The More She Talks, the Better You Feel
Nurse’s Enthusiasm is Contagious

It is just past six o’clock in the morning and Jodi Beevers – at 23 the youngest registered nurse on her unit – is smiling. Oh, she’s tired, very tired, after working all night, but the smile won’t leave her face.

“I’m finally getting used to nights,” says the nurse who began her nursing career at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital a little over a year ago. “It takes a while. But I’m so happy to be at a great hospital doing what I always wanted to do.”

Outside the new Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital – The Denton A. Cooley Building, traffic begins to build on Bertner Avenue. Sunrise is 45 minutes away as Beevers looks at a heart patient’s chart on the Cooley building’s sixth floor.

“I’m from Melrose, New Mexico, a town of 700 people, and went to New Mexico State in Las Cruces (population 70,000), so Houston is a lot different,” she says. “I love it. There’s so much to see and do. I can’t believe the shopping.”

Enthusiasm, of course, is infectious and it’s doubtful there is anyone more contagious at St. Luke’s right now than Jodi Beevers. The patients are wonderful, her colleagues are wonderful, the hospital’s resources are wonderful. The more she talks, the better you feel. As she lists what she likes about her new workplace, you realize that if St. Luke’s had a fight song, you’d start singing it. And that’s without having your first cup of coffee in the morning.

We’re talking about a young woman who seems ready to write a sequel to Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

“I always wanted to be a nurse because of my great-grandmother,” says Beevers. “There was never a decision I had to make on that score. She spoke so well of the profession, how rewarding it was for her to help people. And it really is. I love to make a difference in people’s lives. It may be just small things, like getting them an extra blanket, or straightening sheets or helping people get somewhere. But people really appreciate your help.”

At New Mexico State, she was an honor student, holding better than a 3.5 grade point average. While researching a paper, she read that hospitals awarded the Magnet designation – the highest honor in patient care – hold nurses in higher esteem. When she researched further, she found that St. Luke’s was one of the hospitals with Magnet status. Houston, she reasoned, was close enough to allow her to easily visit family in New Mexico, so she decided to include St. Luke’s in her job search.

“I couldn’t believe how friendly everyone was at St. Luke’s,” she says. “When people saw that I seemed to be lost, people would stop and ask if I needed help. Right away I saw what a wonderful, friendly environment it was.”

During the interviewing process, St. Luke’s administrators and nurses wanted to know what she felt she could contribute to nursing, how she would react in certain situations, what she would do in case of conflict. “It was so professional,” she says. “It was very clear that they just didn’t want another warm body.”

It is also clear, she says, that St. Luke’s takes nursing as seriously as she does. “I try to be a perfectionist. I realize how important it is that I give the proper medication to patients, that I am a people person, that I am an educator, researcher, caregiver, teacher and counselor to my patients. It’s wonderful to be at a place that really values nursing.”

Valuing nursing, she says, can even be seen in the Care Manager, a computerized means of storing and accessing important information about patients - right at the bedside. “I didn’t have anything like it in nursing school,” she says. “You had to write it out long hand and it was too easy to forget something. It’s a wonderful tool.”

Even her patients, Beevers says, have done all they can to make her feel special.

“A patient and his daughter knew I was about to take my nursing boards in February and they said they’d pray for me,” she recalls. “What a wonderful feeling to have someone think that much of you. I can’t believe how wonderfully things have worked out for me here.”

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/05_01_03/page_23.html