Highland Hospital nurse Found a Career ‘That Matters’ in Nursing
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Instead of finding a career that just pays the bills, discovering a line of work that matters in her community was very important to Jessica Middleton when she was a teen.
Now a registered nurse, certified professional in healthcare quality and director of nursing professional development at Highland Hospital, Middleton views her choice of working in healthcare as “definitely the right field.”
When she had just graduated from high school, she trained to work as a certified nursing assistant to see if healthcare would interest her. She quickly realized that the work fit her perfectly. She enjoyed taking care of others and how her work could help improve a situation that was stressful and often painful.
That first job began her journey toward completing a bachelor’s in nursing in 2010. She has worked in telemetry and the ICU at Clifton Springs Hospital; faculty and nurse in several departments at Finger Lakes Health College of Nursing; director of education and quality for UR Medicine Homecare; and then began her current role a year and a half ago.
In healthcare, “quality is the most important thing because it’s how we measure the work that we’re doing,” Middleton said. “One quality outcome measure is related to infections. One is related to falls. Focusing on this data and statistics helps us know where we’re doing well and where we need to focus for patient safety.”
Improving patient safety and care motivates her every day because these are so integral with outcomes. Will this patient get better and go home sooner? Will the patient experience readmission because of a fall or infection?
The National Institutes of Health states on its website that “falls may be serious and may cause significant morbidity and mortality. These can also threaten the independence of older people and may be responsible for an individual’s loss of independence and socioeconomic consequences.”
Hospital-acquired infections also negatively affect patient outcomes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in every 31 hospital patients and one in 43 nursing home resident experiences at least one healthcare-related infection on any given day. The National Institutes of Health states on its website, “The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee endorses that infection prevention and control is the most urgent and vital issue wherever medical care is provided to individuals or communities, irrespective of the type or size of the organization and the healthcare provided.”
“In nursing, you can impact the lives of people and save lives,” Middleton said. “You can really impact families.”
She encourages anyone possibly interested in nursing to “do it. Do everything you can to find the most you can about the profession and what part interests you. Talk with an adviser to help guide you in the right direction.
“Nursing is such a rewarding career. It pays you back,” she said.
In addition to her career in nursing, Middleton works as a yoga instructor and a meditation teacher, pursuits that she feels go hand in hand with her “nursing heart,” she said. “The skills translate well.”
She has instructed at Breathe, a studio in Pittsford, for the past seven years.