Nurses Week Highlight #7

Ronda Johnson, a New Iberia, Louisiana, native has been a licensed practical nurse for 27 years. Her career in the medical field began with the U.S. Army National Guard as a medic. “I wanted to be a journalist, that was my life’s dream … but once I got into it, and stuck my first IV and got it, I was hooked.” Johnson said that she was handed opportunity after opportunity. “It just kind of developed and I was able to go to Nursing school through the Army, and it grew after that. I went active duty. I just loved every minute of it.”It’s the silent gratification that she gets from helping to calm down patients that is the most rewarding part of her job. “You see the relief on their face, and they are not nervous anymore. They are happy they, or their family, was taken care of. The worst part of her job is giving that bad news. “I used to work in a cancer ward and when the patient is going through treatment and it’s positive, positive, positive, and then they get that news that there is nothing else you can do, so the hardest part is watching the patient grieve.” To get through days like that, she tries to remind herself of the bigger picture. Sometimes you just have a couple of days and you walk through the motions, it’s not easy, she said.

Pictured: Johnson is preparing the solution used to fit test the N95 mask.