For New Nurses, Sky’s the Limit

CREST HAVEN – Instead of mortarboards and gowns, students who graduated during an Aug. 15 ceremony at the Cape May County Technical School donned white uniforms and nurse caps.
Seventeen nursing students received their diplomas and pins, and are authorized to work as practical nurses. They were the 55th class to graduate from Tech’s post-secondary, 44-week practical nursing program, where they studied topics that ranged from anatomy to pharmacology.
“They’ve learned to take care of human bodies where the last thing you want to do is make a mistake,” said Shannon Ray, school nurse in the Lower Cape May Regional School District and speaker at the graduation.
According to program instructor Ann Zilinek, the graduates read 23 textbooks, attended over 300 lectures, took over 400 tests and quizzes, and memorized and studied over 250 medications.
“They’ve also learned a whole new language of medical terminology, terms and abbreviations,” Ray said. “(The graduates) will probably be able to read license plates soon, because every three letter combination means something.”
The graduates cared for over 1,200 patients during clinical training, Zilinek said.
“They have seen everything from the miracle of birth to the grace of death,” Zilinek said.
A few weeks into training last September, now-graduate Crystal Barreto was the first student to save a patient’s life by noticing an allergic reaction to a medication, according to class speaker Jennifer Goetz.
Her classmate Brittany Peter was the first to give a patient a full-length catheter.
“She provided our patient much-needed relief,” Goetz said.
Goetz said studying consumed the classmates’ lives “in and outside of the classroom.”
“It was a sacrifice we chose to make,” she said. “Family time, many a day, was put on hold for an assignment or studying for a test the next day.”
At the graduation ceremony, the class lit candles in lamps and recited the traditional Nightingale Pledge, which names the ethics of nursing.
Florence Nightingale, an English nurse during the 19th-century Crimean War, was the founder of modern nursing.
Nightingale was known as the “lady with a lamp” because she cared for wounded soldiers by lamplight.
“I shall abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous and shall not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug,” graduates recited during the pledge.
Goetz and her classmates have plans to either continue education or begin working in the profession.
“We’ll be working in our preferred settings: pediatrics, hospice, geriatrics, union health, emergency medicine,” she said. “The sky is the limit for us.”
Practical nurses’ duties include providing basic medical and nursing care such as checking blood pressure, helping patients bathe or dress, discussing health care with patients, and reporting the status of patients to registered nurses and doctors, according to AllNursingSchools.com
“When you’re in the hospital around the doctors, you’re kind of nervous,” said Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-1st) a dentist, at the ceremony. “But the doctor, he or she, may not be the personnel (you’re) looking at. Very often you look at the nurse.”
The graduates of the Class of 2018 were Crystal Barreto with high honors, Stefania Bucur, Sallyann Burke, Joie Cohen with honors, Caitlin Corso, Jerika Enriquez, Brianna Fox with high honors, Jennifer Goetz with high honors, Abigail Hardy with honors, Alexandra Martin, Jocelyn Martinelli with honors, Grace Mills with honors, Marissa Myers with honors, Brittany Peter with high honors, Jessica Sanchez with honors, Shelbie Snyder, and Melissa Wagner.
To contact Taylor Henry, email thenry@cmcherald.com.