Hospitals say efforts improving to prevent nurses' injuries

When Donna McDevitt, 51, went through nursing school, her instructors wore nursing caps and white stockings with white shoes. They were hardcore, McDevitt said, dedicated and selfless. You never called in sick. You skipped lunch. You didn't go home until your job was done. McDevitt relished it. Her work became her life. She worked 25 years as an intensive care nurse, first at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and then at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital, closer to her home in St. Charles. The years of walking the hallways, moving beds and equipment, cleaning wounds and lifting patients took a toll.