Amanda Grabowski: Nurse on the Front Lines

July 5, 2010— -- Gutsy, compassionate and resilient, Amanda Grabowski is a nurse at the front line of care in the Mass General emergency room, where she can treat a mild headache to a multi-vehicle-car-accident trauma situation within hours.

"I just love the excitement of the emergency room," she said. "You see a little bit of everything."

Raised in Lynn, Massachusetts, Grabowski's parents divorced when she was nine years old. Living with her single working mom, Debbie, Grabowski considered herself a shy and quiet girl who struggled to fit in with people as a teenager. She grew up as a latch-key kid who learned very quickly how to be on her own.

"It was tough because I always had to kind of parent myself," she said. "I didn't have anyone there to say, 'Do your homework.' I just did it. Maybe because I had to take care of myself growing up is why I got into this profession -- was to help take care of other people."

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Another great influence on Grabowski's decision to follow a path into nursing was her Aunt Kathy. As a teen visiting her aunt in Florida, Grabowski was inspired by her work as a visiting nurse.

"She took me a couple times to houses with her, and I got to see what she did, and I just loved it," Grabowski said. "I think it's great to be able to be there for people, especially in the emergency department when you're seeing them at the absolutely worst, and to be able to comfort them and make them feel better in any slight way that you can."

Grabowski went on to receive her clinical training at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts.

In her four years at Mass General, she twice has been voted Mass General ER's "Nurse of the Year." She loves the unpredictability of working on the ER floor and the challenges of dealing quickly and skillfully with patients from all walks of life with a spectrum of problems.

"In the ER, you get the entire spectrum of nursing minute by minute in one shift," ," said Maryfran Hughes, nursing director of emergency services at Mass General. "You can be a pediatric nurse with one patient, a cardiac nurse with another, and then a psychiatric nurse with your next patient.

"People who like a lot of structure or control in their lives don't find ER nursing satisfying," Hughes added. "But people who thrive on not knowing what's going to come through the door, those are the people who stay on ER floor."

In spite of the central roles nurses play in patient care, stereotypes that a nurse's sole purpose in a hospital is to follow doctor's orders persist.

"I think a lot of people think we just pass out medicines, put people in bed pans, wipe their butts and that's it -- but it's really so much more," Grabowski said. "The nurses in the ER are the ones that are going to be the first ones to notice if there's a change in your condition, if you're getting worse, if you're getting better, and we really advocate for patients and what they need."