Skip to main content

How a 'Terrible' Patient Became a Dedicated Nurse

 |  By Alexandra Wilson Pecci  
   September 02, 2014

Most nurse leaders aren't born with the same medical conditions as their patients, but it is possible for them to provide care from a place of empathy and understanding.

Asked "Why do you want to work in the PICU?" during an interview for her first inpatient nursing job, Christy Sillman, RN, MSN, gave a strange answer: "I don't."


Christy Sillman, RN, MSN

"I don't want to be here, but I feel like I have to be here," she remembers saying. "I felt this drive to work in the pediatric ICU with post-op cardiac babies, even though it was the thing that held the deepest anxiety for me."

That anxiety was borne from decades of experience. Sillman, now 34, was born with tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. She had five defects of the heart, including the absence of the pulmonary artery, and has spent her share of time in hospitals.

Today, Sillman is using that experience to relate to patients in a deep and profound way as the nurse coordinator for the Adult Congenital Heart Program at Stanford Health Care in Palo, Alto, CA.

Although most nurses and nurse leaders aren't born with the same kinds of medical conditions as their patients, Sillman says it is possible for them to care for patients from a similar place of empathy and understanding.

In 1980, the outlook wasn't good for babies like Christy Sillman. "They basically told my parents…take her home; keep her comfortable. She'll die within three days," Sillman recounts.

But the baby girl didn't die within three days. Instead, she was enrolled in a drug trial, had a shunt placed, and underwent multiple surgeries, including open heart surgery at the age of 4.

Although Sillman's health issues inspired her father to give up his successful plumbing business and become a physician, Sillman herself fought against entering medicine as a profession. In fact, she planned to study acting until a series of heart surgeries at the age of 17 left her with vocal cord paralysis for more than a year.

"I'd have made a great mime, but that was about it," she quips.

The Pull of a Medical Career
"I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and I started to get more interested in medicine," she says. "But I said again and again, I would [would say I would] never be a nurse. I hated hospitals."

After all, Sillman had spent years as a patient—and a "terrible" one, at that. At the age of 17, she was a volatile patient, flipping nurses the bird, hitting them, and "yelling" at them (albeit silently, because of her paralyzed vocal chords).

"That's not who I am," Sillman says. But she was angry and scared, and acting deeply out of character. And one nurse in particular just made things worse, dealing with Sillman's thrashing and flailing by putting her in restraints, giving her meds to knock her out, and intubating her without explaining why or for how long.

Nurses like that were "just doing what they needed to do to get through their shift," Sillman says.

No, she did not want to be a nurse.

Instead, she entered health education, and after graduation, was teaching menopause classes at the age of 22. Although Sillman says she found empowerment in patient education, she wasn't satisfied, and was searching for the right path. She'd avoided hospitals at all costs, but finally entered one again to visit a friend who'd been in a car accident.

"It was the first time I had been in the hospital since my open heart surgery," she says. "I just watched all the nurses and what they were doing."

Sillman sat with her friend for hours, and watched as a nurse made the difference between her friend feeling depressed and defeated and being uplifted and ready to fight.

Falling in Love with Inpatient Care

Finally, Sillman realized she wanted to enter nursing, and on her first day of her first clinical rotation in the hospital, she knew she'd found her place.

"I fell in love with inpatient care," she says. "I could relate as a patient. I know firsthand the difference between a good nurse and a bad nurse. I know firsthand what it's like to be intubated and be confused from medication."

Over the subsequent years working as a nurse in both inpatient and outpatient settings, with both children and adults, Sillman has been able to apply her own experiences to the nursing care she provides. She's especially adept at caring for difficult patients and is an advocate for patients with congenital heart defects.

Nurse leaders can use the lessons of being a patient, too.

"Not every nurse leader is going to have that personal connection," Sillman says. "But what they can do is get involved with the community of whatever specialty they're dealing with."

She says doing so will help nurse leaders become a trusted voice within the community, as well as help them get a deeper perspective on the issues and struggles of those patients. They can learn and understand that patients who sound like they're "complaining" or being overly anxious, might actually be advocating for themselves.

"You'd be able to develop relationships with active members of the patient community. You're going to have that pulse, that inside information," Sillman says, adding that nurse leaders can apply information, such as what patients complain about and worry about, to advancing care.

"We should take account of that," she says.

Nurses should also remember that patients are people with lives that don't involve their illness—and they can help patients remember that about themselves, too.

"What a bad nurse was for me was one that just saw me as a disgruntled teenager," Sillman says. "The good nurse explains everything, is calm, and helps the patient remember the life outside the hospital. It's very easy as a patient to fall into depression. I always say the walls are very white."

"A good nurse asks them about their life outside the hospital," she continues. "What do they enjoy? What do they love?"

Because at the end of the day, that's what we're all really fighting for.

Pages

Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.

Tagged Under:


Get the latest on healthcare leadership in your inbox.