Cradled in care: Young alum nurtures infants in their fight for life

While her classmates hung out at movie theatres and football games, Janessa (Stimpert) Jenkins ’06 endured a battery of medical testing and treatments during her freshman year of high school. Chronic pain syndrome kept her in the hospital months at a time.

The experience was traumatic, yet there was a positive outcome. Jenkins eventually received a clean bill of health, and while fighting her illness she found her life’s vocation: nursing.

Before her time in the hospital, Jenkins aspired to become a physician. She wanted to understand the way diseases affect the human body, and work to alleviate suffering.  She was convinced medical school was the only way to reach that goal.

Her perspective changed during the course of her own treatment. Jenkins lost interest in the doctor’s role as she realized the impressive and often underappreciated work of the nurses.

“I was a lot more comfortable with the way nurses approached a patient than did doctors,” Jenkins said. “I think nurses look at the whole patient rather than just the medical issue in need of fixing. In my constant interactions with the nurses, they took the time to know me and recognize my needs beyond just medicine.”

The appeal of a holistic approach to healthcare prompted Jenkins to enroll in Illinois State’s Mennonite College of Nursing (MCN), where she gained a greater understanding of individual patient needs. She entered the program with an interest in neonatal care, which also arose in high school as she was entrusted to babysit a preemie during the child’s first six months of life. She crossed the commencement stage equipped to pursue her passion.

“The biggest thing I got out of my MCN education was the critical thinking skills—to step back and look at the pieces of the picture. What is important is what you do with your brain, not your hands,” she said. “They taught us all along to focus on a patient’s culture, their spirituality. That was drilled into every class that we took, rather than just focusing on the medical issue.”

The college also gave Jenkins a competitive advantage through work experience prior to graduation. Her stellar academic record resulted in three hospitals offering a nursing externship for the summer between her junior and senior years. She chose OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria because it is equipped to care for the sickest of infants. For eight weeks she worked with a veteran nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“I would have been happy in any other related field, but from the minute I stepped foot into the neonatal intensive care unit, I knew I was home,” Jenkins said. “I learned so much through my externship, in terms of being able to manage patient situations. Saint Francis was wonderful in that they allowed me to take on as much responsibility as possible within the defined rules. By the time I finished the program that summer, I was able to take care of critical care babies with very little supervision.”

Jenkins was responsible for the assessment and technical nursing care of one to three infants, as well as education for the parents. She amazed her peers with an ability to stay calm under pressure—even when expected to care for critical babies weighing less than a pound. She so impressed the medical staff that when she applied for an R.N. position after graduating, Saint Francis hired her immediately.

The hospital’s Neonatal Clinical Nurse Educator Cheryl Colgan called Jenkins one of the best new graduates she ever worked with because of her strong work ethic, critical thinking, and advanced decision-making skills.

“Janessa is mature enough to speak up and interact with the neonatologists in the unit,” Colgan said. “She is very willing to work as a team player, and appreciates the role of each member of the NICU team and what they bring to patient care.”

Jenkins became such a valued caregiver that Saint Francis covered all of her expenses for a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program at Vanderbilt University. The program, which earned her a master’s in nursing, helped fulfill an ambition Jenkins had possessed since first deciding between nursing and medical school.

“Being a nurse practitioner gave me the best of both worlds,” she said. “I would still be a nurse—I’ll always be a nurse—but I’d also have the knowledge and the advanced skills to be able to take care of my patients on another level. I decided I wanted to do that at some point. The scholarships just fell in my lap.”

During the grueling 12-month program, Jenkins traveled to Vanderbilt for a week every other month while receiving hands-on training at Saint Francis. The work was in addition to her responsibilities as an R.N. in the hospital’s NICU. Upon graduation Jenkins became a neonatal nurse practitioner, filling an important need in the new, tremendously larger NICU that Saint Francis opened in August of 2010.

She is now required to attend all high-risk deliveries, and is in charge of resuscitating newborns on the hospital’s new 60-bed neonatal wing. Beyond handling advanced procedures such as central lines and intubations, she has a caseload of eight to 12 critical care infants.

Every day she makes rounds with the doctors, appraising each patient’s situation by checking lab results, optimizing ventilator settings, and adjusting medication. She then presents a 24-hour treatment plan to the patient’s interdisciplinary NICU team. Team members most often include a doctor, nurse, dietician, social worker, physical therapist—and the patients’ parents.

Bringing the family into the decision-making process is a departure from paternalistic medicine. The approach to patient care is so new that other units within Saint Francis come to observe the team meetings.

“Patient care is evolving now that people have access to so much information,” Jenkins said. “We have people come in and say ‘What about this? Have you tried this treatment?’ Twenty years ago they wouldn’t have known that kind of treatment even existed.”

Jenkins excels at providing helpful communication to patient families, and her colleagues have noticed.

“She never shies away from conversations with parents who are struggling with how their child is doing in the NICU,” Colgan said. “Families acknowledge Janessa in follow-up phone calls positively. They appreciate the care and concern she has given to them and their infant.”

Her ability to put herself in the shoes of her patient’s family is one of Jenkins greatest strengths. “For every family, I think ‘What if this were my baby? And what if this were me?’” Jenkins said. “I take care of everybody in that way, and I think it shows.”

She is equally committed to nurturing those who are following her footsteps at MCN. Jenkins gladly serves as one of the hospital’s preceptors for Mennonite nursing students in the Parent Child Nursing course, providing the same guidance to students that she received. Her willingness to partner with her alma mater is greatly appreciated by the MCN faculty, including Instructional Assistant Professor Lynn Kennell.

“Janessa has been very supportive in the program,” said Kennell, who observed Jenkins as a student and worked with her as a mentor in the Mennonite clinical lab. They are now professional partners through the NICU observational experience that MCN students complete.

“She is soft spoken, but when under her guidance the students need to know their stuff. We feel confident to send students to NICU at Saint Francis,” Kennell said, fondly recalling the days when Jenkins was in the nursing program.

“Janessa was a stellar student not just from an academic perspective,” Kennell said. “She wanted to expand her knowledge of the pathophysiology and understand why implementation of certain interventions would help alleviate the problems. She is a very committed young lady, and is very serious about providing safe, compassionate care to babies and their families, and lifelong learning because she wants to be the best she can be.”

Illinois State formally recognized Jenkins’ dedication to the field of nursing in the spring, presenting her with Mennonite College of Nursing’s Young Alumni award. Jenkins was awed by the nurses who were in her company at the ceremony.

“To be there with so many great veteran nurses, have them congratulate me, and present me with an award was such a dichotomy,” Jenkins said. “I was thinking, ‘You have been in nursing for 60 years,’ and here I am with just four years experience.”

Jenkins obviously did belong. She was thanked by several nurses for her inspiring words as she shared her dedication to the field. Her reflections on the strong bond that inevitably forms with the patients and their families moved several in the audience to tears.

“It’s very difficult not to become attached, very difficult. I go to birthday parties, we have reunion picnics, and I get Christmas cards. But I also go to funerals,” Jenkins said. “That’s the real fact of the job. You have to do all those things. And you never know on a given day which one you’re going to have to do.”