“As a little kid, I always loved playing with my dolls and making them better, making them healthy,” recalled Natasha Granado. “I asked my mom about that, too. She said, ‘You’ve always had a big heart, and wanted to be in the service industry.’ ”
After two decades in nursing, Granado still relies on a deeply rooted ability to care for her fellow humans, as well as the strong work ethic cultivated throughout her youth, in her daily routines at SCA Health Texas Health Surgery Center Arlington, in Arlington, Texas. She has always extended that attitude of caring, professionalism, and service to her nursing colleagues throughout that time as well.
Of her 20 years in the nursing field, Granado has spent nearly 15 of them at the center, rising to become an OR circulating nurse and quality improvement study coordinator with Texas Health Surgery Center Arlington. In all that time, she’s seen her perspective shift from one of a nurse preceptor focused on helping the next generation of skilled professionals learn the ropes of the job, to leading patient safety and workplace satisfaction initiatives.
Out of high school, Granado completed her nursing prerequisites at Tarrant County College in Arlington, Texas, and continued on to the University of Texas at Arlington, from which she graduated in 2004. After a nursing school externship at Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Dallas, Granado remained at that facility, starting in a med-surg telemetry unit before rising to become a Level III charge nurse and nurse preceptor.
“I had always heard in nursing school, ‘Go into med-surg, get that experience, and then get on to what you want to do,’ ” Granado said. “Med-surg in general back then was very short-staffed. I’ve always been a very hard worker, but it was overwhelming, and I was burning out because you couldn’t do so much.”
Under-staffing at the facility was especially stressful to Granado because she never wanted to feel like she was abandoning a patient or leaving her colleagues without help that they might need. Amid demands to do more with less, she feared making a mistake without rest, help and the ability to delegate to her peers.
“To me, work is about teamwork, and our goal is that patient and making sure they’re being taken care of,” Granado said. “If we’re not working together, it’s not working.”
After about three years, she left Methodist Charlton for a position as an orthopedic office nurse at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The hours were much more reasonable, and Granado enjoyed the work, but she only lasted a year commuting from Arlington to Dallas five days a week. From there, Granado took a floor nurse role at Regency Hospital, a long-term, acute care center in Fort Worth.
From wound care, she transitioned to the step-down ICU, but staffing levels at Regency were no better than they had been at her previous workplaces, and Granado threw her back out repeatedly while turning bed-ridden patients without any help. For the first time in her fledgling career, she began to wonder whether she had chosen the wrong profession.
“I liked the unit, but the nursing shortage wears on you,” she said. “At that point, I was very depressed. I put myself through nursing school, took all these loans out, and I’m like, ‘What did I get myself into?’ I want to help people; I want to do something that matters, but not at the expense of my own health.”
It wasn’t until Granado’s stepfather was having retina surgery at a multispecialty surgery center in Arlington that she found her opening into the position that would become the best fit for her. By chance, her mother ended up speaking with the facility’s director of nursing while they waited, and Granado’s name came up.
At the time, the facility, Healthsouth, was staffed mostly by agency nurses. Granado joined as a med-surg nurse, received OR training onsite and dove into the work. Eventually, ophthalmology doctors invested in the facility as a privately owned concern, and it evolved into Texas Health Surgery Center Arlington after SCA purchased it in 2016.
“I happened to stumble upon this, and I’ve been here 14-and-a-half years now, and I love it,” she said. “Transitioning to the OR was fast-paced at first; it was something brand new for me. I picked up every little thing I could learn from each person.”
“I really enjoyed seeing people come back, and they say, ‘My gosh, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was nine and I’ve never seen colors like this,’ ” Granado said. “I wanted to be a part of that; part of helping restore a patient’s vision and their excitement.”
In every environment in which she’s worked, Granado believes she’s taken some aspect of learning that has served her throughout her career, whether it’s a leadership style, critical thinking approach or difference in perspective. But at Texas Health Surgery Center Arlington, Granado feels most like she’s where she’s supposed to be.
As if in confirmation, a study Granado produced on teammate satisfaction for the facility was recently named the Bernard A. Kershner Innovations in Quality Improvement Award winner and the People’s Choice Award winner by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) for 2022. Through a process of performance benchmarking, data collection and employee surveys, Texas Health Surgery Center Arlington was able to apply corrective actions that raised teammate satisfaction scores by nearly 25 percent over two years. In May 2022, the center was rated highest of any operated by SCA Health.
“The doctors and the teammates here are amazing,” Granado said. “I get to come into work, and do what I like. We work as a team; you work together, you get it done faster. Nobody feels like they’re being taken for granted. If something does happen, you take accountability for the mistake, and teach the next person.”
Granado’s life outside of work changed dramatically when she reconnected with her high-school sweetheart. After having spent some 20 years apart, the two were married in December 2022, and together they are raising a family of four children. In her free time, Granado enjoys singing – whether it’s karaoke or music in the operating room. She also likes crossword puzzles, dancing and anything to do with water.
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