Ron Griffin was a successful executive in the health care industry in 1989 when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

"It was like, 'Wow! You might not live as long as you think your going to,' " he said. "Everything turned out fine, but it made me stop and think, 'What do I really want to do?' "

The answer is what he is doing today: bedside nursing, making a difference for people. "It's never fun being in a hospital, but I think I'm able to make the stay a little more tolerable," he said.

Typical of Griffin's style with five to six med/surg patients a shift was his commitment to a difficult patient with a difficult family facing a long stay. Although he was given the opportunity to be assigned to others-just for temporary relief-he declined.

"When you develop a relationship with the family and the patient, and the patient feels comfortable, you can tell by the way they respond," Griffin said. "It was best for me to stay with her. The husband even reached the point that he would go away for a while, which he hadn't done in a long time."

Listening to patients and asking them about needs, desires and schedules are key to satisfied patients, he said. "Too many nurses want to control everything. It should be the patient who has control of their health care."

Since high school, Griffin has been one to help people in need, and to this day he calls on his experience before nursing to care for patients.

From his beginnings as an orderly in a nursing home in high school, Griffin said he had always been drawn to the medical field. With a degree in political science, he became head of volunteer services at Wichita Falls State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. Then, at the request of a friend, he became a nursing home administrator. He climbed the company ladder to regional director, working in assisted living and retirement living.

Griffin said those years of experience extend beyond the tasks of a nurse clinician to helping patients be involved in their care and get through the maze that is health care today. "A lot of my patients don't know what to do next," he said.

For his colleagues, there rarely is a question of what to do next because Griffin, whether he is functioning as a charge nurse or as a staff nurse, has a reputation of jumping in to help without being asked. "We try to work as a team," he said. "If we have, as most places frequently have, agency nurses, we try to take them under our wing a little bit and help them through the day."

Griffin said he might one day be drawn to the classroom as a nursing instructor. But thinking back to his decision to leave the executive world for bedside care, he said, "I have not regretted it. Not even on payday."