest of the time we get creative and do some other things. Despite these challenges, there is an opportunity to improve efficiency and advocate for sustainable financial models that support quality patient care while maintaining the independence and culture that make these centers special.

The values most important in my work and personal life are time with family, empathy, compassion, respect, a nonjudgmental mindset, and patient advocacy. Spending quality time with my family is absolutely huge for me. When I was at the hospital, I was required to work call, and it got to the point where I was spending 80, 90, 100 hours a week away from my family and missing everything. I have to be able to spend time with my children because I won't get that back. In my work, we take care of a lot of chronic pain patients, and those patients have a bit of a stigma in the medical world sometimes. It is my absolute belief that when they come to us, they're looking for a solution, not medications, and they are 100% there to fix what is causing their problem. If you can't come in without zero judgment in your heart or mind, this is not the place for you. I want every patient treated with respect, like it's your mother on the table, and I want your co-workers treated with respect. For the past five years, I have participated in annual medical mission trips to Guatemala with the Faith in Practice nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas, where we do total joint replacements and upper extremity surgeries on patients that would otherwise not be able to have those procedures done. I am super humbled and proud to be a part of that crew that goes back every year, and it's got a gigantic place in my heart. Outside of work and mission trips, I am a car girl and have always been a car girl. I'm the treasurer of our Jeep club, which is a nonprofit organization, and we raise money for different charitable causes. Just taking the top off the car and driving will fill my bucket right back up, and getting to spend time on something as simple as an old engine and hanging out with my son is enough to make me forget about any stress that happens.