Spotlight On: Jane Flowers, MSN, RN, CNOR e, CRCST

By Matt Skoufalos

Asked how she got the idea to enter a career in nursing, Jane Flowers said she came by it naturally. “It seemed like something that would be good for me,” Flowers said. “It was a good fit. I am mechanical by nature, so the OR worked really well for me. I like tools.”  A graduate of the Macqueen Gibbs Willis School of Nursing in Easton, Maryland, Flowers earned her RN degree in a 32-month program.  “We didn’t have summers off, but we had a lot of clinical experience,” she said.  Among that experience was four to six weeks in the operating room, which Flowers said was uncommon. She got hooked on the work quickly.

“I remember there was a tech named Mabel, and I was allowed to scrub with her,” Flowers said. “She said, ‘Honey, you can hand them anything that you know what it is, and I handed over my first Kelly clamp.” “I was committed,” she said. “When I graduated, I knew that’s where I wanted to go. Within a year, I had landed in the OR, and I was home. It was something I loved.” Flowers spent the bulk of her career close to her home in coastal Maryland. She began work at Dorchester General Hospital, a small, community facility where she “learned to do it all,” from scrubbing to circulating.

She continued on to Peninsula Regional Medical Center (PRMC) in Salisbury, Maryland, where she worked as a staff nurse, and completed her master’s degree at Georgetown University. After that, Flowers became the manager for perioperative education, whereby she implemented a Periop 101 course at the facility, became a clinical manager for several different service lines, and helped to establish a robotic surgery program before she left.

“You can learn by doing,” she said. “When I was a staff, I could scrub or circulate on anything or be a first assistant.” An opportunity opened up for her at a community hospital in Cambridge, Maryland, a part of the University of Maryland Shore Health System, where Flowers managed the surgical and ambulatory services; from there, she migrated to the Easton campus, where she managed sterile processing. “I probably never worked more than 35 miles from my home,” Flowers said. “I never went higher than manager. But I was pretty happy. I’m a hometown girl. What else can you say? I liked where I was.”  “People tended to have more longevity at their facilities,” she said. “We’ve evolved into a different world at this point.”

Flowers retired from nursing in 2019, when her position at Dorchester was eliminated – but that didn’t slow her down. She has remained heavily involved in her local chapter of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), which she joined in 1980. Flowers has served on various AORN committees and task forces and has been elected to leadership roles with the organization. More than anything, however, she has dedicated a significant amount of her time to making sure her fellow nurses are recognized for their achievements.

“I’ve probably nominated 70 of the national AORN award-winners,” Flowers said. “This year there were only a few people who got recognized for whom I didn’t submit the nominations. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. We have so many talented nurses doing incredible things.” Flowers said her commitment to seeking recognition for her peers stems from a core belief that nurses don’t get the recognition they’re due. As an inspiration, she cites the often-overlooked work her father, an elementary-school teacher, did in his lifetime. His former students have withdrawn crumpled, handwritten notes from their pockets with his perfect handwriting upon them, which Flowers can recognize instantly.  “His handwriting was perfection,” she said. “I know who wrote that. They’ll tell me, ‘I’ve had it all these years; it meant so much to me.’ When somebody’s been gone for 20 years, that’s a statement.”

Along with making sure that influential helpers get their due, Flowers has continued to do her part for people in her community, serving meals to seniors and the hungry. During the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, she volunteered with vaccination clinics, and also put in a lot of hours helping care for elderly in her community.  She made masks by the thousands, donating many to family, friends the police department, health department, senior centers, homeless shelters, women’s centers and to her AORN Chapter.

“As somebody who works in the hospital, you don’t think about the isolation that COVID made on people,” Flowers said. “We became a little band, or a family, or whatever you want to say. I was the one who made sure they got their vaccinations and signed them up. While it doesn’t sound like a whole lot, I kept busy with all that stuff, and I believe it really made a difference. It’s what got a lot of older people through COVID.”  Flowers, who loves cooking, continues to prepare food for her elderly neighbors; while spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with her sister and niece, she will also fill carryout boxes for her senior crew. This engagement fills her heart and keeps her active now that she’s not providing care in a professional context.

The post Spotlight On: Jane Flowers, MSN, RN, CNOR e, CRCST appeared first on OR Today.