The Lake Today

Editor’s Note: As noted in the Dec. 28 issue, The Lake Today has profiled many individuals, organizations and events over the years. Now in our fourth year, The Lake Today staff wanted to put a new spin on its human interest feature section. Starting in this issue, “Leaving a Lake Legacy” will highlight different individuals, organizations, places or events that truly make a footprint on Lake Area soil. Their stories may be told through their daily routine, through pictures or simply through their words. If you know someone or something that helps make the Lake Area special and form a true legacy to the region, email editor@thelaketoday.com or call 573-365-2827.

“You don’t realize the impact you have on the family.”

Registered Nurse Colleen Nations added that they often receive “Thank You” cards and letters from mothers, among fathers and families, who have had their baby at Lake Regional Hospital’s obstetrics (OB) unit. Yet, it still surprises Nations and her fellow nurses when they are thanked for the work they do every day to make sure the mothers and babies arrive and leave healthy and happy.

“I had a Mom write a card back to me about how much her husband appreciated the things I did for him. I got the card and I had to look to think; I treated him no differently than any other father,” she said. “I joked with him, made him involved, made him do things. But it meant something to him, which I wasn’t even aware of at the time.”

Nations has worked in just about every floor and unit at Lake Regional Hospital over her 34 years with the facility. However, like her sisterhood of OB nurses, she strives to make every mother, family member and baby have a joyous and valued experience in bringing a new Lake Area resident into this world. As she said, “life starts here” and the OB unit continues to grow to allow that life to be full of happiness from the beginning.

Life starts at Lake Regional

The first two patients at Lake Regional Health System, then known as Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital, were, in fact, OB patients.

“One was a patient of Dr. Clemens Haggerty, and the other a patient of Dr. Otis Moseley. According to Dr. Haggerty, Dr. Moseley’s patient was admitted first, but Dr. Haggerty’s patient delivered first, so he is credited with delivering the hospitals first baby,” said Mitch Shields, public relations specialist at Lake Regional Health System.

Since then, the amount of deliveries at the hospital as exponentially increased. In fact, Nations has even seen a dramatic increase since she started working in the unit in 1989.

“I know when I first started, there weren’t near as many deliveries as we do now. Typically back then, you would have one baby delivered a day or a few during the week. Now, it is a slow day if you have one baby in the unit a day,” she said. “We now deliver about 700 babies a year.”

For Nations, the OB unit was a new challenge for her after working at Lake Regional Hospital since April 1978. She started as a nurse’s aide, now called nurse’s technician, while attending nursing school at Lincoln University in Jefferson City. She began working on the general hospital floor and in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) units as a nurse’s aide before becoming a registered nurse in 1985.

“Back then, when you became a nurse, to work in a specialized unit such as OB or ICU you had to work on the general floor for a certain period of time first. I started working on the orthopedic general floor for five years before I went to OB,” she explained.

Even though working around babies was a gradual progression in her nursing career, choosing the industry as her profession was a grounded decision that she knew from a young age.

“Nursing was something I always wanted to do,” said the Iowa native, who moved to Osage Beach with her parents as a junior in high school. “I have aunts and uncles who are nurses; I don’t know if that influenced me at a young age, but I knew that was always my path. I also have two sisters who are nurses (one who works in Springfield and another who does home health out of Lebanon). They are younger than me, so I may have influenced them.”

Yet, since Nations has worked in the OB unit, she has formed bonds with the nurses, patients and babies to help create one of the most rewarding environments at Lake Regional Health System.

A happy start

“Typically, Moms aren’t sick people; they are just having babies. So, they have to be treated differently,” Nations said. “Generally, the age of the mothers is younger, too. So your patients are not sick, they are young and are just treated differently than someone who is really ill.”

Nations said at Lake Regional Health System, the nurses do all aspects of delivering a baby from getting the Mom and family comfortable to taking care of the child after it’s born.

“There is a patient here that I helped labor her for two days and the nurse during her C-section (Caesarean section). Today, when she is going home, I am the baby’s nurse,” she said. “You may be the support person during their labor, telling them what to expect, and giving them their choices of pain controls or you may be the one catching the baby and doing the nursing duties you need to do for the baby while allowing the Mom to bond with her baby. I am in the nursery (Friday), helping a new nurse (in orientation) at the nursery.”

Nations added that all nurses in OB unit have to be neonatal resuscitation certified, which are skills essential for all health care providers who are involved in the delivery of newborns. She has been certified for some time and has been an instructor since 2000, with two other instructors added to the unit since.

Essentially, Nations said she and her fellow OB nurses also make sure the babies do their normal functions and remaining healthy as they come into this world.

“You got to make sure they are fed, be fed so many hours, and that Mom feels comfortable in way she is feeding them. You have to make sure they do basic things like pee and poop,” she said. “You also make sure their vitals are good and their temperature stays good. Babies are different than adults; any little change can have a domino effect to bigger problems. If they have a little bit of a low temperature they have to work harder make them to warm up. So they use more sugars and their sugar levels can go down; if they are not eating it doesn’t keep their sugar up. If those things fall down they can start having respiratory problems. You have to constantly watch these babies, because they can’t tell you themselves.”

Despite many challenges in keeping a baby’s health in good standing and consistent, Nations said the OB unit environment is both comforting for the patients and the nurses. Some of her most memorable moments are those she works with, her fellow nurses.

“We are like a family and a bunch of sisters. Some days we love each other; some days we are nit-picking at each other but you get a group of women working in these close quarters you have that,” she said. “But I really enjoy working with all the OB nurses, and I like to think they enjoy working with me.”

Leaving a Lake legacy

“Everything is a little challenging, but I love working here because it is a happy environment. People are always excited to be having their babies. Sometimes, the outcome isn’t always exactly what they have anticipated, but it is nice to know that you have comforted that Mom and family through some difficult times,” she added.

Nations said in addition to the many “Thank You” letters and cards they get from moms and families with a new member to their family, they also get thanks from those mothers who may have lost their baby.

“We get cards from some of the people who had losses, noting they appreciated the extra steps we took for them,” she noted.

One of the most appreciated and exciting things the nurses do for the new mothers and fathers is take pictures of their new “arrival.” They now have a program where the parents can choose four different photos and get a print out right there at the hospital.

“Then the parents have up to a year to decide if they want to order more or not. They can check on the form if they want the pictures put on the Internet and they have a password on their photos; their family and friends can look at those too,” she said. “Even for babies that demise, we still take photos and do footprints so the parents have those too. We make sure they have momentums from that child they can carry on with them.”

Nations said as they have progressed in the amount of babies they deliver and services they offer mothers and babies to embrace their new lives together, Lake Regional Hospital has progressed to offer more specialized care in the OB unit. She said when she started in the OB unit, the hospital was a fourth of what it is now. The original OB unit had three rooms and a labor room, with C-sections done in general surgery. Now, C-sections are done in the OB unit and it has even progressed from its expanded seven delivery rooms to now having 10.

“Just the other day, we had to put off inductions because we didn’t have enough room,” she added.

Nations hope to see Lake Regional Health System continue its own Lake Area legacy by expanding the OB unit even more.

“Our nursery is a Level 1. We basically take care of well babies. We do some care beyond that, for example, we currently are providing antibiotics to a baby who will be on it for seven days. However, I anticipate we will become a bigger nursery and have a more advanced level of care in the near future,” she said. “We also now have more specialized doctors here in the OB unit to help keep Moms who may have health problems here at our hospital. Before, we would have to send them to another health care facility. We can keep those Moms here to be treated. Our skills and doctor levels have increased and we can keep them here. It is comforting for them to know they can stay close to home to get the care they need.”

For Nations, she has no plans on leaving the OB unit at Lake Regional Hospital any time soon. She, like her fellow nurses and patients, thoroughly enjoys the environment, seeing now second generations of patients and supportive nature circulating throughout the unit.

“The had offered me a scholarship through the hospital if I committed to working there for two years. I didn’t know at that time (back when she first started) if I wanted to stay here for two years, so I declined it. Now, I am on my 34th year here and I don’t plan on leaving,” she said. “I have enjoyed it tremendously. I had two surgeries recently and I really missed the girls when I was gone. It was like being separated from my family for months … life starts here and it’s a great place for it to.”

For more information about Lake Regional Health System or Lake Regional Hospital, visit www.lakeregional.com.