When she meets someone for the first time, Kaitlyn Hall cuts right to the chase when describing what she does for a living – “I save lives!” she tells them. “This is my favorite thing to say.”
As a practical nurse (PN), Hall does just that – and more. Hall graduated from the Practical Nursing program at Prism Career Institute in Philadelphia. She is employed by Aria Health, working in the Telemetry Unit. A telemetry unit is a unit in a hospital where patients are under continuous electronic monitoring, such as heart rate, heart rhythm and breathing – but by the patient’s bed and at a remote location like a nursing station.
In addition to her work at Aria, Hall is a CPR instructor with the American Heart Association.
“I always wanted to be in health care,” Hall said. “Helping people is part of me and I have a drive to do this. It comes naturally.”
While at Prism, Hall says she did a “ton” of assessments, which is the one aspect of her education that best prepared her for her new career. She had previously worked in mental health, but was looking for a way to more closely connect with patients whom she could directly help.
Hall cites one instructor as having the strongest influence on her educational journey. When learning about respiratory and metabolic acidosis and alkalosis instructor Amos Odeleye spent a great deal of time after class with Hall while she created a master visual map of this process in order to learn and master the concept.
Hall chose Prism because of its smaller size and said she loved the environment from day one.
“When I started at Prism, I just wanted to ‘do well,’” she said. “Then I saw some success and started to believe being very good at this was possible.” Hall went on to become valedictorian of her class.
Hall says that some people question some of the unglamorous parts of the work she does, but she’ll have none of that.
“It’s just simply helping someone who needs the help,” she said. “This work prevents greater suffering and if I don’t do it now it gets worse for the patent later.”
But Hall joked that the worst part of the job isn’t the body fluids, as many people would assume but that it’s the little buttons on the sleeves of the gowns.
“To succeed at anything, you have to fight and be willing to make sacrifices,” she said. “You have to be so determined that there is no other way. You have to want success more than you are willing to make excuses to be successful.”