Summerour thriving as a nursing student during pandemic
By Emily Schmidt
University Communications Student Assistant
studentpio@minotstateu.edu
MINOT, N.D. – There is no such thing as a typical day for senior nursing student Erica Summerour.
Completing the penultimate semester of her degree, Summerour is barely on campus. When she is, it’s to practice real life, potentially fatal medical scenarios on a simulation mannequin. Besides that, Summerour’s week consists of clinicals, clinicals, and more clinicals.
“This semester is public health and critical care,” she said. “Somedays I'm in ICU or the kidney dialysis unit, or today I did home health, so I was helping visit people’s homes and assessing them, seeing what they needed, and helping the nurse figure out what assistance programs we could get them on. Our clinicals are highly dependent on what areas we are studying in that specific semester.”
There could not have been a better time to study public health.
“The COVID stuff fits in well because of the public health focus this semester,” Summerour said. “It feels just as hectic but almost in a different way. The schedules usually don’t change as much as they have. We’ve had some clinical places cancel on us because they’re not letting people in due to COVID. We are limited in certain areas because we’re not allowed to work with COVID patients at all. For example, today I couldn’t go with my nurse to the last two houses she went to because they were COVID positive.”
But somehow this semester is not the worst-case scenario for Summerour, regardless of the addition of a global pandemic.
“This, overall, is a calmer semester compared to the last two that I've had because of the workload in general,” she said. “I’m also in the part of the nursing program that is considered over the hill, like things are kind of easing down. But yeah, there’s definitely no typical day though because things get switched around and we have to make up every hour we miss.”
There are some benefits that Summerour has seen in all the chaos. For one thing, the unsteady nature of her clinicals gives her opportunities to experience a variety of fields.
“Even in the program we get to try different units because it helps you know what areas you want to work in after you graduate,” she said. “For example, I thought I would like pediatrics more than I did; I bawled after I gave a two-month-old an antibiotic shot, so I knew that pediatrics was not for me. Or today with home health, I thought I was going to hate it, but today was probably one of the coolest clinicals I’ve gone to.”
On top of experiencing the many facets of the medical field, Summerour also gets to practice a skill that can’t be taught in the classroom: to be adaptive.
“With nursing, there’s no, ‘A happens, then B happens, then C happens.’ It’s more like, A happens; what are you going to do about it? What can you change? Then all of the sudden F is thrown in there, and it’s like what is going on?” she said. “The pandemic isn’t exactly fun, but it’s something I think nursing students are handling well because of the fact that it’s something we need to learn, to be adaptive like that and to figure out things and make them work.”
At the end of the day, whatever kind of day it may have been, there is one thing that keeps Summerour motivated to start all over the next morning.
“We’re probably one of the few groups of students that are equipped to help with this kind of a situation. It actually puts my skills to use,” she said. “I expected it to be busy. I never expected a pandemic to come in and flip everything upside down, but it’s nice knowing that we are useful even before we graduate.”
About Minot State University
Minot State University is a public university dedicated to excellence in education, scholarship, and community engagement achieved through
rigorous academic experiences, active learning environments, commitment to public service, and a vibrant campus life.
Published: 11/02/20
