MD Anderson 2020 Interview Project
 
Chapter 01: First Career in Nursing

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Chapter 01: First Career in Nursing

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In this chapter, Vice President of Patient Experience, Elizabeth Garcia describes her personal, educational, and professional background. She particularly notes the impetus for her interest in nursing, her administrative training, and how her professional experiences coalesce in her current role. She emphaisizes that patient experience is nursing leadership.

Transcript

Nina Nevill

Let’s see. So we are officially recording. Hello again. Welcome. I’m Nina Nevill interviewing Elizabeth Garcia for an oral history project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Elizabeth works for MD Anderson as the Vice President of Patient Experience. This session is being held virtually falways be scheduled if needed. Now, today is July 13th, I believe, 2021. And the time is about 3:10 p.m. And thank you again so much for devoting your time to our project today.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Of course.

Nina Nevill

So just to kind of get started, I’d like to ask a little bit to get to know you first of all. If you don’t mind saying something about kind of where you’re from, or where you grew up, and a little bit about your background or your family.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

So I grew up in Connecticut, very close to New York City, a suburb of New York City, and then went to college in Boston, went to work in New York City as a nurse right after college, and worked at several institutions in New York City over the course of 15 years, and loved living in New York City, and met my husband there who is from Houston. We got married and had our two children there. And then my daughter, oldest, had just started kindergarten literally three days before when 9/11 happened. And the city fell apart after that. Her school shut down classrooms. There was garbage all over the streets because no one was picking up the garbage. There was, of course, the fighter jets flying overhead. And it was basically a very, very, very sad warzone. And, of course, working in the hospital was extremely difficult during that time. And my daughter’s school was not going well because the city budgets were cut.

And then the anthrax attack happened. And I was the administrator on that evening in the hospital when the anthrax was identified. And so my husband and I decided that we couldn’t raise our children in New York City, mostly because of the schools and not being able to afford private school. So we decided to move. And we moved that following July to Houston. And I started working. I worked at a couple of hospitals in Houston before I ended up at MD Anderson. And I’ve been here almost 15 years in several different positions.

Nina Nevill

That’s incredible. I’m so sorry that your experiences in New York City—although, it’s a great place, it sounds like the time that you were there was fraught.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Yeah, and it is very difficult to raise children in New York City. First of all, the cost, but also the accessibility to resources for them. And like my son—obviously, now we’ve been here almost 20 years. My children were raised here. My son played baseball in college and played baseball since he was six years old. My daughter rode horses and did equestrian in college and we never could have provided that in New York City, so it all turned out well.

Nina Nevill

Well good. I’m glad that it turned out. Now, was anybody else in your family—did anybody else work in health care or work as a nurse or was this kind of a new path for you?

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

My father was in public relations and actually still is. And he was the Director of Public Relations at a local hospital, Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And when I was three years old, I was the poster child for their nursing school. And I have the picture hanging over my desk. And ever since I was three years old, when I was in that marketing campaign, I said, I wanted to be a nurse. So there are no other nurses in my family. There are no physicians in my family. A lot of teachers, lawyers, obviously, communications people, my father. My sister is a pharmacist. And the two of us are the only medical people in our even extended family, literally, like all my cousins, everything. So no other nurses at all.

Nina Nevill

That’s incredible. I’m sure that that photo is something that you look back at fondly. Most people don’t follow for so long in knowing or at least sticking with something, so that’s absolutely impressive.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Yeah. And my parents were supportive, of course, because my father worked around health care his whole career, so they were very supportive. So I was fortunate to know what I wanted to do.

Nina Nevill

Well, that’s good. And you mentioned earlier your time in Boston, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your educational path, kind of how you knew where you wanted to go, and what you wanted to do.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

So I was not a very good student in high school. And my sister was less than a year older than me, and so she was right in front of me. So she was an excellent student, straight As without even trying. And I would go into classrooms and the teacher would say, well, you must be as smart as your sister. And I think that depressed my knowledge or something, so I really struggled a lot in high school. And I ended up getting—I knew I wanted to go to nursing school, so, of course, I took sciences. And I ended up getting a D in chemistry. And, at the time, they sent report cards home in the mail. And when the report card came, my mother actually scratched out the part of the D that was like a circle, so that I thought I got a C because she didn’t want me to be upset. And so when I went to interview at Simmons where I ended up going and I got many rejections in the mail from colleges because they would just—for nursing school, they just put your grades through a system. And if you didn’t match what the grades were, then you didn’t get in, so I got many rejections. But when I went for an interview at Simmons, they sat down with me and looked at the transcript, and they said, you know, how did you get a D in chemistry, and you’re applying to nursing school? And I was adamant that I got a C and that must be an error. And I remember her changing it with a red pen on the transcript to a C from a D, and I got in. And I didn’t find out that that was not true until years later actually. So my path to school was not traditional, let’s say.

But when I got to college, I was very comfortable there. It’s a very small women’s college. They had a lot of support. And they were absolutely confident that the people that they let in, we’re going to be successful. And I ended up being the valedictorian of my nursing class. So it’s all about having the confidence that you can do it to be able to do it.

Nina Nevill

Absolutely.

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Yeah. So I really enjoyed my time in Boston and trained at some of the best hospitals in the world, of course, but always wanted to live in New York City. So I moved to New York City right after I finished college.

Nina Nevill

And is that when you—I see here that you attended New York University, the Wagner School of Public Service, was that following right after or—

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Yeah, about a year after I graduated, I was working at NYU Medical Center. And, at the time, there was a very big nursing shortage, and they offered free tuition. It wasn’t even tuition reimbursement. It was you could go to NYU for any degree you wanted, and they would pay for it. The hospital paid for it. So a lot of my friends were going for nursing master’s degrees, and I wanted to do something different because I was interested in being more involved in the business side. And I always knew I wanted to be in leadership, so I applied to and got into the Master’s of Public Administration Program, and I went to school part time and worked at NYU.

Nina Nevill

Wow, that’s awesome. That’s a really cool program that they had at the time where they had a demand and they were able to—

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Oh my God, what a fabulous benefit. At the time, the money wasn’t even taxed, like it wasn’t even considered income. Now, they tax you on any tuition you get from your employer, but at the time that law did not apply. So it was entirely free, no money changed hands at all, which was a perk that you would never find now. And NYU is extremely expensive.

Nina Nevill

That sounds absolutely unique to the time period and to what was going on at the moment. You mentioned that your desire to be a nurse comes from a young age, but obviously something has to kind of keep you in it, keep you wanting to continue. What inspired that commitment to patient care or patient education, which we kind of see at least later on with your trajectory in your career?

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

So I volunteered in hospitals throughout my high school, and I just loved the idea of nursing. And my father did several campaigns for nursing schools through his career as a public relations person in medicine. And one of his posters is in my office and from the 1970s. And it says, “Make love a career.” And that’s really what nursing is about. It’s about taking care of other people. There’s a lot of tasks involved in nursing, but the core of it is really taking care of other people and connecting with them in such a way that you share their journey of what they’re going through, whether it’s happy or sad, or etcetera. And I think that that was really demonstrated during the pandemic when our nursing teams were really patients’ families because their families couldn’t be with them. And it just demonstrated how we were still able to provide exceptional connection for our patients, even though their family members weren’t with them. And there were struggles here and there. But, for example, our patient satisfaction scores really didn’t go down much at all for what our patients were going through and what they were having to cope with. And I really credit that to the nursing teams, really, and the providers and all our other staff, but the nurses are with them 24/7 and really provided that connection for them. And that’s really the heart of nursing.

Nina Nevill

Absolutely. That’s such a beautiful message. And I think almost all, if not most, patients can attest to that (inaudible).

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

Especially our patients. Yes.

Nina Nevill

So just going back a little bit then help me make the connection from nursing in your earlier career to where you are now, like what factors led to that transition or how did that go for you?

Elizabeth Garcia, BSN,MPA,RN

So I get this question a lot. And people say to me, you used to be a nurse. And I say to them, I am doing nursing leadership now. Patient experience is nursing leadership. A lot of what nursing does drives the patient experience and the influence of their care. And communication is very evident inpatient experience. So everything I’ve done throughout my career is nursing leadership. It happens that some people are in my position who aren’t nurses or clinicians, but I think that I’ve been able to bring a very unique side to it and unique viewpoint because I do have the clinical background of actually hands-on taking care of patients. And a lot of the positions I’ve been in have required that I was a clinician. For example, when I was the clinical administrative director in the GYN center for nine years when I started at MD Anderson, that requires a clinical degree which is very necessary to be able to lead a clinical service like that. But then the other administrative positions I have aren’t necessarily necessary to have a clinical degree, but it has helped me tremendously

Identifier

GarciaE_20210731_C01

Publication Date

7-13-2021

Publisher

The Historical Resources Center, The Research Medical Library, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

A: Professional Path;A: Experiences Related to Race, Gender, Ethnicity;C: Offering Care, Compassion, Help;C: Formative Experiences;C: Evolution of Career;

Conditions Governing Access

Open

Chapter 01: First Career in Nursing
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