Meet Mona Wilson

Veteran nurse, Mona Wilson, has been a dedicated RN for ten years, starting off her career in the Med/Surg floor in a hospital close to St. Louis. Mona is a newer collaborator who joined the Nightingale team mid-March. She is the Skills and Simulation Lab Technician so you can find her hanging out in our lab and having some fun running sims for learners, but her job expands as she is orienting to do scheduling for learners and providing support for faculty by assisting learners with remediation and clinical calculations.

Why did you become a nurse?
I came to nursing later in life, in my mid-thirties, so I wasn’t a traditional student. I had taken a personal inventory, and decided that nursing was probably the best way to utilize my strong communication skills and desire to help people feel better. In addition to providing medical care, people need emotional support and teaching, and also humor. Those were the things I felt were my forte. Ergo, Nursing program.

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What is your favorite part about being a nurse?
My very favorite part of nursing is therapeutic communication, and providing clients, families, and learners with more easily understood explanations of diagnoses, interventions, prevention tactics. I have always found that people are more likely to be compliant and take more interest in their own self-care if they truly understand HOW the body works, how different diagnoses affect the body, and WHY the recommended interventions will help them feel better. Understanding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ give the client an incalculable advantage in accepting care from others, and enhancing their own self-care.

Why do you think nurses are important?
Nurses today are providing the vast majority of healthcare in our country, under MD supervision. We have the ability to change things for the better.

What is your one piece of advice for nursing learners?
Instead of memorizing terms, diagnoses, s/s, and the like, learn how the body works, and why we choose the interventions that we utilize. If you can teach it to someone else, you really know it.

Finish the sentence… When I am not at work, I am ____
usually spending time with my husband and my dog, and/or crafting.

What else would like to share about yourself?
I graduated with an ADN in 2006, in Illinois, while living in a small bedroom community close to St Louis. I worked at a hospital in St Louis for several years, on a Med/Surg floor. At the time, I had four children at home, ages 18yrs, 15yrs, 14yrs, and 10yrs. I later moved to a SNF, where I worked until I moved to Utah. Here, I worked at another SNF for the last several years. I really enjoy making jewelry of all different types: crocheted, beaded, working with plastics and textiles. I also love to crochet other projects like hats, scarves, gloves, etc. It’s very relaxing to me. My children are all adults, and live in Tennessee, and although I miss them very much, they are strong, capable people that have made good lives for themselves. My husband and I have a Cairn Terrier dog-child, Yancy, who is very much like a perpetual toddler with ADHD. I also have a Facebook page, Put On Your Big Girl Panties, which reached over 77,000 fans this last week; the page features recipes and/or crafts sometimes, but mostly it’s just things that I find entertaining, or funny — anything that tickles my sense of humor.