Anna Hendricks is graduating with her BSN, as well as a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College. She’ll soon start working as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
Anna Hendricks still thinks back to her freshman year clinical in the College of Nursing at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Hendricks, who transferred to UMSL in her second semester, was placed in SSM Health’s Joint Replacement Center, where she worked with patients getting joint replacement surgery.
As a freshman, she wasn’t able to do much hands-on work just yet, but she found herself having a lot of meaningful conversations with patients that have stuck with her over the years.
“It really just highlighted the human factor of being a nurse – of taking that time to sit and talk to somebody in what might be a very stressful time in their life,” she said. “Even though joint replacement and small surgeries aren’t a big deal to some people, that might be the first time this patient has gone under anesthesia or the first time that they’ve been in the hospital outside of being born. It can be scary, and I think that it’s always nice to have a friendly face to talk to and look at and know that you’ll be safe. I just really enjoyed being that person for people.”
Hendricks, who will graduate with her BSN, as well as a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College, this weekend, has known that she wanted to be a nurse since her freshman year of high school. She grew up watching medical dramas and had her first true experience with nurses when her younger sister was born prematurely in 2014. Nursing stayed in the back of her mind as something she’d be good at, and she said the COVID-19 pandemic pushed her to take the leap, inspiring her to become a certified nursing assistant while still in high school.
After one semester at Southeast Missouri State University, Hendricks transferred to UMSL in order to be a bit closer to home while pursuing her nursing degree. Quickly, she felt like she had found her place.
“Even though it’s quite a large school, it still feels very small,” Hendricks said. “It doesn’t feel like I’m going to school in the city, which I personally like because you get to know professors better as you get to know campus better. There aren’t many places of the UMSL campus that I have not visited myself for one reason or another. That was really the big thing for me – just feeling like I could find a place here.”
The Honors College also helped Hendricks feel at home at UMSL. She enjoyed the discussion-based classes in the college, as well as its individualized ways of measuring performance and achievement, which varied from professor to professor and allowed students to showcase their individual strengths. In the College of Nursing, she was able to get hands-on clinical experience across a variety of specialties and hospital systems, including Missouri Baptist Medical Center, Mercy Hospital, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and St. Luke’s Hospital. While she had a bit of a leg up, having worked as a tech at Barnes-Jewish Hospital for the last year and a half, she still found herself learning new things.
“Honestly, it’s just made my love for the profession and the school grow, because they really try to give you every opportunity to do anything and everything,” Hendricks said. “We’ve done a lot of community outreach, which has been very near and dear to my heart because the whole reason that I even got into nursing was to help people. That makes me feel good, that they prioritize teaching the community aspect of nursing, because it really does show you how many different areas of nursing there are, which was extremely helpful.”
Inspired by her sister, Hendricks has long known that she wanted to work in pediatrics, but she said her clinical experience in the College of Nursing helped her decide what hospital system would be the best fit for her. After graduation, she’ll be starting a nursing position in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where she was able to work while studying at UMSL. She’ll be returning to the floor after completing her capstone hours in the NICU alongside a preceptor, which gave her invaluable experience and helped solidify that it was the right place for her. She feels that having those opportunities at UMSL has set her up for success in her next steps.
“I feel like I’ve been given a lot of opportunities, especially through the College of Nursing,” she said. “I think they did a wonderful job of setting us up to get jobs.”
While working in the NICU can be challenging and scary – as Hendricks notes, she’s not just playing with babies all day – she enjoys having the opportunity to comfort families and provide them with necessary education. Many parents she works with have never had a baby in the NICU before, so there’s a lot to learn, from using a tracheostomy to help with breathing or a G-button to help with eating to the many anxieties they might have about taking their baby home from the hospital.
“It’s extremely fulfilling to me to be able to know that I can make a family feel more confident in caring for their child,” Hendricks said. “Most parents in the NICU kind of sit on the sidelines because it’s a scary situation and you don’t quite know what you’re allowed to do. My favorite thing is being able to tell them, ‘No, this is your baby. If you want to pick up your baby, just let us know, and we can make that happen.’ I love being able to make a first-time mom or dad smile because they got to hold their baby for the first time, or change a diaper, or something that most parents would think is so mundane but is really so important to bonding. Everybody has their feeling of purpose in nursing, and that’s mine. I just like feeling that sense of relief that me and my family were given when my sister was in the hospital, and I want to pass all those good vibes to other people.”
