When you think of clinical research, you may picture doctors and scientists collecting data or patients trying new treatment regimens. However, some very important people are missing from this picture: clinical research nurses.
Nursing
“I would like to say thank you to my coworkers and Roswell Park for allowing me to come to a place where I love my job every day, and I choose to stay here."
“I love the people I work with,” says MaryEllen "Mel" Lenz, RN, AAS, who admits being “in shock” when she received the Nurse of the Month award. “I love my job, the people I work with and I love the patients.”
Oncology nursing provides the opportunity and privilege to interact with patients and their families at a difficult time in their lives. We are caregivers, cheerleaders, confidants and, in many cases, close friends.
Day in and day out, the nurses at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center provide outstanding care to their patients, doing their best to lift spirits and make things a little brighter for people going through a difficult time.
Keppel feels that her daily mission is to do right by her patients.
As we mark National Nurses Day and the beginning of National Nurses Week, it’s fitting to remember that in the United States, the first professional training programs for nurses grew out of the Civil War.
I’ve never taken my career choice for granted. I always knew that I wanted to take care of people during times when they couldn’t care for themselves. Seeing how this has manifested in my life has been a true blessing.
Life has a funny way of leading you down the right path, despite the plans you have for yourself. That path led me to a very special friendship.
Where she once cared for active-duty troops, families and retired members of the armed forces, Dr. Bell now supports patients in waging war against cancer at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Christine Pieri graduated from nursing school on a Saturday and started work at Roswell Park the following Monday. In those early days, “I didn’t know much about oncology,” she says, “but once I got here, that became my passion."
Prospective employers expressed doubt that she was really a nurse or emphasized that even if she were hired, she would not receive the same pay as the white nurses and would have to eat alone, in the kitchen. Those roadblocks were no match for the determination of Eva Bateman.