Her Story
About Heather
My career in healthcare spans 20 years, though my path has been anything but traditional. I started at the very beginning - in a chart room, not really knowing what I wanted to do, just seeing all the doctors in the back. From there, I moved to customer service in the appointment center, then to scheduling, gradually seeing more of the healthcare world. That's when I knew I wanted to be a nurse. I started going to school one class at a time because I had two kids and didn't want to overwhelm myself. I kept taking classes until I earned my master's degree in nursing. I've been a nurse for about 4 years - I started my nursing career very late in life, but the experience I gained through my journey gave me a whole perspective, a full circle of what the healthcare field is all about. Now, I serve as the manager of the administration office at Kaiser Permanente, where I've been for a year. My key responsibilities include managing staff, handling call-offs, scheduling, payroll, making sure the census and matrix are up to date, doing quarterly reports, and attending many meetings about workflow. I work with managers across the whole hospital to make sure they're aware of upcoming things like flu seasons so we can staff well.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Heather
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The greatest piece of advice I've been given is to not do anything for money - you want to do it for a purpose, and always treat everyone the same. Also, a company will be there, but you want to do things for people. So you want to make sure the intentions are for people, and not for a company, because companies will come and go. When your intentions are set right, then you will lead down the path of your purpose. And I believe in purpose wholeheartedly, because I believe in doing something that you love and not something for a dollar.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to understand the background, and understand when you go into the hospital or healthcare field that people are not coming in happy - they're coming in with a problem. The majority of the times, it's not a happy thing. They're coming in sick, they're coming in for anxiety to get results or to figure out what's going on. So you have to be a little bit more sensitive, you have to empathize a little bit more. Those are the key things - you want to know culture, and you want to make sure that you're sympathizing and empathizing to the fact that this is not the majority of a happy field. If they come in with an attitude, remember everything that they have going on - they had to call off of work to come to a place that they don't want to go.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenges would be the things that I'm not able to fix or help. You know, nurses are educators, so with that being said, we can only educate amongst certain things. Sometimes when people come in and they're having problems, and you want to help out the best you can, but you can only do so much to educate. You want so bad to just grab their body and go outside and work out, or eat right, and it's very hard to see those types of things happen, because you want to try to take control, but it's something that I can't control. I can only educate and give my knowledge, and because I'm such a fixer and I want to help so bad, sometimes me knowing that certain things aren't going right, it just makes me sad.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I value my time, I value my health, I value other people's time and health, and I value structure and organization. I want to make sure that everyone is educated in every aspect of the scope of whatever that they have. I believe that no question is a silly question - I just want to make sure that everyone is understanding, and if you don't get it, then I can teach you a different way. If you don't get it, I could try another approach. Let's make sure that you get it. I want to make sure people really understand what's going on and the whole scope of everything. So, education is very important to me, and time and organization is very important.
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