Caring for Patients and Families in All Stages of Life

When registered nurse Gloria Tigner began working at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in 1966, Ronald Reagan was campaigning for governor of California and Otis Redding was singing "My Girl."

And nursing caps were the order of the day.

"The pins you had to use to keep the cap on your head pulled your hair out," she recalls. "Fortunately, not long after I started at St. Luke's, our director of nursing said the cap was optional."

No doubt about it, this woman, who was a licensed vocational nurse for 27 years before going back to school to become a registered nurse, has seen a lot of change at St. Luke's in 35 years.

And the change, she says, has largely been for the better.

"Nursing is really not as hard as it once was," Tigner says. "We had no problem giving really good care, even when there used to be just one R.N. for every 34 patients. Now, the ratio is one R.N. for six or seven patients."

Advances in technology, she says, have been a big help.

"I can remember when we had to use the old Gumco suction machine with patients. We wheeled that machine down the hallway, and it made a loud, clicking noise when we used it," recalls Tigner. "Now we use nasal gastric meters that are mounted into the wall of a patient's room. They work so much better and are so much quieter."

Patients are also much more knowledgeable.

"It used to be that patients would come in here and rely solely on what their nurses or doctors told them," she says. "Now, they come in here armed with information they've downloaded from the Internet. That's good though. It makes patients more involved with their recovery and is always a sign they'll take good care of themselves, which is what we want them to do."

Today, Tigner has once again gone back to school to prepare for a change - a huge change from what she has been doing. Recently, she finished coursework to become a mortician. Now comes an apprenticeship. When, or if, she'll make a permanent career change or pursue work part time as a funeral director, she isn't certain.

"I really wanted to help families cope with their grief," she says. "So I decided that becoming a funeral director was the thing I ought to do at this point in my life."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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