E6
NURSES
MAY 2023
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
Experience as a patient inspired nursing career
By GEORGE HAWS george.haws@nptelegraph.com C ourtney Viter had planned to go into the Air Force until she was in her senior year of high school. Her change of heart started when “I was playing basketball ... and ended up having to have knee surgery.” “My mom wasn’t able to go back with me" into surgery, she said. "I had to go back by myself.” As she was coming out of anesthesia, the nurse who took care of her happened to be the mother of a classmate. “It was kind of like having my mom back there with me,” Viter said. “Her caring really eased my nerves.” “I went back (into the waiting area) and my mom asked, ‘How are you doing?,’ and I said, “I’m going to be a nurse one day.”
Her mom, Jodi Wenburg, wasn’t so sure. “She told me, ‘No, you’re just on the meds.’" But Courtney was sure. Her dad, Alton Wenburg, “was a little upset that I didn’t join the military,” but he didn’t try to talk her out of it. He had been in the army, and Courtney’s grandfathers and many other family members had served in the U.S. armed forces. Both parents supported her decision. Viter attended Mid-Plains Community College and made a conscious decision to stay in rural Nebraska. She met her future husband, Cole Viter, about a year after she graduated from high school. He was in the military and soon after was deployed. “I stayed close to home, close to family," she said. "Having that support while I was going to nursing school, it really helped to get across that bridge in life. “
Now she and Cole are married and have a 2-year-old son, Hunter. “ He loves playing with my stethoscope and listening to his heart and the dogs’ hearts.” Viter completed her prerequisite classes, then enrolled in nursing school at Mid-Plains and graduated as a licensed practical nurse in 2019. “I was able to work on the ICU floor (at Great Plains Health) as a CNA (certified nursing assistant) for a year and a half while I was going to nursing school," she said. "So I got really hands-on, helping the older, experienced nurses.” She also worked as a CNA for other, smaller hospitals from 2015 to 2018. “Being a CNA and having that role experience in what the nurses do, it really opens your eyes and gives you an opportunity to see the potential that you have in the future.” With her LPN degree, Viter was hired as a progressive care unit nurse in ICU at Great Plains Health.
there, holding the IPad, letting the fam- ily Facetime,” as if she were “that other family member” for them. Viter went back to school in 2020 and earned her registered nurse degree in 2021. She was recently advanced from ICU progressive care unit nurse on the ICU floor to ICU RN. “For me it’s the passion — not only to help me grow as a person, but being there for my patients — for (their) outcome to be equal if not better” than it had been before they required the medical care. When there is that occasional grouchy patient, she said, “you’ve got to really understand what they’re going through. Sometimes it’s hard not to (get grouchy back), but you’ve just got to look at the bigger picture and realize they’re sick, they’re not in their home environment, they’re not with their loved ones.” Nursing “truly is one of the most rewarding jobs out
there,” Viter said. She is happy to be able to “have a positive im- pact on somebody else’s life.” While
“I truly love it here,” she said. “I really don’t see myself going anywhere else." COVID hit our area in 2020. “I think COVID for me really opened my eyes,” said Viter. As an LPN, “I didn’t have the ability to do the high-risk things that the RNs (registered nurses) could do,” but she was able to do a lot of things to help them “so there was less stress on them” during what otherwise was a very stressful time. She also played a
you’re “helping somebody else’s hard time get better, your pa- tients really do have a posi- tive output on you, as well.”
crucial role in support- ing patients’ f am i l i e s when no vis- itors were allowed in the hospi- tal. “I was
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