Well hello there! I’m Stephanie and you’ve stumbled onto my blog. After finding I really enjoyed updating my Instagram and creating content that is interesting and informative for potential nurses/critical care nurses/flight nurses, I decided to reopen an old blog from my externship with a brand new look!

So who am I to talk? Really–no one special. I’m just extremely passionate about the field of nursing and have spent the years of my relatively short career striving for my dreams. While young adults in my age group spent time out with friends, traveling the world, and swiping through Tinder/Bumble, I was constantly in classes or chasing certifications. I bring my passion for my work home with me and constantly consume everything I can–not because I have to, simply because I love it!

I never really saw myself being a nurse. Thats the honest to God truth–as a teenager I wanted to be a police officer, a doctor, or in graphic design. Sure, I applied to nursing school in my high school years but at that time, I never wanted it. I ended up switching to pre-medicine when I got to college. I can honestly say the six years I spent in undergraduate studies was a hell of a ride– nursing to pre-med to criminal justice/sociology to a new college and a paramedic program, finally coming full circle back to a bachelors’ nursing program.

I love medicine–I started my life in EMS back when I was 17 after a breakup left me shattered. After failing my EMT program the first go around early on in the program, I reregistered the next semester and finished the program. I realized what it took to be in medicine–a drive, a sense to get into my books and talk less, and a recognition that you literally stand between someone’s demise.

While I loved paramedicine, I realized I wanted a bachelors degree and more freedom in my workplace. I applied for pre-nursing and gained acceptance after a year on the waiting list.

Every semester, I found myself working harder and harder. I had ups and downs with my health that created extreme difficulty but nonetheless, I pushed. I was blessed with an externship at the Mayo Clinic on the Trauma/Emergency Surgery floor in the summer of 2013–although I butted heads with my clinical coach and struggled through, I learned so much. I realized everything I wanted to be as a nurse and everything I didn’t.

I graduated the next Spring and started my career in a small, community intensive care unit. I still struggled with “the older nurses” who didn’t feel I earned my place. I had great preceptors but every shift change brought extreme anxiety. I knew where my heart was–emergency medicine. And so by the following March, I was blessed with a position which I still hold today at an ER a few minutes from my home. Gone were the days of inpatient nursing and a 45-minute commute.

And here is where I remained full-time. Slowly working my way off nightshift where hardened, seasoned ER nurses taught me that while its ok to be compassionate, sometimes you need a crunchy outer shell to thrive in the emergency department.

May 2016, I began my Masters of Science degree at Duquesne University while continuing to work full time. My focus was on forensic nursing which brought back all the warm and fuzziness of my brief soiree in criminal justice. I set my focus primarily on injury patterning, trauma, and strangulation. I wrote a great deal of thesis and research papers on the topic of homicide escalation in domestic violence and set my sights heavily on the topic of strangulation (which to this day gets me sideways eyeball when I talk about it). I wrapped up my degree with an internship with the county coroners’ office where I slowly began to understand the sheer magnitude of the opioid epidemic and how few resources the office had to deal with the increasing death tolls.

Anyone who knows me though, will tell you–I’m never content with sitting idle in my career. Over all these years of volunteering as an EMT and my brief time as a firefighter (using that term lightly as my interests were technical and vehicle rescue as opposed to actual water-on-fire firefighting), I had loved seeing the medical flight crews on their helicopters. I read every book on the subject and for a decade had dreamed of working on a helicopter. Every certification I completed was with the end-goal to fly.

My dream was realized in 2018 when I accepted a position as a full-time flight nurse. It was the best year of my life… I lost 40+ pounds, completed my Masters, and got the job I never thought possible.

Now, I continue again to strive as I seek certification as a flight nurse and restart my education again for my competency certification in chemical dependence.

So who am I (as I come back to the beginning)… no one. I’m me. I am the culmination of a short lifetime of experiences whether they be triumphs or failures. I am living testimony about the power of not accepting “no” and “you can’t/won’t”. But I am, still at the end of each day, still just me.

And hopefully that is simply ENOUGH.

Disclaimer: All views expressed on this site are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated