Patients' choice: Nurse builds trust with clients

Posted May 21, 2009 11:00 pm

A year ago, registered nurse Tina Bullocks won the Patients' Choice Award at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan.

The announcement came at a luncheon held during National Nurses' Week, and it caught Bullocks by complete surprise.

"I felt like I was at a pageant, with the second runner up, and then the first runner up," Bullocks says with a laugh. "But it was such a good feeling when they announced my name, and just to hear what all of my patients had to say."

If they raved about Bullocks' care and compassion, the feeling is mutual. She loves taking care of her patients, and she looks forward to work every day. Bullocks works on 4 West at Vista Medical Center East, where she cares for patients that include those needing medical surgical procedures, orthopedics and oncology.

Her interest in caring for patients goes back to her parents, she says. They both worked as nurses' aids at Hines VA Hospital and spent much of their time listening to stories shared by the veterans.

She is in her 30th year at Vista, having begun at the former Victory Memorial Hospital in 1979, as a licensed practical nurse on the medical surgical unit.

Within a few years, Bullocks decided to pursue a registered nursing degree. While working full time at the hospital, which also helped pay for her schooling, she took classes at the College of Lake County in Grayslake.

"I was a single mom at the time, and my daughter was just a toddler," Bullocks says. "That's why I wanted to go forward, to take care of her."

Bullocks earned her nursing degree in 1988, and for the last 21 years she has remained committed to bedside nursing. In recent years, she has added some supervisory responsibilities, serving as the charge nurse for the second shift.

When she comes in at 3 p.m. each day, she looks over the daily reports, and assigns the other nurses and patient care technicians, before assessing her own patients. During the shift, she distributes medications, starts IVs, changes dressings, while occasionally having to insert a nasogastric tube and monitor chemotherapy ports for cancer patients.

"Every day is different, and you're constantly busy," Bullocks says, "especially on the second shift. It seems like that's always the time people are admitted to the hospital."

For those patients who are admitted to her floor during the late afternoon or evening, Bullocks may be the first person they meet, and she strives to make that first impression a positive one.

"You see people at their worst, when they come to the hospital," Bullocks says, "and sometimes that first contact can make all the difference to them, and their families."

Tina Bullocks, a nurse at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan, gives bedside care to patient Maria Elena Martinez of Gurnee. Bob Chwedyk | Staff Photographer

Tina Bullocks Age: 51 Hometown: North Chicago Specialty: Treating medical surgical patients as well as those in orthopedics and oncology Best part about the job: "The trust that develops between the patient and the nurse. You walk away feeling like you've helped someone."

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