April 30th is the deadline for applying for a $4,000 scholarship offered by the Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital and the MDMH Staff. Such a grant could be considered a modest contribution to the continuing education of a local high school graduate headed out into the wide world, or it could be considered a life changing event.
For Melissa Ireland, BSN, RN, CNOR, Surgery Nurse at Marcus Daly, it was both. It was a crucial peg in the advancement of her career and it was a life changing event. For the hospital, it turned out to be an investment in a local individual that grew in magnitude immensely over the years and eventually returned home to roost. This not only benefits the hospital, it benefits the whole community.
After graduating from high school, Ireland wanted to go to nursing school but it was difficult to get into the program in Missoula.
“I was a single mom with two kids,” said Ireland. “I wanted to go to school right away.” As a result, she ended up in Twin Falls, Idaho. The criteria there favored single moms. But it wasn’t an easy transition.
“I cried,” said Ireland. Fraught with doubt about her own abilities, she felt alone. But she wasn’t. She said that when she arrived at the school, she found lots of support.
“The school gave me a sense of purpose, something I could commit to,” she said, “something I could put my energy into and feel a sense of accomplishment. I just can’t go off and do a job on my own, I’m not that type. I like being part of a team with a shared purpose.”
“Our purpose is to heal,” she said. “It is to accomplish for the patient whatever we can do to bring quality of life. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.”
After working for about 11 years as a surgical technician, and also getting remarried, Ireland still felt the need to learn more and do more and, with a little help and a lot of urging from her friends, decided to go back to school. Still finding Missoula a hard place to get into, she applied and was accepted into a program at the Confederated Salish Kootenai College.
It was tough. She said she owes a great deal of her success there to her husband, the “love of her life,” who encouraged her and supported her as she took up student life in the college dormitory while he took care of home base and the two kids while holding down his own job. She was able to find part time work at the local hospital.
Ireland eventually got her nursing credentials at the CSKC and the $4,000 grant she received was important but even more important was the emotional support that came along with it, she said.
“They put their trust in me,” she said. “They were investing in me.” She said it gave her a feeling of confidence in herself and the desire to live up to that trust.
Ireland continues to push forward her career and, after a strenuous two-year study program culminating in rigorous testing, she is now the only Certified Operating Room Nurse on staff at the hospital. But she’s not stopping there. In fact, with a good team on her side there is probably not much chance of stopping anything this woman wants to do. So, she has recently become a Certified Surgery Educator as well and works to get other nurses certified.
“Anyone with the proper education can work in surgery,” said Ireland, “but to be successful takes something special. You have to be confident. You have to act quickly. You have to depend on the person next to you. You have to be thinking seven steps ahead.” She said “readiness” was what it was all about.
Ireland is very thankful for the personal help that she has received along the way in fashioning her career, from husband, friends, and colleagues, and wants to do what she can to help others.
She very much encourages anyone with a real desire to get into health care or nursing to apply for grants like the one being offered by the hospital. She said other grants are available as well and she applied for a lot of them. She got one from the Soroptimists and they still give out such grants. Ireland’s advice is to apply often and apply repeatedly, “until they tell you to stop,” she said.
She firmly believes that if a person really wants to go to school they will find a way if they just don’t quit trying. She said finances can be a serious obstacle, “but it can also become an excuse. If you let the finances stop you, then you really didn’t want to do it. If you do, you won’t let anything get in your way.”
What she mentioned throughout her account and what she circled back to in the end was the emphasis on team work and how a good team improves every individual’s performance.
“You have to know who you are working with in surgery, what their mind set is, how they behave around trauma. You need to know how they handle the very sad times and the very joyous situations that occur in surgery,” she said. “You have to be able to communicate well with doctors while performing vital tasks.”
She said the idea that your surgical team is, in a way, your family is true in the sense that you spend almost as much time with them as you do with your family. You grow to be very close.
“We are so hard on each other at times, but we are also the first to stand up and defend each other,” she said, “like siblings. It sounds like a commercial, but it is true.”
Ireland said that her team members were all growing emotionally and intellectually, always learning from mistakes and from other people’s experiences. She said they are all very excited about moving into the new Operating Room when construction is finished. She said having such a facility will attract more doctors, more specialists, and create a need for more surgical assistants and nurses. She is ready to provide the kind of certification training that that can help produce the most qualified staff. She said the aim was when they leave the certification program that these people have the confidence and the abilities to succeed in their area of expertise.