Interview a Health Professional

Megan McInerney

Introduction to Health Professions

Professor Truax- Armstrong

November 9, 2017

From Candy-Striper to Senior Industry Consultant

Kristin McInerney graduated from Old Dominion University with a Master’s of Science in Nursing. She is currently the Senior Industry Consultant at Teradata, a database company who helps connect hospitals to major medical equipment sales companies. She was always interested in nursing, as she grew up under a long line of nurses. “Nursing was the only thing I really ever considered, there was no other option for me.” However, her family was not her only inspiration for getting into the nursing field.

What solidified the idea of nursing in her mind was Kristin’s volunteering hospital work as a youth in Princeton New Jersey. As a candy-striper, part of her job was to move containers for the doctors. She was always told strictly to never look into the containers, but, of course, this only guaranteed that she would look into the containers. Kristin’s first job was to move a white, Styrofoam box from point A to point B in the hospital. She heard strange sloshing sounds inside of it, and opened the lid to discover it was full of blood. Her reaction was “Oh, Jesus, that’s all?!”, un-phased by the gore in front of her. Kristin knew then that her fate was as a nurse.

After graduating college, Kristin went into the navy as a nursing officer. She had ample experience with all kinds of nursing rotations by the time that tragedy struck. 9/11 struck, and McInerney was one of the responding nurses to the scene in the pentagon. After this, Kristin was given her choice of job options. She wanted to try her hand in working with computers, and “She chose IT as information management to try something new.” This is the background that landed her at Teradata, and this year marks her ninth year on the job.

What surprised her most when getting into the nursing field was how quickly she was put into positions of leadership. Kristin quickly became shift leader, infection prevention for the floor, fire prevention, and other leadership positions. She did not expect that, as an inexperienced nurse, she would have to grow so quickly as a leader. However, her ambition and leadership on the job paid off in the long run.

Kristin’s most rewarding part of the job is the job itself, she loves to solve people’s business challenges. But Kristin also loves to travel and work with her favorite customers. Kristin loves many of the people that she works with, stating that they are wonderful people because “they all have a mission and they all want to improve patient care”. She also says that the travel and accrued free travel points, which enable her to go on her favorite vacations to Hawaii with free airfare and hotel rates every now and again, are one of her favorite perks.

Her advice to anyone getting into nursing is that of self-preservation. Be firm, but polite with coworkers and patients. Be kind and polite, but stand up for yourself when dealing with senior coworkers. It is important to make friends of your coworkers- including nurses but especially coworkers in other hospital departments. “Be friendly to everyone! Be friends with people in all the departments of the hospital- it will form a great support group for people that you work with.” Another important piece of advice is to keep your work and personal life separate—however hard this may be. “It’s all about striking a balance in your life between your family, yourself, and your work.” Her helpful tip for striking this balance is regularity. “Get into a schedule of taking care of yourself—body, mind, and soul. When you are busy, do not forget that you must take care of yourself and be open to new possibilities.”