By Matt Skoufalos
As early as middle school, Katie Chargualaf found herself contemplating a career in health care. Growing up in a family of health care providers, where health care was commonly talked around the dinner table and at holidays, made it easy for her to see herself entering the field. Chargualaf was hesitant, however, because she felt an equally strong pull to consider a career in education. While volunteering in a hospital one evening, she had an epiphany that maybe she didn’t have to choose between the two.
“I love both and I could see myself doing both,” Chargualaf said. “One night, it finally hit me that teachers couldn’t nurse, but nurses could teach. If I go into nursing first, and I want to pursue teaching, I could teach nursing.”
With the added benefit that her mother, Kathryn Barnes, could help guide her through nursing school, Chargualaf graduated from the same nursing program her mother had 30 years earlier: the Bon Secours Memorial School of Nursing (now Bon Secours College of Nursing) in Richmond, Virginia.
“I’m grateful for her guidance,” Chargualaf said. “It fostered in me a love of doing more.”
As much as Chargualaf’s career path was guided by the influence of her family, it was equally affected by her husband’s 21-year career in the U.S. Air Force, during which the family moved 14 times across America, with one stop in South Korea. Those assignments afforded her the opportunity to practice nursing in different geographical regions, in areas both rural and urban, and offered a rich opportunity to see how the same types of patients are cared for differently.
“That was very valuable to my practice, and something that I bring into the classroom today,” Chargualaf said. “I found these variations, and it just continued to fuel my love of learning.
I can teach you one way to care for a patient, but that’s not the only right way to do it.”
The family’s first stop was in San Antonio, Texas, where Chargualaf took a position in a 40-bed medical/surgical oncology unit. There she cared for patients who didn’t require intensive monitoring or highly complex medications, as well as oncology patients, so she became certified to administer chemotherapy.
“What I learned about being a post-surgical nurse there stuck with me for the rest of my career,” Chargualaf said. “It was such a great learning environment. I found myself hanging by the bedside because is was a great lesson for me. That first job created such a solid foundation for my practice for two decades; there are still patients I remember, and I still keep in touch with the nurses I worked with back then.”
From San Antonio, Chargualaf headed to a long-term care and acute rehabilitation facility in Rapid City, South Dakota, for her first time practicing nursing in a rural setting. She recalls the assignment as being her first time practicing outside of her comfort zone.
“That was a steep learning curve,” Chargualaf said. “You had to be resourceful there. You didn’t have everything at your fingertips. You had to think for yourself, be innovative and suggest some ideas. I looked at patient outcomes through a new lens. From that point forward, I didn’t go into it as ‘my job is to follow the doctor’s orders, do everything they say and go home at the end of the day.’ I can play a more active role in patient care on my unit, and how we do things as a unit.”
That assignment also instilled in Chargualaf a desire to advance her education and earn a master’s degree. The notion that additional schooling could help her deliver better patient care and expand her practice opened Chargualaf’s eyes to the notion of becoming a lifelong learner, the better to expand her skill set with each new setting in which she worked.
“It sparked this return to school that has continued to follow me,” Chargualaf said. “I just keep going back. I love learning. Health care keeps changing, and nursing practice has to follow suit to those changes. I need to make sure that I’m doing right by my patients. I need to make sure I’m giving the best, most evidence-based information that I can to make sure the next generation is ready for the challenge.”
Chargualaf graduated from the University of Phoenix in 2008 with a master’s of science in nursing, and a concentration in nursing education. She recalled helping her young children with schoolwork during the day, and then clearing the space for her own coursework at night.
“I put a little red table in my office, and gave my kids their homework while mommy did homework,” Chargualaf said. “We were all in school together in the evenings. My youngest was practicing coloring in the lines, while my oldest was practicing his letters. They were learning while I was learning, and I think it made
a lasting impression.”
Chargualaf accepted her first teaching position at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, and quickly fell in love with it. While teaching nursing fundamentals and medical-surgical nursing, she learned how suited she was for a career in nursing education. By 2015, she’d completed her Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii, and by 2018, the family had settled for good in Augusta, Georgia, where she is currently an associate professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina in Aiken.
“I love that the health care community in our area is just the right size, where you know people at different facilities, and can network and make those connections,” Chargualaf said. “I’m teaching in the classroom, and being here is supportive of my research. It’s everything that I could have imagined wanting in my forever-job home. I feel like it’s where I was meant to be.”
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