GATHRIGHT DISCOVERS NICHE IN BLINN’S ASSOCIATE DEGREE NURSING PROGRAM
Samantha Gathright thought she wanted to spend her life caring for animals. Instead, she found her path caring for people.
“I love animals. I adore them,” said Gathright, a 26-year-old Blinn College alumnus from Porter, Texas. “But there’s just something about interacting with people and bettering their lives that really gets to me. It makes me feel like I’m making a difference, especially when you can educate patients about caring for themselves.”
After volunteering at St. Joseph Health System’s oncology unit four years ago, Gathright, then an animal science major at Texas A&M University, decided to make the switch to Blinn College’s highly-regarded Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program.
But not without a few bumps in the road.
“I didn’t get in the first time,” Gathright said. “It was a bummer, but I reapplied and got accepted in January 2013. Looking back to the first day when the instructors told us it wasn’t going to be an easy ride—that was so true. To see how far we’ve all come is unfathomable.”
Gathright graduated in December 2014 with her associate degree in nursing and earned a job as a registered nurse in the emergency room at Scott & White Hospital in College Station, where she assists doctors in treating and diagnosing patients on an emergent basis. Gathright said she loves the fast-paced, ever-changing nature of the ER.
“You never know what is going to come through the door,” she said. “I’ve seen patients from 12 days old to 92. Being able to serve and interact with people in this capacity is wonderful. It’s what I was meant to do.”
Gathright plans to earn a master’s degree in nursing so she can train future nurses while remaining an ER nurse, much like Blinn ADN instructors Jaime Hardy and Cynthia Comley, and Blinn College Nursing Student Association Advisor Sami Rahman.
“I think I learned more from Mrs. Comley than anyone else,” Gathright said. “Every morning in clinicals we would have 15 minutes of intense questioning over drugs and pathology. I had to call her and thank her after taking my Emergency Nurses Association exam because a question came up that she had drilled us over a million times.”
Gathright will undergo training to become a sexual assault nurse examiner to care for patients who have experienced sexual assault or abuse, and volunteers with The Bridge Ministries Medical Clinic, a nonprofit community clinic.
“I would go back to Blinn every time,” Gathright said. “The bedside manner you learn from Blinn faculty is not something you can get anywhere else.”
Prospective ADN students can participate in information sessions taking place the first week every month. Each information session will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Texas A&M Health Science Center campus located at 8441 State Highway 47 in Bryan. To register, visit: www.blinn.edu/twe/adn/info_session.php.
In addition to associate degree nursing, Blinn’s Division of Health Sciences offers dental hygiene, emergency medical services, physical therapist assistant, radiologic technology, fire science, therapeutics manufacturing, veterinary technology and vocational nursing programs. Story and photo courtesy of Blinn College.