Oral History Program Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln Interviewed by Marci Farr 23 September 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln Interviewed by Marci Farr 23 September 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: Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln, an oral history by Marci Farr, 23 September 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln Graduation Photo Class of 1956 Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln September 23, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on September 23, 2010. In this interview, Josephine discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Josephine Ulibarri Hibbeln. She graduated from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1956. It is September 23, 2010 and we are interviewing her at her home in South Ogden. Could you tell us about your family, where you grew up, and where you attended school? JH: I grew up in Dolores, Colorado and came to Ogden in 1953, right out of high school. I entered the three year nursing program at St. Benedict's School of Nursing in September. It was inexpensive, but as students we paid for it by working 48 hour weeks. At that time staff weekly hours were reduced from 48 to 45, but as students we remained on the 48 hour schedule. After graduation I worked on the surgical unit at St. Ben's for a year. My take home pay after two weeks was ninety-six dollars. After a year of work, my friend Margie Boyd and I decided to find work in California. We found a job in Oakland at the Kaiser-Permanente Hospital, but didn't like Oakland and moved to San Jose two weeks later. We lived in San Jose for several years and worked at O'Connor Hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity. Later I took a job at the Sunnyvale Medical Clinic in Sunnyvale. I worked there for several years, and met my husband who was in the Navy and stationed at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California. He was a navigator and flew in Vietnam until he was discharged. Then he worked as a navigator for United Airlines 2 until the airlines developed a navigational system. At that time he decided to enter graduate school and we moved to Ogden in 1971. He enrolled at the University of Utah and a few months later, through no plan of my own, I enrolled into the University of Utah BSN Program through the extended program at Weber College. I say through no plan of my own, because returning to school was the last thing on my mind as I was caring for our first baby. Richard, my brother called me one day and said, "You know there is a BSN Program here through the University of Utah and you really ought to think about it." My answer was, "Yeah, I'll think about it." Soon after, I received a call from Janice Hassell, a co-conspirator, who was teaching in the BSN Program. Janice had graduated from St. Ben's with my sister, Pat in 1958. Janice said "I understand you are interested in the BSN Program." I said, "Not exactly." Janice kept calling. I am certain she and my brother were in constant dialogue. I finally discussed it with my husband and decided I might as well give it a try. I had at a time or two thought about getting a BSN, but knowing that I had to take chemistry was a definite deterrent. I was told that Weber had developed a fifteen hour summer chemistry course, which would be acceptable for entrance into the BSN Program. Oh! Well, one summer I thought, not so bad. Little did I know! The chemistry consisted of three courses. The first course was three weeks of inorganic chemistry, the second course was three weeks of organic chemistry and the third course was three weeks of biochemistry. At the end of one and a half weeks in each course we had midterm exams and final exams at the end of each three weeks. I remember very little about that summer other then chemistry. I did ace all 3 three courses and after 18 months of other courses I earned a BSN, December 1973. By then, I was pregnant with our second child and my husband had been accepted into a doctoral program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Christopher was born in April 1974 and we moved to California in August. My husband completed his doctorate in 1978 and we moved to a job at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. I taught in a practical nursing school and when our older son, Paul was in high school I entered the MSN Program at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, Ohio and received my master's two weeks before our older son graduated from high school. After graduation, I received a faculty position at the University of Toledo. After our second son was in college, I again returned to school at the Medical College of Ohio and received a second master's as a nurse practitioner. I entered a part-time practice and continued teaching. Approximately, a year later, my husband developed a neurological condition which required much of my time. For economic reasons, I remained at the University of Toledo and gave up my dream of being a nurse practitioner. My husband passed away June 30, 2007. I continued to work until the end of the academic year 2009 and retired at age 74. My son Christopher graduated with a master's degree in child psychology from the University of Washington and works as a counselor at a school for troubled children as well as having his own small practice. He is married, has a beautiful baby (Gabriel) and lives in Seattle. Paul, my older son, received a doctorate from Ohio State, has worked at the State 4 Department in D.C. and recently moved to a historian position at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? Was there any reason? JH: Right out of high school, I had no aspirations of becoming a nurse. I didn't even know what a nurse was or did. I came from a small town in Colorado, population 1000 and graduated with a class of 23. After I graduated I knew that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in Dolores. My best friend had been accepted to a nursing program at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. So when my parents suggested St. Benedict's in Ogden, Utah it sounded good to me. My parents already lived in Ogden, so it was not like moving away from home. Margie Boyd and I, the only two students from Ogden, were roommates. We were able to go home for the weekend and Margie's mom sent loads of food with her. Our other classmates knew who to visit when we returned on Sunday afternoon. MF: Do you have any funny stories about her? JH: There were three of us in our class who were short. Margie, Donny Siddoway and myself. Margie was slightly taller than me. We used to measure ourselves to see who was taller. One day we measured the length of our legs and discovered that my legs were longer than hers. I have to this day, never let her forget it. She is also two months older than I am and I remind her every birthday. When stressed about school, depressed, or a classmate dropped out, Margie and I would discuss dropping out. At these time we would wonder to the window in the lounge and look out at this lonely tree on a rock on the 5 mountain. Margie would say, "You know what. As long as that tree stays up there, you and I are staying here. We are going to get through this." That little tree helped get us through school. Margie and I were roommates for five years after we moved to California. We have remained friends all these year. She is married, has two daughters and two grandchildren and lives in Mesa, Arizona MF: What do you remember about the Sisters when you were in training? JH: Sister Berno was the director and Sister Mary Margaret the hospital administrator. There were many rules and restrictions. Sister Berno had (has) an angelic face. That is all you could see because of the habit. She was like a wisp of air, looked like an angel, and spoke softly, but we were terrified of her and avoided her when she was around. Margie's and my room was right next to the nun's quarters. Sometimes Margie and I would be in our room doing what-ever, Sister Berno would walk by, close our door, say nothing and walk away. As students, we had very little contact with Sister Mary Margaret. However, if we got out of line or broke curfew we heard from her. The dorm doors were locked early and the hospital locked at 8 pm after visitor's hours. Curfew was at nine and we had to sign in at the front desk when we entered through the hospital. However,as with all students, there were ways to circumvent the curfew. One way was to communicate with the student assigned to the "neurology" (psych) unit. The Neuro unit was on the first floor and had a back entrance. By entering though there, one could bypass the front desk. Pineview Reservoir was a no no, but we found ourselves there often during the summer. Some of my classmates got caught one time, 6 because they had taken the army surplus blankets from the dorm to lie on the beach. While there, they witnessed a young man injured by the propeller when he jumped out of a boat. Being good Samaritans they rushed to help him and wrapped him in the blankets. Consequently, the blankets, which also said St. Benedict's School of Nursing were discovered in the emergency room. Sister Mary Margaret was not happy about that incident. When returning to the dorm after the doors were locked, or when going from the dorm to the hospital or hospital to dorm after hours we had to go through the connecting tunnel. The tunnel was spooky and no one liked to go through it alone. Most often we would wait for another student. Despite this, sometimes students would hide in the tunnel and jump out at other unsuspecting students. MF: Did you have any other interactions with the Sisters after hours? JH: Yes, we did have friendly interactions with the Sisters especially the younger ones. There was a tennis court and we would watch them play tennis. Sister Mercy was like a friend that we could talk with. We were often treated to ice cream out in the lawn in the summer and could have all the ice cream we wanted. But as I recall, the ice cream flavor was most often peppermint. Something else we had all summer was rhubarb, which came from the monastery in Huntsville. We had rhubarb in every way that it can be prepared. I guess I remember these two as I'm neither fond of peppermint ice cream nor rhubarb. We also had plenty of eggs, but most often they were "soft cooked," as Sister Boniface called them. We could not have fried eggs, because they were not healthy. 7 Sister Boniface was the dietician and she ruled the hospital kitchen with an iron hand. She also taught nutrition and we had to spend a month with her in the diet kitchen. We were terrified of her and dreaded the diet kitchen rotation. She was tall and thin, had a high squeaking voice and wore thick glasses. When she looked at you her eyes looked huge. We always knew which student was assigned to the diet kitchen because they had the "deer in the headlights" look all the time and the student could be seen running up the stairs carrying meal trays. Special diets often had to be delivered to the patients by the student and the student was not allowed to take the elevator. Sister Mary Gerald was in charge of the medical floor. Most of the students liked the medical unit as Sister Mary Gerald treated the students well. I can't remember who was in charge of pediatrics. I do remember Second South. I think that's what it was called. This was where the polio victims were isolated during the early 50's. MF: What were your favorite classes that you took? JH: I like anatomy and later physiology with Sister Estelle. I liked those courses very much because I was so naive when I started school. For me studying anatomy and physiology was like porn. "Wow! You are put together that way?" Especially, male anatomy. We did not talk about the body at home. Sister Estelle also taught microbiology and I enjoyed microbiology, although I found microbiology harder. Working with the microscope was challenging. I remember one time finally getting my slide perfect and calling Sister Estelle to take a look at it; then I moved the scope and put the lens right through the slide. 8 I also liked Nursing Arts taught by Miss Barker who later became Mrs. Morton. Making a hospital bed was another challenge for me because I had never really made a bed, especially a hospital bed with square corners and tight sheets. To this day I still make square corners on my top sheets. Miss Barker always looked prim and proper. She wore starched uniforms with button down long sleeves and was our role model. We all wanted to be Miss Barker. The skills learned in nursing arts stay with you forever. In those days there were no disposables. We set up medications in bottle caps. The syringes were all glass and breakable. The syringe plungers were not necessarily matched with the syringe. Syringes and plungers were sterilized in a water sterilizer and then attempts were made to match them. One of my student life experiences (mishaps) occurred when administering my first intramuscular injection of penicillin. My favorite clinical instructor, Miss McKellar, I'm not certain of the spelling (we called her Mac) was with me. I prepared the penicillin, it did not come all prepared like it does now, I greeted the patient and had him lie across the bed, prepped the correct site, and entered the gluteus medius muscle perfectly...at that moment the plunger fell out of the syringe and the penicillin ran down the patient's buttocks and down his leg. I stood there in shock, thinking, "I'm going to die." As a nursing instructor I have always remembered that incident and it has made me more empathetic with students. MF: Do you remember any of the doctors that were in the hospital? JH: One of our favorite residents was Dr. Seager. Recently I went to help at the clinic at Rescue Mission on Wall Avenue. I understand the lady in charge of 9 the clinic is Mrs. Seager. It's a small world. Dr. Howe was "the surgeon." We were all terrified of him. Doctor Swindler, "the orthopedic surgeon." We liked him, but he made us scrub the bones in surgery and made us all wear orthopedic shoes. Our feet were measured when we first started clinical and orthopedic shoes were ordered for all of us. They were ugly. When Dr. Howe or Dr. Swindler yelled everyone jumped. As students, we were taught to stand up and get out of the way when a doctor approached. If we were found in the nurse's station and a doctor approached we were to leap up and let him have our seat. Another doctor I have never forgotten was Dr. Lumas. I learned from him that when he ordered a post-op patient ambulated at 4 p.m., he meant the patient was to be ambulated at 4 p.m. and why. The major causes of death following surgery are complications related to immobility (respiratory, peripheral vascular and gastrointestinal). The best way to prevent these complications is to get the patient upright and moving. As a student I was assigned a post-op patient who at 4:00 p.m. was feeling sick from the anesthetic, vomiting, in pain and did not feel well enough to get up. I felt sympathetic (in nursing you're taught empathy not sympathy) for the patient, did not explain why it was important that she get up and decided to give her "a little more time." When asked by Dr. Lumas if the patient had ambulated as ordered, I tried to explain why the patient had not been up. My explanation did not make an impression with him, but his response to me has never been forgotten. MF: What would you do with your classmates or your roommate if you had a night off? 10 JH: As students we worked split shifts and seldom had much time off. We worked on the units from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Classes ran from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Then we went back to work from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. By 7 p.m. we were pretty tired and had to study until lights out at 10 p.m. If our schedule was on night duty (mine seemed to come much too often) we worked the entire 8 hour shift and got off in time for class. Consequently, bedtime did not come until 11 a.m. It was hard to sleep because the rest of the students were up and about making noise. When I graduated I vowed that I would get a job at McDonald's before I would work night shift again. Working night shift was stressful because often times we were the only nurse (student) on the unit. One night, as a first year student, I arrived on 2 South to find that I was the only nurse and had a patient in an iron lung. I had never seen an iron lung and did not know what to do and no one to ask other than the shift nurse who was leaving. All she said was, "if the power goes out, you have to use the bellows." I prayed all night that the power would not go off as I did not know how to use the bellows. MF: Did you get a time off in the summer? JH: Not really. The nursing program was thirty-six months, twelve months a year, unlike the nine months for four years college programs. When the Weber College Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program started around 1954, we could not understand how students could be trained to be nurses in eighteen months, plus they did not have the clinical experience that we had. The students at St. Ben's were the major work force at the hospital. As senior students we were taking charge of units and when we graduated from St. Benedict's we felt confident that we could walk into any hospital and function 11 as nurses in most clinical settings. It was not hard to move on to another facility. One of the problems that hospitals, now days have hiring new graduates is that their experiences are fairly limited. Even the BSN programs graduates do not get the clinical experience that we did at St. Ben's. Now there are distance nursing programs where the clinical experiences are limited further. Hospitals want new grads to land on their feet and go. Well, they can't do that and new RNs require internship and preceptor programs where they work one on one with an experienced RN. This is a major expense for hospitals. Nursing has changed. Patient acuity levels are much higher and demands on the bedside nurse are greater. Students entering nursing have different agendas then we did in the 50's and 60's. The nursing goal of dedicating your life to care for the sick is no longer true (if it ever was). Goals now days vary, from "it's easy to be a nurse," to mobility (you can find a job anywhere, you can move on to another area of nursing, you don't have to stay at one job because there are openings elsewhere), the technology is stimulating and exciting and now days the salaries are comparable to other professions. Opportunities in nursing have few boundaries. MF: Did you do rotations in Hastings, Nebraska? JH: No. In my time we had a "neuro" (psychiatric) unit at St. Benedict's. My sister (Pat) graduated two years after I did and her class went to Hastings. My class and previous classes went to Denver for our pediatric rotation at Children's Hospital. We looked forward to that rotation because we got away "from the nuns." For three months we felt that we had more freedom. My group went in 12 September and returned to St. Ben's just before Christmas. Pediatrics was not my thing, but we enjoyed our time in Denver. MF: Which out of all the floors that you rotated through, which was your favorite? JH: My favorite was the surgical unit, which as I recall, was on the third floor. Second favorite was the medical unit on the second floor. Pediatrics was also on the second floor. Many of the students could hardly wait to get into OB and work with babies. As I mentioned above, babies and little people were not my favorites Miss or Mrs. Etcheverry (I can't remember if that was her maiden name or her married name) was the obstetrics instructor. One of the nurses we loved on the OB units was Pat (Hopkins) Brown's sister. Pat Hopkins graduated in my sister Pat's 1958 class. Some of the nurses who worked at St. Ben's were single and lived in the nursing student's dorm. Consequently, they were near and dear to our hearts as they mentored and took good care of us. The first time some of the students (I was one of those) saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show was in one of their rooms. MF: Tell us a little bit about your capping ceremony? Did that take place after six months? JH: Capping ceremony took place somewhere mid-year of the first year. Capping was a big event. We marched holding a Florence Nightingale Lamp in our hands. Sister Berno did the capping. I received a small scholarship at capping, which helped pay for my schooling. We were proud of our caps, but they were the biggest nuisance and got in the way. We tried to keep them on our heads with little button clips which didn't work well most of the time. I was glad when hospitals stopped demanding that nurses wear caps. When I worked at O'Connor Hospital in 13 San Jose, California there was a cannery not too far from the hospital. The women who worked in the cannery wore caps similar to nurses' caps. We used to say, "people think we are working at the cannery." MF: What do you think was your greatest challenge while you were in nurses’ training? JH: Everyday was a challenge. I never knew why, but Sister Berno frequently came right up to my face and asked, "Miss Ulibarri, are you adjusted?" I suspected it was because I was the only Hispanic in our class, although there were other Hispanics in the program. Over three years time I never knew what I was suppose to adjust to or what Sister Berno meant. I never knew if she presented the same question to other students. The biggest challenge, I think if you speak with any of my classmates they will agree, was diet kitchen. We had to spend a month in the diet kitchen with Sister Boniface and we were all terrified of Sister Boniface. She didn't talk to you, she yelled in a high squeaky voice. We had to prepare some of the food for and set up special diet trays for patients. One day I was warming up peas and making toast for a patient. When I went to check the temperature of the peas Sister Boniface caught me doing the unforgiveable. I reached in with the spoon, tasted, and put the spoon back into the pot. I was not allowed to leave to go to dinner. For dinner I had to sit in the kitchen and eat cold peas and toast. Psych was a another challenge for me. At the young age of 18 or 19, I vowed that no one in my family would ever have to spend time in that unit. Dr. Gorman, I think that was his name, was the head psychiatrist and I understand a disciple of Doctor Freedman who advocated insulin therapy and 14 lobotomies in the treatment of mentally ill patients. Consequently, as students we witnessed insulin therapy, prefrontal and transorbital lobotomies as well as shock therapy. In surgery one day, I had the job of holding the patients head during a transorbital lobotomy. That was probably one of my most memorable horrible experiences. A protractor was used to mark the orb around the eyes. Then the doctor took what looked like an ice pick, introduced it under the upper eyelid and pounded it through the orbit bone with a mallet. The pick was then swept along the full area of the arc back and forth destroying nerves. This may not be scientifically or medically correct, but this is what I saw. When both sides were completed, the patient was returned to the surgical unit to recover. The eyes remained black and swollen for many days afterwards. I never witnessed a prefrontal lobotomy, but I did take care of a young woman who never recovered following the surgery. Her temperature went up to 106 degrees F. and she went into status epilepticus. The seizures could not be controlled. Intravenous luminal was tried and eventually sodium pentathol without success and she died. As a student I was assigned to the psych unit on night shift, alone with one orderly. At five o'clock in the morning I would administer the insulin to the patients on insulin therapy. With a diabetic patient the most insulin usually received is 50-60 units at one time. For insulin therapy I would administer 100 to 150 units. By the time the day shift arrived at seven o'clock in the morning the patients were in a deep, deep insulin coma. To test the depth of the coma, the head nurse would press on the orbit of the eye, a very painful area. If there was no response, they had reached full coma stage. 15 Then of course we helped with electric shock therapy. The student's job was to hold the head or lay across the patient so that they did not leap off the gurney during the tremors. These are the experiences I most remember about psych. When I think about my experience in psych, I think about "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Most often we did not see the recovered patients as recovery I continued after discharge. MF: Thank you for sharing your stories with us.