The White County Medical Center opened in 1967 with a starting staff of 50 employees. Now, the hospital is the largest employer in Searcy with a medical staff of 150 physicians and more than 1,750 associates and has 438 licensed beds.
Tanya McGary has been working as a nurse for 23 years, 16 of which she has spent at White County Medical Center. She started there on the medical surgical fl oor, where she worked in a 36 bed unit with a variety of ill patients. Last November, she accepted a job in the educational department, where she teaches graduated nurses in the new RN Residency Program.
Q: How do you find a connection with the patients?
A: The patients are like our family, our community, people that we live around. Those are the ones we’re going to take care of. You have to treat them like your family or the most significant person in your life. So you want them to have the best care and treat them with the most respect and compassion and care 24/7.
Q: What’s the key to being a Nurse Educator?
A: Communication is the key. You have to be able to communicate with your team and understand your staff. The other educators and I have to understand the different ways nurses learn. We all interpret in a different way, and the way you can administrate that care could be different. The only right way to do it is to understand how to take care of patients in a way they can have an impact on them in the proper way. I am just observant. What we do for education and for our nurses impacts them and they will carry that on. If we have respect for our students, they will have respect for the patient. It’s cohesive. The way you treat them they will treat others.
Q: What’s the difference with working in a college town?
A: Here in Searcy, I get the opportunity to meet people and young nurses from different backgrounds. I learn about their environment, why they chose nursing or about their heart for mission. I want to hear their stories and the patients want to hear it too because it brings them to a more personal level. Sometimes we might have students with severe infections, meningitis or appendicitis who are far from home. Then we always try to have somebody from Harding to be with them and talk to their family. We don’t want them to be alone and we do whatever we can locate their family. We comfort them and stay next to them until someone can get here.
Q: Why did you become a nurse?
A: I became a nurse because of a major surgery where I almost lost my life. God kept telling me I needed to be nurse, but I kept telling him I couldn’t. I finally gave in and took the test and got accepted into nursing school. I love every second of every day. Twenty-three years and it hasn’t been a day where I felt like I haven’t done something in someone’s life, even if it’s just a smile, greeting a patient or holding the door for someone.
* * *
McGary’s son, Will McGary, was a police officer in Conway who was killed by an intoxicated driver while on duty last February. He donated his organs and earlier this week McGary and her family were able to meet the 16 years old recipient of one of her son’s kidneys for the first time. McGary said she believes whatever happened was God’s will and said she is glad her son keeps touching lives.
