Where Nursing Meets Mission

Stephanie Dull, RN: I feel so privileged that I get to see people like on the worst moments of their life and be part of that transformation. When I watch them, it’s like, I can’t believe I get to be part of this. Watching them get better. It’s very exciting, and it’s very rewarding.

Paige Kemper, Nurse Manager: Cedars is a crisis stabilization unit. Our main goal is to help get the patient out of their crisis, get them more stabilized, get them back to a baseline where they can be discharged back to the community and be productive.

Greg Lehman, RN: One of the greatest rewards of the job is seeing people get better. Even in the course of like over a long weekend, we can sometimes can see people come in that are quite agitated or suicidal, and then by a few days later they have become much more stable and they see that they’re ready to go out there and go back to their families and jobs.

Ruby Ledesma, RN: Mental health, I think mental health is very important and it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. Everyone has mental health, whether it be some that need more help and others that don’t.

Lisa Short, Director of Nursing: Psych nursing is different in that you are actually working with the patient instead of just working with the disease.

Stephanie: I feel like psychiatric nursing gives you so much more relationship building opportunities because you are spending time with the patient, not just to, you know, dress a wound. You are actually there for them. And it’s imperative that you develop relationships so they can be honest with what they’re feeling and thinking and you can assist them best the more you know them. So it really is all about relationship building.

Paige: When you’re orienting, what I always hear from new employees, new orientees, is how friendly and how helpful everybody is on Cedars. And not just Cedars, but the whole process.

Ruby: I feel like we’re all very close. We all have a good relationship.

Stephanie: What I love about Oaklawn specifically is, my coworkers are always people who are trying to do the next best step, the next right step, the next right thing. I like my coworkers. We all have a similar heart for helping our patients, and there’s something that Oaklawn’s doing right in their hiring process
because I work with coworkers who have the same mission as me. We’re all on mission.