Oral History Program Hope Shipley Welch Interviewed by Marci Farr 11 October 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Hope Shipley Welch Interviewed by Marci Farr 11 October 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The St. Benedict’s School of Nursing was founded in 1947 by the Sisters of Mount Benedict. The school operated from April 1947 to 1968. Over the forty-one year period, the school had 605 students and 357 graduates. In 1966, the program became the basis for Weber State College’s Practical Nursing Program. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the graduates and to add to the history of nursing education in Ogden. The interviews focus on their training, religion, and experiences working with doctors, nurses, nuns, and patients at St. Benedict’s Hospital. This project received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State History. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Hope Shipley Welch, an oral history by Marci Farr, 11 October 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Hope Shipley Welch Graduation Photo Class of 1963 Hope Shipley Welch October 11, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Hope Shipley Welch, conducted by Marci Farr and Melissa Johnson, on October 11, 2010. In this interview, Hope discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr, and we’re interviewing Hope Welch. She graduated from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1963. We’re interviewing her at her home in North Salt Lake; it’s October 11, 2010. Tell us a little bit about your family, about where you grew up and where you attended school. HW: I grew up, actually, in Roy until I was nine, then we moved to Corinne, which is west of Brigham City. My mother died when I was three, so I was raised by a stepmother and my father. There is one full brother, no other siblings. I went to Corinne Elementary, and then to Box Elder High. At the time I went to Box Elder High there was a junior division and a senior division. It was all in one school, and I graduated in 1960. MF: In high school, did you know you wanted to be a nurse? What made you decide to become a nurse? HW: I cannot tell you when I started wanting to be a nurse; it was when I was very, very young. I always wanted to be a nurse. I’ve thought back and wondered what influenced that. My mother died in an auto accident when I was three, so I’m thinking maybe that triggered something, but I always wanted to be a nurse. MF: When you were in high school, what classes did you take? 2 HW: There was nothing told to us about what specifically you had to take. We went in; (the girl that eventually became my roommate in nurses’ training), we went to Box Elder’s counselor, and he says, “You don’t want to go on to college. You just want to go find a husband and get married.” So we were asking for schools of nursing, and he says, “Well, here’s a little bit of literature.” St. Benedict’s happened to be one of them. I had taken Latin, hearing from somewhere that I should take Latin, and we (Suzy and I) were taking chemistry as seniors; we knew that probably was a given. Other than that, I wasn’t told anything. I’d had anatomy and physiology from the high school, but there was not much for girls then at our high school. There was no promotion of, you should go on. Even my parents felt girls should not go on to college. My dad especially; they just get married six months out of high school. My stepmother, actually, who stated that she hated Mormons and Catholics, is the one who said, “Let her go – she’ll not make it, but let her go.” So that’s why I got into St. Benedict’s. I think she (Stepmom) was very rigid, and the sisters had a rigid program. They kept track of their girls very carefully. MF: They did. They made sure you did what you were told to do. HW: Yes. MF: So was this your first time away from home, when you entered training? HW: Yes. MF: Tell us a little bit about when you first got there. How was that, what were your impressions? 3 HW: That’s pretty scary. Mainly because I did come from a home – my parents ran a pool hall, but I was raised LDS. My stepmother was extremely rigid (i.e. bouffant slips under dresses and skirts, wearing shorts). I had rules about how late to go out, whom I could go with, how old – they could be, two years older maybe. Very rigid. We (my brother and I) could not eat between meals. So when I got to St. Benedict’s, I knew it was going to be rigid, and that’s one of the reasons she let me go. So the first – well, we actually tested to get in in January of 1960. After the testing, there were 130 girls. After the testing was finished, we went into the nurses’ home, and they took us around, some of the current students, and they said, “If you’re not smoking and drinking now, you will be in a year, because we’re going to party.” I was LDS, and my parents ran a pool hall; the last thing I wanted to do – they (my parents) drank, I didn’t want to drink – that scared me. So that first day was a little scary. My roommate was not LDS, but she was the friend from high school. So we had each other. It was scary, but it was a controlled environment. You lived here, and you went to school here; you went to school in the basement, and you went to work, when you started nursing, over in the hospital. It was very controlled. MF: Who was your roommate? What was her name? HW: Her name was Suzanne Barker. She died in 1975. But she was from Box Elder, also. MF: Were you roommates with her the whole time? HW: Yes. We became like sisters. MF: You would have to be, relying on each other for all the stuff you went through. 4 HW: We were quite separate – different – but by the time we finished, my extremes had come her way, and her extremes had come my way – we were very good together. MF: So you balanced out. HW: We did. MF: That’s good. Do you have any fun stories about your roommate or classmates that you remember about when you were in training? Anything that stands out in your mind? HW: You know, when I went to the Sisters new monastery open house, whoever was there from Weber State asking for the history said, “I’ll bet you have stories about partying and going out.” There was some of that, but a lot of our classmates did not do that. We had a laundry chute – we had to stay, as freshmen, on the second floor, on the west and north part of the nurses’ home. Then the sisters’ convent was on the east side. You went through a swinging door, and there were the sisters. So they were there for the freshmen to be kind of a guide. But this chute was there, where you put your laundry down, and the girls would slide down it. I have – one of the pictures is my roommate, who would get in there. She was the party girl. She didn’t go out and party and go on wild parties, but she just was mischievous. I was the studious person. I went to bed at nine o’clock at night, and I got up at four to study. They would stay up ‘till midnight and talk and laugh. One night I got up in the morning, at four, and I opened the door; I didn’t turn any lights on. I opened the door, and somebody had fashioned a brown paper bag into what looked like a man’s arm. They had taped it to the top. 5 I opened that door and I screamed, and I literally jumped from the door to the bed on the opposite side, just screaming. At one of the recent get-togethers, well, in the last few years, the girl who was responsible said she just laughed. Another time – have you heard about Mrs. Chase? MF: Your dummy? Yes. Tell us about Mrs. Chase. HW: Mrs. Chase, they dressed, and they put in one of the bathroom stalls, with her feet out on the floor. I got up, and I thought, there’s a dead woman in here. They heard me then, and they thought that was funny. One time we had chemistry from Mr. Gray at Weber State, he was the head of the chemistry department at Weber State. He was probably the most dull teacher we ever had. We knew we were going to flunk. We were supposed to have one hour on Monday of class, and a two-hour lab, and then another hour of class on Wednesday, and he was just the driest person. He’d end up lecturing the whole time. So they dressed Mrs. Chase and put her in the front – our classroom was downstairs, and there’s a commode in there, a toilet that flushes, and then there’s beds, and the chairs are there. They dressed her up, put a scarf on her head, and propped her hand up under her chin. At the end of the three hours that he had been lecturing, and we didn’t get a break, Sister Berno, the director of the school of nursing, came in. She had a way of tipping her head; just this questioning look in her eyes. She said, “What’s this, girls?” I don’t know who said, this is the dummy. He said to her, “I wondered why she was so still the whole time.” Of course, the scarf and everything were in 6 the classroom. Sometimes they would flush the toilet during his lectures. Never during one of the sisters’ lectures. You never did anything with the sisters. MF: That is a good story. What do you think you remember most about the sisters, or which of the sisters stand out to you from training? HW: You know, they’re human. There were some you liked better than others. As I got older, I appreciated more of them. Sister Berno I liked; Sister Estelle was probably one of the top ones. She taught us anatomy and physiology, and she went on to become the hospital administrator. So we lost her as a teacher, but she was still there. Sister Rebecca taught us pharmacy, and we loved her. Effie Etcheverry was our clinical instructor on Orthopedics, and was a most pleasant instructor, and person. Sister Boniface was the dietitian, and she had coke-bottle glasses, you know? Her eyes would be just huge. She was slender, and she was the dietitian, and we had to have part of our rotation into the diet office, or work in the cafeteria. You can see I’m a little chunky; I wasn’t as chunky then as now, but I was a little chunky. So she would have me get menus. Fourth floor, no elevator. You’d get one menu, and you’d come down the stairs, hand her the menu, and she’d say, well, we need this other menu. So you’d run back up the stairs, and you only had a certain amount of time. I understand she eventually got lasik surgery. I think she might still be alive, and I thought, that would make a big difference for her. MF: In your perception of her. How funny. What were your favorite classes that you took? 7 HW: I enjoyed all of them. Did I do as well – chemistry was probably the worst, I didn’t do well in chemistry in high school either. MF: That’s a hard one. I think you either like it or you don’t. HW: My husband’s cousin became the Dean of Weber State’s chemistry department. He was telling me one day, when we were young; he said, “These nurses at Weber, they just don’t get enough chemistry.” I just kind of didn’t say anything and acted like that’s fine, because I probably would have flunked his class. MF: With the sisters, did you have social time with them outside of the hospital? HW: Yes. Well, out of the hospital… everything was in the hospital, practically, but we had parties frequently. Some of the pictures I have, show them – Sister Berno, I don’t know what the games were, but they’d go and see who could unpack a suitcase and dress – over their habits – with regular clothes, street clothes, and then they’d have to race back and get them off and put them back in the suitcase. We had parties. As Freshmen, we went up to Snow Basin for a picnic, around October of our first year, 1960. We went to Maddox's once as a class. MF: Did that help, as far as seeing them as more humanistic, instead of in their habit? That would be kind of intimidating, if you weren’t used to it. They were always in their habits. HW: You got used to the sisters. When you first walked in – I hadn’t been around Catholic sisters, but when I first walked in, they made you feel at home. They were rigid, there were some. Mary Gerald was over the second floor, medical floor, and I literally saw her take a small student and take her to the wall, lift her off the ground to tell her she should not do something with one of the patients, 8 and what it was, was to talk about medical conditions around the patient. You were not to do that. They were not to hear you. Yet, Sister Mary Gerald - I took care of a woman when I was a senior, and she had been in a coma, and they expected her to die. When she came out of her coma, she said to me while I was caring for her, that she was so mad at Sister Mary Gerald, because she came in one day with my best friend and told her I wasn’t going to make it through the night. She said, “I couldn’t even blink my eyes, but I could hear Sister Mary Gerald say that. I wanted to tell her, I’m going to make it. I just was so mad.” I thought, I have a feeling, where I’d seen Sister Mary Gerald with that student, bawling her out about not talking about a medical condition around where they the patient could hear, that she (Sr. Mary Gerald) did it for that purpose. You’ve got to fight to get out of this. MF: Absolutely. Wow. HW: We didn’t have IV antibiotics then, you know; this lady had serious infections and boils. They’d taken her to surgery to lance, and then she’d get another one. But she made it. MF: Kind of a never-ending battle, trying to keep these things under control, I’m sure. Was it kind of primitive, as far as the medicine? Is that the right word to say? HW: Primitive? My kids say I’m out of the cave era. MF: As far as the things that they had; things were just coming in, I think, as far as the drugs, the wonder drugs, and being able to help. HW: We had antibiotics. Antibiotics founded in ’42; we were there from ’60 to ’63. So they really were quite new. We gave shots right and left. People’s hips would be 9 so sore. I mean, you’d give penicillin, and that’s thick medication; potent to the skin. We’d give shots every six hours, to the same person, for maybe a week. People were in the hospital for a back problem, or if they had to be in traction and on the orthopedics ward and that might be – six weeks. I think back, what did they do, with jobs and money? You didn’t have insurance like you do today. MF: That’s true; that would be a challenge, that would be hard. They didn’t do IVs at that time, did they, as far as giving the medicine? Had they started doing that yet? HW: We did IVs, but it was sugar water (actually D5W or D10W), and lactated ringers. Nurses didn’t put medication in IV's. When I graduated in ’63, I took the first coronary care nurses’ course in Ogden in April 1968. Then we could start. When we had that course, we could start putting some IV medications in. MF: Wow. So that probably made a difference, too. HW: It made a big difference. But it was still restricted. I moved to Idaho and came back to Logan Regional; well, actually, they didn’t need nurses then, so I didn’t get in the hospital until 1989, and when I got back on the floor, everything was IV medication. That was a big adjustment. MF: I’m sure that would be. Do you remember any of the doctors that you worked with? Who were a few that were at the hospital? HW: There were a lot; they’re dying. Dr. Grua was a surgeon, Dr. Howe was a surgeon. Dr. Taylor, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Stirlund, Dr. Hurst, Dr. Merrill, Dr. Swindler. I ended up working for Dr. Swindler after I graduated. Dr. VanHook, the neurosurgeon. 10 MF: Connie’s husband. HW: Yes. MF: She’s… ’62? HW: Yes, ’62. MF: Make sure I keep my dates straight. Did they ever teach, or did you just do surgeries with them? HW: There were a couple of times they lectured, but not very often. We had OR rotation, and that was interesting. I won’t – there were some doctors you enjoyed being with more than others, but that was so on the floor too. There were some who would throw the instruments at anybody and everything. There was one in particular that everybody was scared of him. I’m short, and in OR, the first thing you learn is, this is the sterile field the front of you; on the back is not. You held retractors when you were assisting the doctors, and there was an intern who wore glasses with no lenses, so he could have the hearing aids. When we went into surgery, he was assisting this surgeon, and he took his glasses off so he couldn’t hear. This was the surgeon that was known to throw verbal barbs as well as all the instruments. He was doing abdominal surgery, and I was holding the retractors, and his elbow was right in my face; that’s contaminated, and I’m sterile. I’m holding and holding the retractors and trying to avoid the back of his arm, and my hands start shaking. One hand slipped, for just a second, but it slipped. He said to me something about, “You’ve had your vacation, get back to work,” and then he started hollering at this intern who had no hearing aids in, who just sat there and smiled. 11 MF: That’s a good story. We love to hear those. Tell us about if your classmates or your roommate had some time off - what are some things you would do? HW: We’d go downtown on the bus frequently. There was Fred M. Nye’s, and Auerbach’s, and those stores – JC Penney and things like that. We’d go down there and go to the store – frequently we went to Utah Noodle. That was a big – once in a while we had a class party, and we’d go down to Utah Noodle. In fact, I have pictures of our whole class there. MF: Which rotation was your favorite when you were rotating to each floor? The one you most enjoyed, the one you least enjoyed? HW: I enjoyed most of those, except pediatrics. I didn’t like pediatrics, but they scared us about pediatrics. That was in Denver, at the Children’s Hospital, and they told us that Katie Thompson would get us if nobody else did. MF: She was the military nurse, right? HW: Yes. MF: Okay. HW: I loved Hastings, the psych; some of them didn’t like that, but I had some good experiences there. I enjoyed most of – when I was there, I got into it and enjoyed it. MF: Did you like the fact that you were away? HW: At Denver Children’s, you mean? MF: Yes. HW: Yes, it was a very good learning experience. They were the largest children’s hospital west of the Mississippi, and they had people flying in from Mexico, and 12 all over. That was pretty huge, and we lived at the nurses’ home just across from the hospital; Tammen Hall. I’ve got pictures of the hall. From there, we were told - it was in a poorer district – not to go out, even in the day, without at least three of you. At night especially. This roommate of mine, she was there at the same time. Sometimes they would split us up; she and I weren’t in psych together, but we were at Denver Children’s. She was going through leaving her religion and becoming Catholic. She wanted to go to the cathedral, I think on Aurora Boulevard. Anyway, there’s a main boulevard in Denver, and the cathedral was there. It was about ten blocks away from the hospital. It was at night that the priest was available for catechism, to teach her, so she could become Catholic. Of course, I was LDS, and I wanted her to be LDS, but – that didn’t work. She wanted to go by herself, so I said, you can’t go alone. So the two of us went, in the night, in the dark. We had a couple of scary incidences. They’d lock all of the facility at Denver, and the only way you could get in was with a card identifying you. There was a police officer stationed in the emergency room the whole time. If you weren’t there at ten o’clock, they would not let you in. There were a couple who ended up in hotels because they did not get in, and then St. Benedict’s told us they’d kick us out, if that happened. There were a couple of girls who were affiliated with other schools, from other states; Idaho State, some from Iowa; two or three from there in the Denver area, and there were a couple from another state who went on blind dates, and when they 13 went in, the guys were drunk and beat up the police officer. They got – I don’t know what they got – at least, they had to leave, while we were there. MF: That’s crazy. So how many from the school would go at a time? HW: There were seven of us there from St Ben's at our affiliation; there might be something around that. There were thirty in our class, so what they would do is divide you; there would be some left at St. Benedict’s, there’d be some at Hastings, and some at Denver. Then we’d just rotate around. MF: That’s a good thing. What scary things happened in Denver? Did you have some run-ins with people in the street? HW: We’re on the seventh floor of the nursing home. Pretty safe, I would imagine. But one night – there was no air conditioning, and we were there March through June. One night this man was hollering, “Help me! They’re going to kill me! Help me!” I went to the window, and they were beating up on a guy, and they shoved him into a car and drove off. We didn’t have a phone on the floor, you’d have to go to the first floor to get the phone; I jumped into bed and just shivered. You know, that was so cowardly, but it scared me to death. When my roommate and I were walking to the cathedral and coming back, a lady was coming back – or she was dressed as a lady, I don’t know if she was. But she was swinging this big purse back and forth, and she’d swing it clear up and clear back, then clear up – she was coming for us, and all of a sudden, she made a ninety-degree turn. There were several churches on the corners, and she went up to the sign of the church, and she went up to there, and as we got up to her, she turned and started running to us. We just ran to the hospital emergency room. I don’t know. 14 Other than that; there were little things that scared you, but it was okay if you used the cautions they told you. Another one of the classmates we were with; she just died a year ago, but she and I went to the zoo, in the day. They had a very good zoo there. We met a young man, and he asked her out to a movie. So he drove us back to the nurses’ home, and she went with him – as she left, I thought, I don’t know where they’re going, I don’t know his name. You don’t have cell phones. A few years after we graduated, she said, “Hope, why did I do that? That was so stupid!” And I said, “Yeah, it was!” Because, especially in today’s world, with things that happen, it was terribly stupid. But it was even not good then. MF: That is a crazy story. MJ: Now, a lot of people that we’ve interviewed have talked about how the psychiatric experience – they hated it. So I’m curious what was so positive about it for you. HW: I don’t know. I don’t know if it was my background; my stepmother hated Mormons and Catholics, and she didn’t like me. I don’t know if it was part of that. I loved psychology. When we got there; there were some coming from Denver to Hastings, and three of us traveled from Ogden to there. We traveled by train, and one girl had packed fried chicken in a little bucket. There was no refrigeration, and we took two nights and most of three days to get there. We got there, and they told us, the cafeteria’s in the middle. It’s a three square mile hospital area, with buildings, and you have keys on a big ring to open and lock doors everywhere. It was night, or dark; it was about six o’clock in the evening, and we were going to go to the cafeteria, and there were three of us. We went down the 15 stairs; we were going by tunnel, because it was dark. I don’t know if the patients knew there were a bunch of new students there, but you heard people screaming. You didn’t know where it was coming from, because they had a lot of little hidden spaces. There was graffiti all over the walls; not always pleasant graffiti. So that was kind of scary, but pretty soon you got quite used to it. My first six weeks was on a chronic ward. There was a lady there that had been thirty-four years with post-partum depression, and there were others that were just as sad. That was a little harder. Then I went to a male admitting ward. The psychiatrist – how do I put this - he was a normal person. A lot of them were not. They had issues of their own, but he was normal. I watched the police bring guys in with straightjackets; they’d take them into his office, and within an hour or so, they’d walk out without the straightjacket. Most of the time we were just fine. It was a positive experience. I learned a lot about myself, about people; it was good. I enjoyed it. I know that my mother, my stepmother, said, one of the last letters before I came home, “Why don’t you stay there?” Because of the way I was writing. They told us, when we got there, you’ll wonder why you pick up the fork the way you do to eat. You know, you do start thinking like some of the patients. Why am I not in this facility -? because a lot of the people seem so normal. Why? I did well in psych, so. MF: Just trying to figure out the puzzle, why things work that way. HW: Why does somebody end up there, and I didn’t. MF: What’s the difference. 16 HW: Right. I had good nursing supervisors there, and I talked to the one assigned to me about that, and she’d tell me about strengths that people have, you know, that somewhere else you didn’t. I didn’t have a lot of reinforcement at home, but she said, somewhere else you’ve got reinforcement that helped. We all – there’s a line, and we all have our ups and downs. But she said, it’s when you get really out of control that you have the most problems. Most of us can have those ups and downs. There was a man who taught – I don’t remember exactly what the course was – but he was a minister of another church, and he would teach about psych. He had a good philosophy. What he said was, you look at God through the eyes of your father. I did love my father, very very much. So that was good for me to hear. I had a good feeling for religion. My mother, again, hated Mormons and Catholics, but my father was Mormon, and we were baptized – I was a Mormon. There were about seven of us in the class of thirty. Half of them were Catholics; the others were a multitude of religions. But we did very well. Our class, out of the 130 that tested, 36 started. By the first six months, we had lost six. Then we retained the rest, which was unusual for a class. Ours was the largest graduating class. MJ: I’m curious about the psych aspect, because my parents; I grew up in a facility, they ran an apartment complex that was kind of a halfway house for psychiatric patients. It’s interesting the things that you do learn about yourself, being around people dealing with those issues. I think my childhood was very interesting 17 because of it, but I learned a lot of compassion and empathy through the experience. HW: Yes. There but for the grace of God go I type of attitude. You know? I’d never thought of that before going there. You saw that most of the time, when they were on their medication, they were like you and I. There were situations that might be the straw on the camel’s back, but – I enjoyed psych. MF: When you were at St. Benedict’s, which did you like the most, as far as med/surg, OB… was there any that you liked in particular? HW: OB probably was my least favorite. I liked orthopedics, the medical, the surgical. When I worked, I worked more than twenty years in hospitals; I probably prefer medical, but I would float. MF: So it was probably good training that you had every aspect of the hospital. HW: Yes. I think the student nurses today don’t get the hospital training. I mean, they put us in – we started Labor Day of 1960, and by November of 1960, just before Thanksgiving, we were on the floor as nurses’ aides. MF: So was that before capping? HW: Oh, yes. MF: Okay; so they had you as aides. HW: We got capped the end of January. MF: Okay. Tell us a little bit about capping. Was that just the greatest day? HW: Oh, yes. We’d made it to capping, not completion. We had to recite the Nightingale code – I’m not saying that right – the Nightingale pledge. We had our 18 little lanterns that had the little lights in them, and we were given our cape, and capped, and I have pictures of that day. MF: So you weren’t guaranteed, but were you pretty much for certain once you got there, or did you still have to maintain your grades and everything? HW: You still had to maintain your grades. Now, the first six months that we were there; when we started on the floor, they would give us so many hours on the floor, then you came back to class. Then, after four o'clock, your classes were done, so you might go back. We had split shifts. You might work seven to eleven and then four to seven. However, you didn’t get off the floor at 11 a.m. or 7 p.m. They liked to give the student nurses the little extras to catch up. They passed a law, and I kept thinking I was going to go in and look at what that law was – it restricted student nurses, it was specifically for student nurses and that type of thing, where you couldn’t have classes and work more than forty-eight hours in a week. But technically, because you were only scheduled the amount of time the law allowed, so they were okay; it was just that actually you didn’t get off the floor when you were supposed to. MF: That’s how they kept you. HW: By the first year, by June after we started, we were doing charge nurse duties. MF: Wow. That’s amazing, to think, here you are nineteen years old, and you’re in charge of how many patients. . HW: That’s right. We were charge and medicine nurse. There could be about 25-30 patients, it depended. 19 MF: That’s a lot of responsibility; but look what it did for you, as far as being able to take on anything. HW: You got the floor experience before you got the RN title. When I came back to Logan Regional, they had the two-year Weber State program, and those girls just didn’t have that much time on the floor. So then they took the boards, passed, got their RN, and didn’t have that practical experience. I think we lose a lot of nurses following graduation. In fact, the University of Utah had the four-year program. As a senior, we saw several "U" graduates with their four-year program come. Some of them couldn’t start IVs. We had started them at the beginning of our senior year. They didn’t know how to empty what they called Gomco suctions. It’s an ancient machine now, but they didn’t know how to do those. We know – I had a friend who was a couple years older than I, from Box Elder, who graduated cum laude from the U, and came up to work and lasted one year as a nurse. She couldn’t last on the floor. She had the bookwork, but she didn’t have the practical. MF: That makes a difference; and I think the personal care, as far as being able to spend time with your patients. Because you had to; there weren’t the machines. You were the ones that were taking care of these patients. I think that makes a difference, the personal care. Because sometimes you don’t get that; it depends, but I think being able to take that time. HW: Well, the sisters taught holistic nursing. This person’s in for an appendectomy, but this is affecting that whole person, and you need to care for that whole 20 person. They really, I think, made that a big part of my nurses’ training. I loved that. MF: That’s true. Your whole body needs to be able to heal. HW: Well, and you put a man, the head of the household and the wage-earner in traction for six weeks, what an impact on the family. So you’re treating him, but also those family members. Yet they were rigid with visiting hours. It was something like two to three in the afternoon, and seven to eight; we, as part of student nurses or employees, were to say, “It’s time for you to leave.” Now, that’s changed to where they walk in any time. MF: That is interesting. What was probably your greatest challenge while you were in nurses’ training? HW: I don’t know. Once in a while I wouldn’t make the grade I wanted. Orthopedics was a little challenging for me, the class. I called mother then; I think I got a D on a test, and I didn’t do that that often. I called her then because of that test score. “I just need to quit.” But she said, “Oh, you’ve gone this far, you can make it. Just do it.” So I stayed there. I loved to study, which, when you’re in a dorm, is sometimes not the priority. Janice Hassell gave vocabulary quizzes; medical terminology. She gave something like 15-20 words at a time. One time there were so many who made so many errors, that she made those who had made errors write a sentence ten times using the word, to hand in the next day. I didn’t have any that I had to write. That made me not so popular that way. But we all got along together. I was the studious one, and I got teased, like I said with the arm and Mrs. Chase, but I was in offices every year, one of the student body 21 officers. I was the student body president as the senior; class secretary as a freshman, and student body secretary. I look back and I think, that’s probably because they didn’t want to do it. MF: Exactly. That’s good. Well, tell us a little bit about graduation and where it was held. HW: Okay – it was at the Catholic St. Joseph’s. Fantastic. I’ve got to show this to you. This my mother sent for, after graduation. This is what it looked like. MF: What a great picture. HW: This is our class; we all came in, we had roses, and we came in and sat in our assigned rows. Then they’d call our names, after they had the speaker and everything. They’d call our names, and we had to go up to the altar and genuflect. Our freshman year, the first year, we were expected to go to prayers every morning at seven, and classes started at eight. We recited the 23rd Psalm, and then other scriptures that changed. The 23rd Psalm was there the whole year. We were given a doily – I call it a doily, I don’t know the real term – and a little holder, and we had to put that on our head. We had to genuflect at the altar, and go and kneel on the benches, and recite this. Then we’d – at the beginning of the school year, we’d go to high Mass to begin the school year. I was thinking that – I must not have taken it out. There was an article that went with this picture in the Ogden Standard. So this is where she got this from. But you were supposed to genuflect at the altar at graduation, then go over to the Bishop- Bishop Federal, on the left of the altar and kneel down and kiss his ring. They did 22 tell us that if you didn’t feel good kissing the ring, you didn’t have to. We would bow our heads in reverence, but I didn’t have to kiss the ring. But it was exciting. MF: All your family was able to come? HW: My mother and dad; that’s it. MF: Did you have a reception afterward? HW: There was a reception in the basement of the cathedral, or the chapel. It’s a cathedral too, isn’t it? St. Joseph’s Cathedral. MF: I’ll have to check on that; I’m not sure, I’ve heard it both ways. HW: I have too. I’m trying to think; I’ve been in it a couple of times since. An aunt of mine passed away, and I went into it, and I thought, how small. It seemed so large when we graduated. MF: That’s interesting. What did you do after graduation? Did you stay with St. Benedict’s? HW: I went back to the nurses’ home. MF: Did you? HW: Yes. MF: Tell us a little bit about your nursing career after you graduated. HW: Sister Berno asked me to be one of the instructors when I graduated, because I was planning to go on to college and get a degree. In the interim, between the time the freshmen came on, or the new students came for the new school year, they (St. Benedict's Mother Superior) changed her. Sister Cassian (the new School Director) didn’t agree with that, but she kept me on as an instructor for freshman students when they got on the floor (or as a Clinical Instructor). I did 23 that for a year. I also worked as a float when I wasn’t with the students. Then I stayed on as a float; I took this intensive coronary care nursing. I have to back up; I worked for Dr. Swindler for a year, then came back and worked – Sister Danile, who is still at the monastery, was the pharmacist. She started a program called pharmacy nursing. We worked with her in the pharmacy, but we would deliver the medications on the floor. They don’t do that – I’ve never heard of it anywhere else. We cut known medical errors by eighty percent, she did, by having us do that. They went to the unit dose; most of the things were unit dose. The nurses on the floor only gave the PRN or pain medications. Then I took the first coronary care course that they offered in Ogden, one of my other classmates and I in April 1968 and there were, I think, about four of us from St. Benedict’s. We went over to the old Dee hospital and took that course. We learned CPR on a dog; live dogs. They took two dogs that were at the Humane center, that were going to be euthanized, and they’d wire them and shock their hearts to go into the different rhythms. We would have to bring them out. We’d have to intubate them; you don’t find that any more – they’d put a tube down, and that’s how we would breathe for the dog while somebody was doing CPR. We resuscitated – I think there were fourteen of us, and we just worked; there were three weeks that we went every day, and we worked on those dogs forever. They both survived. MF: Wow. That is good to know. HW: In fact, the man in the lab took them home, and one – he was going to use them as hunting dogs, but neither one of them; for some reason they would shy behind their legs. So that’s how – I worked then in the pharmacy as well as coronary 24 care. Then we moved to Brigham, and I commuted for a while, but Brigham had a small hospital – Cooley Memorial Hospital, not the one that’s there now. They needed a coronary care nurse. They had sent, by then, other nurses from there down for training; they were expanding this program. It was called IRMP – Intermountain Regional Medical Program – out of the U, was who was doing Coronary Care training. So I worked there. I had a new baby, and I said, “I can’t work that much.” They said, “Just come in for coronary care.” Well, you know, when they’re short on nurses, I went in for anything that was on call. The emergencies; you didn’t have ICUs and things like that. So I did that until the baby started having medical problems. One of the most interesting things, which I was very unprepared for. They called me from the hospital, because I wasn’t working as much, and they said, “Could you just do this commercial?” I said, “Sure, what is it?” They said, “We don’t know, but just meet them at the cafeteria at the south end of Brigham.” So I walk in in my dress – you didn’t wear pants, you wore a dress. My nylons, my white shoes, into this cafeteria, and there’s men there from Hollywood, going to do an Anheuser-Busch (they are the parent company of Budweiser Beer) commercial out at Little Mountain or Promontory Point. So I said, okay – so I get on a bus and go with twenty men out to Promontory Point. Isolated. They are bringing in four 2,400 pound sides of a beer can that they’re putting together with a helicopter. They say the top dog from the Vietnam War was coming in to fly this helicopter to put these sides together. Now, I had one little emergency bag. I was supposed to be there two days; it 25 ended up being four. I thought, what’s going to happen if one of those 2,400 pounds comes down onto a man? I realized that I had gotten myself into a little more industrial nursing than I had ever thought. We made it with just one man getting a laceration, sent him to Brigham to sew up. That was interesting. It made me realize; don’t step before you know. Then we moved to Montpelier, and they had a small hospital. I worked there; worked nursing home in Brigham for a year for a friend, a classmate, who was the director. I hated that, there. I hated it. I was always told you take care of your family. Went up to Bear Lake Hospital in Montpelier, and they built a nursing home on. It wasn’t always busy in the hospital, and not everybody wanted to work nursing home, so they’d send me there. I loved it, because it had changed. I realized people can’t take care of family with serious medical problems now; there’s so much medical that has gotten so much – I mean, people are living that died when we were in training. And ten, fifteen years later, these caretakers were destroying their health trying to care for their family that they felt guilty bringing to a nursing home. But I watched, and they had a lot of love at that nursing home, and I fell in love with those little old people. I guess because I was aging; I don’t know. Then we moved; my husband taught seminary, and we got moved around. So then we moved back to the Logan area, and they didn’t need nurses at Logan Regional Hospital. They had shut down two wings of the brand-new hospital. So I ended up working at Pepperidge Farm as the health coordinator. So that was another industrial nursing. So I certified as an EMT, because I was twenty 26 minutes away from the hospital on a good day. On a snowstorm, forty minutes or an hour away. That was interesting. Then I went back to the hospital and worked in Dayspring, with the drug and alcohol rehab. Then they shut the nursing part of that; they used techs. So they put me out on the floor, so I floated again; nights. I said, don’t send me to peds. The very first patient that I lost while I was caring for was a two-month old baby that was probably SIDS, but they didn’t have that term. This family had lost four. MF: Four babies? HW: That was the fourth child. They had one four-year-old at home. It just devastated me, when I had cared for him all day, and he died ten minutes before I was to go home. The mother – it was hard. I can still cry about that one. I didn’t want peds. So Logan – I was float. Every once in a while, they’d need someone in peds, and they’d say, “Okay, Hope; sorry, you have to go.” And I’d say, “You guys are not kind.” And I did work in Peds, but the other nurses were good. They’d put me on medical or psych or ER or surgical. And that kept my skills. Then my husband got transferred down here, so I came down. I don’t know if you ever heard of Ask a Nurse? MF: No. HW: Okay. It was only open about ten, maybe fifteen years. It was nurses, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. People called in if they had a medical question. They could call from – well, we got calls from all over the United States - mainly in Utah, but also some from Europe or Hawaii. Asking, “Hey, this is what’s going on, what do I do?” You lost the use of your eyes because we were on the phones 27 - you couldn’t see them, couldn’t smell, couldn’t touch, couldn’t take blood pressures. All you could do was listen to what they were saying. Very challenging, and probably one of the highest liability places you could work. You had to have had five years of experience in the hospital, and I worked there five and a half years and they closed it down because of liability and cost. So then I went to what they call auditing – clinical auditing for Intermountail Health Care's Insurance Company. High dollar facility claims, anything ten thousand and over, we would look at claims for duplicate charges, erroneous charges, fraudulent charges. They put us in what they called SIU, which is the Special Investigation Unit. So that’s where I ended, was there. My husband retired and wanted to go on a mission, so I quit in December of 2003 and haven’t gone back, but have missed it. I’m still licensed. I maintain my license, because I can’t let it go, but they wouldn’t need me anymore. They have shortage of jobs, not nurses. MF: What a great thing. Thanks for letting us visit with you.