LaTanya (Latanya Bruton) Sanusi

I attribute my success to living by one simple rule: treat people the way you want to be treated. When you go into any situation, I don't look at people based on what they did or where they came from. I've met a whole bunch of different people in my nursing career, some good, some bad, and I've learned that every person is different. The approach that you have with each person, combined with just common decency, is what makes the difference. When I worked in corrections for a couple of years, people would ask me all the time, 'How do you do that job?' And my answer was always, 'I'm a nurse, that's how I do the job.' I don't look at what they did or why they're there because it has nothing to do with the job that I am to do. You can easily be on the other side of that table, or sitting on the table, so treating people the way you want to be treated is what has guided my success.

The best career advice I've ever received is probably the one that everybody hears the most, and it's 'do what you love.' That advice has stuck with me throughout my entire career and has guided my decisions, including my recent move into a different aspect of nursing with my drug testing business.

My advice to young women entering nursing is that it's not easy. It's not an easy job. I've trained a lot of people, and I tell them that nursing is never a job that you're going to be able to just leave at work. You're never going to be able to leave it at work. In any aspect of nursing, even what I do now, you're always wondering, 'Okay, did I do this? Did I do that? Did I tell them this? Oh, I should have said that?' So it's always something that you feel like you missed or you could have done better. It's not one of those jobs that you can leave, so just prepare that it's not going to be a day that you leave work and you're able to just cut off from nursing. You're a nurse 24-7. I go in a grocery store, I'm a nurse, because if something happens, I am. My nephew, when he was younger, played t-ball, and one of the kids had fallen, and he yelled back, 'My TT's a nurse,' and it was just like, 'Oh my god, please don't do that, because I don't want to be a nurse today.' My mom and I went on vacation about 5 years ago, and we're waiting to board the ship, and a lady passes out. Of course, my mom had already told somebody else that I was a nurse, and this lady turned around and said, 'This lady's a nurse,' and so I'm thinking, 'I'm on vacation, I'm not supposed to be working,' but I had to address the situation. So that's the advice I would give them: prepare to not leave it at work. I mean, it's a 24-hour job.

In nursing in general, the biggest challenge is the shortage. There are more patients than nurses, and there's just not enough of us. But that shortage also creates a great opportunity to become a nurse, because there's such a need. In the DOT drug testing sector specifically, I would say the biggest challenge is staying compliant and not being easily deterred to do what's not ethically correct. Compliance in this sector is critical. As for opportunities in nursing overall, there are always other parts of nursing to explore. I kind of veered away from bedside and wanted to get into a different part of it, and there are so many other fields and facets of nursing. One thing I tell people when I train them is don't get complacent in one field of nursing, because there's so many opportunities to branch into other areas. I think nursing is always evolving, and it's always good to have new eyes, because what I was taught 20 years ago is probably not the same information that they're being taught today. There are the basics, but there's also new stuff, new medicines, new treatments. I want to step aside and let the younger people do their thing and let the newbies come in and do their thing.

The most important value to me in both my work and personal life is to treat people the way you want to be treated. It can easily be you on the other side of that table, or sitting on the table. I worked in corrections for a couple of years when I first started nursing, and people ask all the time, 'How do you do that job? How do you do that job?' And I'm a nurse, that's how I do the job. I don't look at what they did or why they're there. It has nothing to do with the job that I am to do. So treating people the way you want to be treated is the foundation of everything I do.