Vital Views

Joe Gaccione 0:02
Welcome to Vital Views, podcast for UNLV School of Nursing. I'm Joe Gaccione, communications director for the School of Nursing. You're probably wondering why a communications guy is talking to you about nursing. Fair point. I'm not a nurse, but I know plenty of nurses who are willing to share their expertise from all walks of life. My goal is to hopefully help facilitate their knowledge to try and make it less in the weeds and more palatable for general audiences while retaining the importance of what these health pros are talking about. These nursing stories focus on work on the front lines, in the classrooms, in the lab, wherever our nurses are making a difference. We're all getting a front row seat to essential health information through the lens of a nurse's vital views. There are 30 students currently in UNLV Nursing's accelerated second degree bachelor in nursing program. It's a long name, but this program gives non-traditional students a chance to earn an undergraduate degree in nursing if they already have a bachelor's in another field. This is a more intense track than a traditional bachelor's in nursing program, but it offers an opportunity for people who are interested in nursing to add a new chapter to their lives in order to scratch that itch of helping others. Joining us today is current second degree student, Keila Haynes. She previously earned her bachelor's degree in business administration from Western Michigan University. So Keila, thanks again for being on the show today and talking with us. Your first career was in business and sales. Can you talk about how you started in that field?

Keila Haynes 1:32
Yeah, so I started as an intern in my last semester, senior year in college at Western. And I really just worked my way up from there. I didn’t really try out other internships. I loved the company, the experience, so I just got hired in right after that.

Joe Gaccione 1:54
And then what made you transition into nursing?

Keila Haynes 1:56
Actually, it was a bit of an ominous discovery for me. Me and two of my friends were coming back to my house after getting dinner one evening, and we were on the highway headed home and all of a sudden there were lights coming at us, vehicle going down the opposite end of the highway. We swerved out of the way, thankfully. What we saw in front of us was two motorcyclists that were down. And so, my friends and I, we just, instinct, ran over to help. Unfortunately, one of the gentlemen, his, I mean, he was just covered in blood. Severed leg, fingers, pretty bad situation. And that accident actually caused a ripple effect on the other side of the highway of another accident. So the three of us are seeing this all happen at once, and we're really just running around trying to help and pull towels from the car. Other people were stopping and we asked them for help too. My friend called 911 and we ended up using one of my friend's belts as a tourniquet for his leg until we waited and until the ambulance got there and was assisting with both accidents at that point. And it was instant. I mean, we were there for a couple of hours, but I felt something I had never really felt before. It kind of just felt like falling in love, and I just thought I could do this every day for the rest of my life. The following month I just hopped into EMT school just to get my feet wet and just have a starting point to explore the medical field. So I don't, I don't really tell people that I, I picked a career change. I feel as though that the career actually picked me.

Joe Gaccione 4:06
And in that moment, you know, your adrenaline's racing, you're trying to figure out what to do. I mean, you don't have that, that medical experience that you would have even now, I would think, and so you're just trying to do the best you can, but even just that effort, just that will to say, “We have to at least try, we're not just gonna drive away and just let this, let this resolve itself.” You have to try and do something.

Keila Haynes 4:28
Right, right. Well, and I think that's where the previous skillset actually does come into this field is that my two other friends, we all worked for the same company, so we were all in sales, and we're used to working under a lot of pressure very like high stakes kind of a career choice. And we really just stayed calm and we had great communication skills amongst the cop that came to the scene, someone else who came to help. We just coordinated with people really well, because that was something that we could bring to the table. And we got lucky because one of my friends actually had watched, was watching some just medical TV show and they had talked about tourniquets at one point and really how we kind of carried it out.

Joe Gaccione 5:24
What luck.

Keila Haynes 5:25
Yeah. And he lived, so we got to, actually we found him weeks later and went and visited in the hospital. It was just very, I don't wanna say it was an incredible experience because obviously not for that person, but it was quite an experience for sure.

Joe Gaccione 5:47
If anything, maybe reaffirming that, this feeling that you had was not just a fleeting moment, like there was something, some substance to this, right? So then how did you hear about UNLV's program?

Keila Haynes 6:01
I searched everywhere over the U.S.. I’m originally from Michigan, spent a large portion of my career in Dallas, I'm in California currently, moving to Las Vegas for the remaining of the program, so I was willing to move anywhere to make the dream come true. And so I just Googled a very, very long time and spoke with a lot of schools, did a lot of research, and in the middle of the research is actually when UNLV came up with the program. So, when I first started to, to look at the career change, I don't believe the program had quite existed yet.

Joe Gaccione 6:44
And how has it been so far since you've been in the program? As, as of this recording, you've been in for several months at least.

Keila Haynes 6:52
Well, I'm surviving. It's been really just a whirlwind. You are definitely drinking from a firehouse, but I kind of love that. I'm used to that. Just kind of throw it all at me and let's go. And really it just keeps progressing, so we've been able to work remote, which has been convenient for the first part of the program, and since some of us are still out of state, and just kind of, I think, also give us a, a readjustment just really even coming out of the COVID years, it's been a nice adjustment for that. And then we will be in person here soon and starting clinicals. And I'm very excited to, to see that, that piece of it as well.

Joe Gaccione 7:41
Is that gonna be your first time in clinicals since you started?

Keila Haynes 7:44
It will be, yes. The ABSN program, I believe, is on a different type of clinical schedule than the traditional route.

Joe Gaccione 7:53
I wanted to, to backtrack, going back to your previous career. Was it, was it easy even with this new feeling of, “I, I think this is something I want to do, I want to, I want to switch gears and try a new, a new field,” was it easy like that to make a decision and say, “I've had this education, it served me well for the time, but now I have a new calling,” or was it a, was it a tougher transition to just up and go to, to healthcare?”

Keila Haynes 8:22
No, it felt like a calling for me, but I would say the difficult pieces of the transition came more later, I would say, just because of the pandemic had obviously changed lives and it shut the program down, you know, for over a year. So I would say the problems came a little bit more after than in the beginning. And I also don't, maybe for me personally than maybe other people in the program, but I don't look at it as much as a complete career change. I really look at it as a career addition and trying to really bridge the gap between the two because there’s so many just technological advancements coming out in the medical industry. That's really, really exciting. And so, I was in tech sales and I just find that type of progression to be really exciting to see. And I think that there's a way to kind of marry the two together down the road.

Joe Gaccione 9:26
In that moment with the, with the, the crash victim, you had that experience already of being in high pressure situations.and you knew how to relax, compose yourself, and, and do what you had to do. Are there other skills that you've been able to transfer from business to nursing, maybe like organizational skills?

Keila Haynes 9:45
Yeah, definitely. I would say the number one skill is going to be people skills, social psychology, human psychology, knowing how to manage your time, communicate, understanding different people's personality types and how to communicate with those personality types and having a true understanding and, and really a mindset of “What do people value?”. And so for example, when we've been learning about the subjective data and going into getting the patient's history, there's been examples of patients who have lied on some of the things that they're reporting, maybe because they're embarrassed. As a nurse, it is, it's part of your job to build rapport and figure out ways to build trust with people, and if you know how to do that already going into nursing, I think you have a step up because you're, you're dealing with people all day and you're gonna have resistance, some more than others, and learning how to manage that even managing conflict I think really is the number one that goes into it. But then of course there's just all the soft skills. Just when you've already been in another career, you know yourself, you know how you work best, you have your regimens down already, so I think there's a little bit less of a learning curve on the soft skills and managing yourself.

Joe Gaccione 11:19
And also too, we've had nurses that go on to be entrepreneurs and they say it’s, you know, a whole other game to play when you're trying to learn how to be a business person, and it almost feels like you kind of have that, that groundwork laid. If you, if that's the path you want it to go, you at least have some familiarity in that already.

Keila Haynes 11:39
Yes. And that, that is actually one of my dreams, I hope that this can turn into one day, is, is being a “nursepreneur” and even maybe one day getting to work just for a company that's progressing in medical technology and kind of help with really the direction that it goes in. I think that'd be exciting too.

Joe Gaccione 12:00
Be part of the future. You talked before about building rapport. I'm curious how it is interacting with your cohort, because you're all coming from a unique place. You're all non-traditional students, you all have extensive careers in other areas, in fact, I know at least one person came from agriculture, and that, that always stood out when I heard his story. I thought, “Wow. How did you go from that to nursing?” Do you get to interact a lot with your cohort members? Do you get to learn about each other?

Keila Haynes 12:33
I've taken the opportunity to do so. We've had our group chat that it seems like the majority of people participate in, and I'm excited to start being able to like, work with everybody in person and really put like, names to faces. Even though we've met once, you're not seeing everybody. So that'll be coming up soon. And I think we've done a great job at building rapport like the best that you can when everybody is remote. And so I think it's, it's gonna be even better when we're in person.

Joe Gaccione 13:07
For anyone who is interested in going into a new field, trying their hand at a different career, it's easier said than done, I think, to say, “Yeah, just go ahead and do it. Just try it,” because there, you know, there are logistical things you have to figure out, maybe financial situations, but if you had a piece of advice for someone who might be on the fence, not necessarily just for nursing, but maybe another field, what would it be for them?

Keila Haynes 13:33
I would say the biggest piece of advice, it would definitely depend on what the, their situation is. So, I think the biggest piece is to really sit down and think about what your “why” is and spend just a couple days digging deeper. Really ask yourself deeper and deeper, like, “Why do I want to do this?” because if you already have a bachelor's, if you've already had a past career, it is a lot to give up and for, so for me, I, I'm taking quite a big pay cut to become an RN, and so I had to really, really love what I'm gonna be doing in order to do that. And so, I had taken a moment to kind of work some lower paying jobs just to get the actual field experience and be around nurses and see what they're doing on a day-to-day basis rather than just reading about it in a, a textbook or, or theory in class. And so, I would just say make sure it's worth it. It's, it's not something I would tell everybody to do. Even if you're unhappy with your job, there's so many other options you can do before doing a complete career change. You're not gonna get as much, you know, grants or even there's scholarships you can't apply for anymore because one of the, like they dequalify you if you have a previous bachelor's. So make sure you know your why and when you feel like you just, you couldn't do anything else, that that's what you want to do, then I'd say that's when you go for it.

Joe Gaccione 15:25
Well, that is all the time we have. Keila, thank you so much for calling in.

Keila Haynes 15:28
Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Joe Gaccione 15:31
Thanks for listening out there. Hope everyone has a great day.