Chapter 01: A Nursing Student Discovers MD Anderson and Oncology Nursing

Chapter 01: A Nursing Student Discovers MD Anderson and Oncology Nursing

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Description

In this segment, Ms. Houston talks about her family background and the path that led her to oncology nursing. Born into a military family, she moved a great deal as a youngster. As her mother and aunts were nurses, she followed in their path, attended Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. She began to work at MD Anderson while still in nursing school (in ’68 or ’69), choosing Anderson over Methodist Hospital, because of the higher wage ($18/8 hour shift). She describes her responsibilities at this time (dressing changes, for example). When she did her clinical rotation at MD Anderson, she was so impressed with the culture of work and care for the patients that she decided to become an oncology nurse.

Identifier

HoustonDA_01_20120726

Publication Date

7-26-2012

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Educational Path; Personal Background; Inspirations to Practice Science/Medicine; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Joining MD Anderson; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

All right. I always make sure we are recording, and we are.

Deborah Houston:

Okay, great.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I am Tacey Ann Rosolowski, interviewing Deborah A. Houston, Director of Information Services Clinical Operations and Projects. That’s correct?

Deborah Houston:

Correct.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay. At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer in Houston Texas. This interview is being conducted for the Making Cancer History Voices Oral History Project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson. Ms. Houston, and is that title correct?

Deborah Houston:

Uh-hunh (affirmative).

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay. Ms. Houston has worked at MD Anderson since 1969. Her first career was in oncology nursing. Then, she made a career shift into information systems. This session is taking place in Ms. Houston’s office in the Pickens Academic Tower on the main campus of MD Anderson. This is the first of two planned interview sessions, and today is July 26, 2012. The time is eight minutes after 3:00. Thank you very much for taking part in this interview.

Deborah Houston:

You’re welcome.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So, I wanted to just start with some personal background—just general background. If you could tell me where you were born and when—where you grew up.

Deborah Houston:

Well, I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, actually, on November 7, 1950. My father was—both my parents, at that point, were in the military, so we moved around a lot. When my father retired from the military in 1960, we moved to California. About 1963, we moved to Houston, when he was working for a subcontractor for NASA. Well, it wasn’t NASA then. I don’t know what it was called back then. Then it became NASA, and they were going to build the Johnson Space Center.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, I see.

Deborah Houston:

So we moved to Houston, so I consider Texas my home. My mother is from Texas.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Now was anyone else in your family involved in the sciences? Was your father?

Deborah Houston:

No, my father—no. He was actually a business graduate. My mother was a nurse.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay.

Deborah Houston:

Is a nurse. Well, she is retired, but she is still alive. My father was not in the sciences. He worked in kind of procurement work with the company he worked in. His company provided supplies and things like that for NASA.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So what made you decide to go into the sciences and, ultimately, to go into nursing?

Deborah Houston:

I think it was probably my mother. There was a lot of—she had other sisters that were nurses. I liked science in high school. I guess I made decent grades in science, and it was interesting. Originally, I thought about going into medical school, then I decided I didn’t have good enough grades, and it was going to take too long, so I decided to go to nursing school and don’t regret it at all.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So tell me about your educational background.

Deborah Houston:

I got my bachelor’s degree from Texas Woman’s University in Denton in 1972 and also got my Master’s in Nursing from Texas Woman’s University, as well, in 1984.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

In the same institution

Deborah Houston:

Same institution

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Uh-hunh (affirmative).

Deborah Houston:

And did my clinical for school at the Houston Center. TWU has a campus here.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Did you find yourself gravitating toward any specialty at that point?

Deborah Houston:

When I was in school, I got really excited about neuro, so I thought about going into neurosurgical nursing. There was a program that Methodist Hospital had with neurointensive care. I had a friend in school that was really interested in that. So, I thought about that and thought that’s what I wanted to do. I took some extra science courses in college in neurophysiology and things like that. But when we came to Houston and found that we could work as students at the various hospitals in the Medical Center, and I came to Anderson and worked on-and-off. By the time I was a senior in nursing school, realized that oncology was really what I wanted to do.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Now tell me about how you ended up working at MD Anderson as a student and what exactly you did.

Deborah Houston:

Well, all of the hospitals in the Medical Center at that time, so this is in like 1968, 1969—’69 when I came here—would hire students to work on weekends or at night or whatever. A lot of people went to work at Methodist, because Methodist was a general hospital, and everybody thought that was a great place to work. A lot of clinical rotations were at Methodist Hospital, but MD Anderson, we discovered, paid more than Methodist Hospital. A friend of mine and I came to MD Anderson to work, because we were paid the tidy sum of eighteen dollars a shift for eight hours of work. That was working the night shift, actually.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Wow.

Deborah Houston:

So we came in the first year. It was a Nursing Assistant One position. It was sort of like a hospital aid or nursing aid. We helped patients bathe and get up and ambulate and empty bed pans—that kind of thing—take vital signs, turn patients, comfort care—those kind of things—things that a hospital aid would do—feed them. Then the next year, I was a Nursing Assistant Two. That year, I was able to do procedures—dressing changes, things like that. I worked a lot of times with the LVNs, who would teach you how to do things.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

LVN?

Deborah Houston:

Licensed Vocational Nurse.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay. Uh-hunh (affirmative).

Deborah Houston:

They would—you could learn to do dressing changes, suction patients, do things like that—do a little more complex care.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So at what point did you decide that it was oncology nursing you wanted to do, and why did you make that decision?

Deborah Houston:

When I was a senior in nursing school, and I worked here like two weekends a month. It wasn’t like I was working here hundreds of hours a month. We had to go one semester back to Denton, to the main campus of TWU, so I did that in my fall semester. At that point, I was still toying with I wanted to go into neurosurgery nursing. When I came back to Houston for the spring semester for my final semester—that was in 1972—and I came to Anderson and did my clinical rotation at Anderson. I realized it was sort of like an epiphany of why would I want to work anywhere else? Just the skill of the nurses that I was working with; it was like that’s what I wanted to do. The people that I had worked—I was still working on the weekends occasionally, and the nursing staff that I worked with was like, “You just need to come work here. You need to just continue working and come be a nurse with us.”

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What was it that really—can you give me an example of what just really drew you?

Deborah Houston:

I think the working relationship of the staff with each other, and then the caring that they gave the patients. I mean, the patients really needed nursing care. To me, it was very different than going to a general hospital or an OB hospital or something like that. The patients really needed a nurse. Yes, you need a nurse when you have a baby, I guess, but you had a baby. It’s a wonderful, great experience, and you go home. Here, we were—back in those days, in the old days—patients were here for long hospital stays. We didn’t do as much outpatient chemotherapy as we do now, so patients were in the hospital for a long time. The types of wounds that we saw—their cancers were well-advanced, and it was just a lot of physical care that you provided and comfort and that really was something I felt I was good at and wanted to do.

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Chapter 01: A Nursing Student Discovers MD Anderson and Oncology Nursing

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