Like no other career, nursing gave Mary Brobst the ability to “stretch and grow.” In eighth grade, Mary Brobst not only knew she wanted to be a nurse, but she knew she wanted to be a neonatal nurse.
“On career day, a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse not only spoke to our class about how she cared for premature babies who need specialized, intensive care, but she also described how her job is really about caring for the newborns and their families,” remembers Brobst. “That intrigued me.”
Nursing continues to intrigue Brobst in her now nearly 20-year profession of choice. With each new intrigue came a new career opportunity. Last year, Brobst’s career took an invigorating about-face when she accepted an opportunity to become nurse manager for a pilot medical-surgical unit being implemented at SSM St. Joseph Hospital of Kirkwood. Brobst has now moved the advanced patient care prototype to the new SSM St. Clare Health Center, a replacement hospital for St. Joseph. She was also a nurse leader in another non-traditional aspect of medicine: Project Beacon, SSM’s electronic medical record initiative.
In the beginning, in nursing school, Brobst was so focused on neonatal nursing that it became almost “painful” to go on clinical rotations on adult units. “I wanted to get to those babies,” she explains. Now, she realizes the importance of focusing more broadly on the career paths available in nursing.
“All my instructors told me I needed to spend a year on a general adult medical-surgical floor environment before I decided on a nursing specialty like neonatal,” recalls Brobst. “I’ve since learned that if you really want to get to the next level in nursing, you have to round yourself out in additional areas.” Don’t get Brobst wrong — she loved and still loves neonatal nursing. She would spend the first eight years of her career doing so. But when there came a lull in the neonatal census at her children’s hospital, she accepted a position as a charge nurse in a special care nursery.
“In health care there is continual restructuring, reorganization,” says Brobst. “You can’t expect to stay in one place or in one nursing specialty your entire career. Fortunately, nursing is so flexible. In nursing, there are many, many different roles and positions out there to match whatever your needs are at different points in your life’s journey.” Brobst is exhibit A. During her career, she has morphed from a neonatal nurse, to a pediatric nurse, to manager of a labor and delivery floor, and then supervisor of a specialized female cancer floor, to clinical director of an adult med-surg floor.
“That’s quite a departure from the NICU,” Brobst admits. But each opportunity to change nursing has rewarded Brobst with the opportunity to stretch and grow her career. “What’s neat about health care is that you can design your own future. You are given the educational opportunities, the encouragement and often even the funding for schooling from your hospital employer,” says Brobst.
Brobst adds she has taken those opportunities to step back and see where she really wanted to be in her life, and whether her career was headed in right direction. “Nursing is one of those fields where you can take the responsibility for your own destination and career,” she explains. Nursing has also given the opportunity to flex from full-time, to part-time, to a “weekends-only option” employment as she married, started a family and saw it grow.
“There are so many choices, so many avenues in nursing,” Brobst said. “You can go down one path, like I have, back up and say, maybe I want to do something else — and be able to do it.”