NiNi Lewis graduated with her BSN and a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College in May. She’s now working as an ICU step-down nurse at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
As a kid, NiNi Lewis never would have thought she’d grow up to become a nurse.
A few weeks before Lewis’ ninth birthday, her grandmother got very sick. She would go on to suffer four strokes, and Lewis spent much of her childhood in and out of the hospital. Watching the nurses care for her grandmother inspired Lewis to consider nursing as a way to give back. But when her grandmother died a few years later, when Lewis was just 13, she began to wonder whether she could handle the emotional weight of the profession.
In high school, as Lewis struggled with mental health issues, she began considering a career in psychiatric mental health. Nursing always remained in the back of her head, however, and while she originally enrolled at the University of Missouri–St. Louis as a psychology major, she wound up switching to nursing during orientation week. She hasn’t looked back since. In May, she graduated with her BSN from the College of Nursing, as well as a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College, and it felt like a full-circle moment.
“I feel very proud of what I did,” Lewis said. “As a kid, seeing all of that, I would never think I would be a nurse, caring for patients and loving it as much as I do. It’s almost like I’m dealing with childhood trauma every time I go in the hospital and deal with sick patients. I feel like now it’s kind of like exposure therapy in a way, knowing, ‘Oh, I went through this, but I have figured out how I can help support others through it, and see those good success stories of people improving and getting better.’ I feel like it’s a way of addressing my own childhood trauma through helping others.”
A St. Louis native, Lewis chose UMSL for its affordability and its proximity to her grandfather, with whom she was incredibly close until his passing last year. She also received a full-ride scholarship to the university through the Opportunity Scholars Program, which is geared toward academically gifted first-generation college students or students who face substantial challenges in accessing a university education.
Once she settled on nursing, Lewis was eager to get some experience in the field. Right before her sophomore year at UMSL, she started working as a patient care technician at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, which Lewis felt would give her an introduction to working as a nurse before starting the clinical portion of nursing school. In this role, she provided direct, hands-on care and support to patients – such as helping with daily activities including bathing and feeding or taking vital signs – under the supervision of a registered nurse or doctor. The experience proved to be extremely helpful, especially since her first semester coursework that year focused on PCTs and the basic roles of nursing, including talking with patients and helping them clean or feed themselves. It also helped solidify that nursing was the right path for her.
“I feel like I knew what to expect coming into nursing, just because I’ve had so much sick family, but if you can get a hospital job, or if you just generally do your research, being a tech, you are directly with the patient,” Lewis said. “Dealing with patients, you encounter a lot, and it’s going to show you that you either are going to sink or swim. It’s okay if you sink, because you can either say, ‘Hey, this is something I want to do, but I just have to fix some things about myself,’ or you can be like, ‘Hey, this is a beautiful field, but I am not the right person to do it.’”
The next semester, Lewis began doing clinicals twice a week, and as she progressed further through the BSN program, she was able to get exposure to different areas of nursing. While she had initially thought she wanted to work as a psychiatric mental health nurse, Lewis soon realized it was not the right fit. But as she thought more about her close relationships with her grandparents, she realized how much she loved working with the geriatric population.
That idea was solidified while Lewis was completing her externships in the ICU at BJC Healthcare. At the very beginning of the spring semester of her junior year, her grandfather passed away.
“I was just having to work through a lot of battles of being able to adapt to situations with grief,” Lewis said. “It also taught me that in some of the most difficult situations, life still goes on. You have to be able to adapt, you have to be able to try to control your emotions the best you can. It also taught me that in this field, you’re going to experience death, and I felt it helped me be more comfortable with postmortem and end-of-life care, and being able to support patients and their families in that process. It helped me face a lot of fears.”
Lewis continued to work in the ICU for her senior synthesis externships, which helped her gain vital experience in critical care. She’ll be leaning on that experience in her new role as an ICU step-down nurse at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, where she’ll be caring for patients who no longer require the round-the-clock care of the ICU but are not yet stable enough to move to a general medical-surgical floor.
Lewis notes that it’s hard work, often involving severe conditions such as respiratory issues and cardiac arrest as well as a higher nurse-to-patient ratio, but she’s looking forward to expanding her critical judgment skills. Plus, she’s always wanted to work at St. Mary’s, which is the same hospital where her grandmother received care when Lewis was growing up.
Lewis is proud to have completed her degree, noting the clinical judgment, critical thinking and time management skills required to balance the challenging nursing coursework on top of clinical rotations. She’s excited to start her career as a nurse in the ICU step-down and hopes to continue growing in her skillset so that she can eventually return to UMSL to teach in some capacity.
“I want to be a foundation and support and help nursing students have a better transition from student to nurse,” she said. “I feel like UMSL definitely gave me the foundation of how to be a student and what to expect in nursing, but the clinical courses, especially the nurse externship, have shown me what you do in school is not always what you’re going to see done in clinical practice. You have to be able to adjust and adapt to all situations that come. They always tell us that nursing isn’t black and white, which is very true.”
