Chad Plank

HIST 150 0002

March 25, 2016

A. I conducted this interview in a hotel room in harrisonburg because i was sick with the flu during spring break. I recorded the interview with a recording app and converted it to mp3 on garage band.

B.Dr. April Plank is a 51 year old female born in Port Jefferson, New York.  She was the third child born of 6 children to Oliver and June Voorhees.  Her father was an auto body repairman who completed through the 8^th grade before leaving school to work.  Her mother was the first and only of 8 children to graduate high school. April completed undergraduate nursing degree in 1986, Master’s degree for Nurse Practitioner in 1991 and Doctoral degree in 2009 at The State University of New York @ Stony Brook.  She is married to her college sweetheart for 30 years and they have 5 children, 4 of which are biological and one adopted.  She works full time as a doctorate prepared Nurse Practitioner.

C. In the late 1900s the role of woman was starting to change but still had a certain standard. You were supposed to raise a family and support your husband but making a living for herself was starting to grow. Many woman became nurses and the career was mainly run by woman.

TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW

 

1. Can you describe what career choices you were encouraged to pursue during your childhood.

“So, my um parents were very supportive, but they never really said, ‘You should do this or do that, when you’re done with high school’.  They talked a lot about me and my sisters being mothers and um, really, I was never, I don’t ever recall you know being told, you would be good at this or you should pursue this or that.  They did, however, I worked at McDonald’s when I was in high school and um, my dad did talk to me about how you know, I could get a promotion and could be a crew trainer and then an assistant manager.  That was when I was in high school.  That’s the only career discussion that I really ever recall.”

2. How did these differ, if at all, from the career choices that your brothers were encouraged to pursue?

“So, I am uh, one of 4 girls and I have 2 brothers and um, my older brother…I remember you know distinctly many conversations my dad having with him about how he was , you know, had to have a a training, so he encouraged him in HS to train in the auto body industry, which is what he was in and then he encouraged him to go on in his post high school education um those were a lot of discussions whereas my sisters and I, I don’t really remember him any conversations about encouraging us to move on other than, you know other than finding our husbands and being moms.”

3. Can you describe what made you pursue nursing?

“Yea, um, when I was in high school I always loved the sciences.  And I actually had um, the good fortune of, you know, being an athlete and getting a scholarship to college which is (chuckle) probably why I went to college, but when I was thinking about what to study, one of my teachers, my biology teacher said to me ‘hey, you know what are you going to study?’ and I really had never had the discussion with anyone and he said ‘well you really like the sciences why don’t you think about something in health care’ and um, so that’s when I started thinking about health care and nursing.”

4. Can you describe what it was like in health care when you first began your career and how it differs from today.

Yea, so I’ve been um a nurse and now a nurse practitioner for 30 years and I can tell you there’s been drastic changes over the last few decades.  Um, For example, when I started, I work for a big academic hospital and I’ve been there my entire career and when I started, um there were 2 male nurses in the entire hospital; now there are literally hundreds. And when I started there were not just a handful but I would say maybe 10% of the physicians were females and um so there’s been a huge gender transition as far as there’s it’s about split there might even be more female physicians than males now and there’s certainly a bigger population of male nurses so that’s a big difference.  In addition, when I started in health care there wasn’t a lot of encouragement of like team input where now there’s a  focus on, um for patient care, they want input from the entire team which includes the nurses and the nurse’s aides; so that’s a big difference as well.

5. Do you feel that your daughters have broader opportunities in the work force than you did?

Absolutely um, and I’m really happy about that. I believe that um, the young people who are graduating from you know, various college degrees, the females have, you know, certainly seem to have, a closer, they have almost equal opportunity, I’m not sure if it’s completely equal but it’s they have opportunities that all the men have and that’s with regard to every career I can think of really.

6. How has the health care field changed over the lifetime of your career?

Well I guess just to reiterate what I said earlier I think theres more of a focus on team input.  I think that every worker in our health care center is more valued, so when the nurse’s aide wants to give input during rounds about how the patient responded to either a medication or a physical therapy treatment um it’s definitely valued.  It’s often put in the record.  Whereas when I started it was the physicians making the decisions, they were mostly males. Its more of a team input now.

7. What obstacles do you face in your career that you felt were directly related to your gender?

Um you know when I became a nurse and I started working in the intensive care unit I definitely fell in love with the field of health care.  And I started, I was only 22 when I graduated and I was thinking about going to medical school. And I discussed with various co-workers and everyone really encouraged me you know and everyone really encouraged me that you know one day I was going to be a mom and being a physician would be difficult to manage being a mother and why don’t I go to grad school and I’m really thrilled with my career

But I do feel that it was an obstacle if I wanted to go to medical school.  It really wasn’t widely encouraged and I think it is now. In addition it’s a little difficult to juggle your family with your career.

Something that I had to deal with

8. How difficult was it to adjust to motherhood while maintaining your career.

To be honest I had quite a difficult time going back to work after I was a mother.  I felt a lot of guilt leaving my first baby and my whole family at one point when I would work.  Because I think that you still have this feeling about how my mom was a mother and all the things she did and I wanted to do all that and have a very successful career. So it was a little difficult to juggle but once I came to terms with that I couldn’t do everything but I could do some things well but it took a little time.

9. What advice would you give a college student interested in nursing being a male, like myself?

So I would tell you I have over 30 years after graduating and becoming a nurse and I can honestly say I absolutely love my career. So I would say that to anyone male or female and I would tell you as a male that theres a much higher rate of being hired as a nurse.

You shouldn’t feel any hesitation theres much higher rate of males highered the historical view

of a nurse back in the older times of all nurses being females no longer holds true. And you should pursue it and look forward to a very interesting and satisfying career.