Kathy Schmitt: nursing
What do you think was the best thing about being a nurse at Horsham Clinic?
Well, the funny thing about being a nurse at Horsham Clinic, I had spent all my nursing years working in critical care. I worked in the ER at Abington. I worked in ICU at Jefferson. I had worked in at St. Agnes. Well, I went back, I failed to mention that when I started working, when I got out of the 3-year diploma program, I started taking 1 or 2 courses every semester and they gave you a year’s credit. So I had 3 years of college to do. I walked from Jefferson to Penn for my classes at night and then took the subway home.
But I plodded along with that, paid my tuition, went into my classes, you know, twice a week, at least full-time in the summer. I took a little leave to go full time. because I remember this because with Karla was asking me recently about the space walk. And I said, I was in Biology class at Penn when the spacewalk came, and that was in July. And I was taking a 6-week full-time course, and he abandoned class and just put a TV on so we could watch it.
I got to my last year full-time and I went to Penn. I had 1 year to go and I went full-time. Got my BS. And then, I worked at St. Agnes for a couple of years.
I got a job in delivery room, not too far from critical care, and they did C-sections and operations and everything. But, then, somebody called me about a teaching physician and a practical nurse school.
I went over to interview and she goes, oh, you don’t have any education courses. And I said, well, they don’t do that on the bachelor’s level. So I said, well, let me go out to Penn and see if I can take a couple of undergraduate education courses or curriculum or something like that, if that’s what you want. So the staff there that was interviewing me said, you don’t need to take undergraduate classes. You have your degree; you need to start taking graduate classes. Well, that was a little scary. However, she said, I can get you funding where the whole MS program is a 2- year program that required a thesis and everything, but you know what? That was so great.
But back to Horsham. So I had worked in other kinds of things. I worked at St. Agnes teaching for a while. But I went to take a job at Horsham Clinic when they were doing a depression study and they needed somebody to start IVs. And of course, in the ER, they do that. So I said, oh, I can do that. Sure. And I was easing back in after James was born. And it was like a part-time. I went over to interview and the woman said, oh, I got somebody for that. I don’t need you for that. I need you to be in our pool. And I said, I don’t do psych. And she goes, you’ve been doing psych your whole life. You worked in the ER.
I said okay. I tried it out, and it was a very hard year that we were in flux, and I was getting a divorce. I was part-time and then I wound up with no medical insurance. I interviewed and took a full-time job and got benefits and that as kind of just fell into it, but I really did like it.
I had a lot of friends there and just, yeah, it’s so funny. I wanted to start a book club there, and we did start a book club, but then one of the nurses retired, the night nurse, and another one couldn’t do it. And one moved down to New Jersey. So our book club kind of disbanded a little bit. Then I was trying to get people on my unit to join a book club and they said, we don’t read, are you crazy? I said, well, why don’t we do a movie club?
They loved it. We would go to the movies once a month after work. Like if we’re 30, nobody in the theater but us, and then we would go have dinner and discuss the movie.
And then my book club revived because a couple of people came to me and said they want to do book club and movie club. The 6 of us always went to the movies, and sometimes more people if they wanted to. I had a nice social life at Horsham and, I guess I met my current closest friend, Stacy, there, and we started traveling together on trips.
Stacy was divorced, and I was divorced, and rather than pay a single supplement, we tried a trip together. We went to Paris, and that first trip was wonderful. We walked all over. I was kind of the navigator. I would make plans, we’re doing this, we’re doing this. We’ll walk in here. We’ll walk in there and just like, look at it.
I knew Stacy would like to sit in a pub or a bistro all day. So I told her that I would give her time for her relax with her hot chocolate or her beer or whatever she wanted. If you know, at least follow an itinerary. And she loved it. She loved it. And I loved that. We had little breaks because of her.
I made a lot of friends at Horsham. First, I was on the adolescent unit. I loved that unit. But then the docs that ran it left, and they did a whole restructuring thing. And to be frank, I figured they were going to bring their own people in and I was left with nothing.
I got my resume together and I thought, goodbye, Horsham Clinic. However, then I was called back and, asked if I would go for at least a year or 6 months to finish out a drop-in counselor role at Cheltenham High School. I did that, but it came with no benefits. They were going to keep my benefits because I would work a little part-time too, and weekends.
School was easy, 8:30 to 2:30. The kids would come to the office, sit down, just want to chat, get out of class, whatever. Then I did a few classes with them on health issues and that kind of thing.
I loved it. The only thing is it had been a social worker job that didn’t have any benefits. And when they renegotiated with me in the summertime too, we started in September. They weren’t going to give benefits, and the pay wasn’t even as good as I was getting already. So I said, no thanks, but they gave me a unit of dual diagnosis, adults. And that’s where I retired from.