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Home health nurse Craig Rhyne, RN, eventually may be
regarded as a modern-day circuit rider who hop-skips
by plane across rural America to deliver medical care,
especially to American Indians.
Rhyne, 48, is in a master's degree program at Oklahoma
State University to become an advanced nurse practitioner.
Although he has yet to fly his first medical mission,
he is a member of Angel Flight, an organization of private
pilots who volunteer their time and aircraft to ferry
people from the hinterlands of Texas, Kansas and other
rural states to larger medical centers when they have
no other means of getting there.
"Once I get my master's as a practitioner, I want
to combine that with flying and do clinical work in
rural health care settings," Rhyne said. "My
calling is to serve Native Americans as a nurse. There
are some pretty rural Indian tribes that don't get a
lot of medical care."
That calling, which Rhyne can explain only as "God's
hand," is why he left his native New York for Shawnee,
Okla., west of Oklahoma City. Besides school and a career,
he works with the Kickapoo tribe, leading a 12-step
Bible study for recovering addicts.
"I'm a missionary. I'm not a preacher, but I'm
concerned about people's spiritual health as well as
their physical health," Rhyne said. "I find
it pretty fascinating that in recent years these high-dollar
studies have concluded that somebody who is healthy
spiritually heals faster and is less of a burden on
the insurance system."
Rhyne occasionally works in oncology at Midwest Regional
Medical Center in Oklahoma City, but it is as a full-time
home health nurse for Unity Health Center in Shawnee
that he affirms the decision to become a nurse.
He said he knew in high school that nursing was for
him, but it was later in life, while dating his wife,
that she insisted he enroll in an associate degree program
and prove wrong the people who said he wasn't smart
enough for college. Rhyne said the other thing he heard
repeatedly is that men aren't nurses, that "It's
not a manly thing."
"I've made more money in other jobs, but I've
never worked at anything I've enjoyed so much,"
said the former tractor-trailer driver, home builder,
real estate appraiser and auctioneer. "You really
do touch people's lives on a different level than in
other professions. You have the power to make an impact.
"I was with a patient when he was first diagnosed
with cancer and I was with him when he died," Rhyne
said. "His wife hugged me and said, 'You know,
you made him laugh the morning he died.'
"You want to know the high point in my career?
That's one of them."
Beyond starting his days at about 7 a.m. with paperwork
and a list of assignments, there is little that is typical
in home health. Occasionally, there is the call to start
an IV at night in a bad neighborhood, he said, but the
unwritten rule is that people don't mess with nurses
because they're there to help.
"Talk about diversity in culture in nursing, I
have it," Rhyne said. "One day, I was in a
house with a dirt floor and the woman cooked most of
her meals outside, and later that afternoon I was in
a half-million-dollar home."
What the patients have in common, though, is an appreciation
of the assessments, treatments and teaching he does
and the relationships that come from treating every
client with dignity.
"It's kind of odd being from the Northeast, from
New York state," Rhyne said. "Down here, I
have patients who refuse to call me by my name. They
want to talk to their 'Yankee nurse.' But really, it's
'my Yankee nurse.' "
Regardless of socioeconomics or culture, he said, "It's
been found that you will get better quicker in your
own surroundings. You're used to your own germs, so
to speak. You're more comfortable. You're home."
And that's where he plans to apply his advanced practice
skills: on a circuit of small communities of American
Indians and rural residents who otherwise would lack
adequate medical care.
Contact
Phil McPeck at getpjm@aol.com.
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