 |
 |
      |
||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
   |
|||||||||||||||||
|
Flex
appeal |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
In preparation for a wedding, the diabetic mother of the bride decided to skip taking her diuretic for a couple of days to cut down on powder room visits during the festivities. Her physician had never told her exactly what the diuretic was for, but she certainly knew its effects. But during the two days, she developed a near-fatal case of pulmonary edema. Lucky for her, Diana Lithgow, MSN, NP, RN, treated her. "I sat down and drew her a little picture about how the heart backs up into the lungs. She said, ‘I’m a smart woman. I could have understood this.’ And there was a ‘click’ in my head," Lithgow said. This pivotal episode occurred more than 10 years ago, when there wasn’t time for much precepting in the managed care version of nursing, in which the priority seemed to be sending patients home from the hospital posthaste. Lithgow has two bachelor’s degrees and earned her MSN at California State University, Long Beach, to become a family nurse practitioner. She won the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners’ California NP of the Year award in 1996 for achievement in excellence. In March, the California Coalition of Nurse Practitioners (CCNP) elected her the Nurse Practitioner of Distinction. "But I didn’t do anything," Lithgow protested when the CCNP first told her about the award. But Lithgow has humbly crafted a tripartite career for herself and helped other nurses to prosper. "To be able to be involved in people’s lives when they need a compassionate, empathetic, knowledgeable person the most is a gift never to be taken for granted," Lithgow said. She originally became a nurse after her first bachelor’s degree in bioscience seemed to portend a future studying lab rats. "My mother told me that I would love nursing, as she did. She loves going to work every day and never regrets a day she cares for people – and she said it was what I would need to find fulfillment in life – and she was right," Lithgow said. Her second bachelor’s in nursing brought fulfillment, except when she met the woman with diabetes, who hadn’t been told by her physician why the diuretic pills were necessary. Lithgow worked with the Nurse Provider Action Group on a campaign called Nurses 4 Nurses, which focused on having consumers demand NPs as their primary care providers. The group veered away from instigating costly legislation, but their approach worked. A Health Care Financing Administration representative went over the letter of the law with the group, and it became clear that Medi-Cal and Medicare patients have a right to access to advanced practice nurses as primary care providers. Today, Lithgow works as a primary care provider at a community clinic, while in the evenings she’s a professor in the MSN/family nurse practitioner program at Western University of Health Sciences, where she has co-written the first online program in the country. Along with all this, as treasurer of the Orange County region of CCNP, she keeps track of a growing number of members and their dues. One day a week, she also teaches health at a school. But all these vitally important jobs must weave themselves into the background, so to speak, when the primary characters on her "tapestry of life" appear: daughter Alexandra, 8; son Joshua, 10; husband, Douglas; and mother, Helen. "I won’t take any job that won’t allow me to pick my kids up after school," Lithgow said. She goes online after their bedtime, at 8:30 or so, and takes care of students’ postings and discussion boards. "I read all that and make sure it’s substantive," she said. Each job complements the other. A professor needs to be up-to-the-minute in clinical care, Lithgow said. And her clinical work led to teaching health at her children’s private school one day a week. "At the clinic, I saw a fair amount of teen pregnancies and STDs. I thought if I taught them that cervical dysplasia can be caused by the human papilloma virus, it might help them be more proactive in preventing that, as well as pregnancy." But it seemed she was reaching the teen-agers too late. She received 100 percent approval from parents for teaching a course in health and nutrition to grades K-8 at her children’s school. She only teaches the sexuality content to the seventh- and eighth-graders. At first, Lithgow wasn’t sure her experience teaching graduate level nursing courses would prepare her for teaching young children. "The director of the school gave me that ‘please’ look. She wanted a nurse, even though I wasn’t a teacher, in case the children asked, ‘What does the liver do, anyway?’ She didn’t want a teacher who’d just be reading the curriculum out of the book. A nurse could go off track." This is Lithgow’s second year of teaching the course. She also brought in the D.A.R.E. program to teach kids about the dangers of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. "I brought in three real laryngectomy patients – not just pictures – and made them all look at their stomas in their necks – and made sure that they knew it was a direct result of smoking. The kids’ eyeballs were like saucers. ‘Oh my god. I’m never gonna smoke,’ one of the kids said." The students all have e-mail at home with ‘handles’ to disguise their identity, she said. Questions they wouldn’t feel comfortable asking her in person come to her that way. A recent San Francisco State University alumni magazine article suggested that the 21st century way to manage a career will be quite a bit like what Lithgow already does: Generate income via three part-time jobs with flexible hours. Not only can she make time for her children, husband and mom, but she keeps her finger on the "pulse" in several different worlds. |
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|
NEWS
AND TRENDS | CAREER
CENTER | EDUCATION
|
|
||||||||||||||
