MC School of Nursing Welcomes Ninth Graders
Three dozen ninth graders visited the Mississippi College School of Nursing for a career day program Friday that encouraged them to consider the profession when they attend college.
Nursing doors are wide open, School of Nursing Dean Mary Jean Padgett told the visitors on the Clinton campus. "The Army and Navy will pay you to go to school," she said.
But the nursing profession isn't geared for everybody. Giving flu shots, working in a hospital emergency room or putting in long hours at a hospice is demanding work.
"You must have a caring heart. It is a people profession on the whole," said Padgett, a 1973 MC nursing graduate. "You have to love people."
The Rosa Scott Middle School students also received insights from other MC nursing faculty members, including Elizabeth Twiner, Denise Ferriss, and Deborah Bolian.
At the Friday morning program, a trio of MC nursing students from Clinton, Anna Brown, Neal Ursy and Noel Bishop, also shared their experiences.
At the MC School of Nursing, students do much more than get information from textbooks. They give shots, draw blood, visit the Jackson Medical Mall, go on medical mission trips to Mexico, and help prepare patients for surgery.
"We make a difference between life and death sometimes," Twiner told the students.
The profession has taken Mississippi College nursing graduates to help those in need following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and after the recent earthquake that devastated Haiti.
A former Army nurse who's taught at MC for a dozen years and works part-time at Baptist Medical Center, Ferriss told the students to be prepared for a challenging assignment. "Nursing is not for sissies," she said. "You work hard."
The MC School of Nursing stop was one of a number of career-related events for the students, said Rosa Scott teacher Lory Smiley. They will also visit Trustmark Park, home of the Mississippi Braves, Jackson area engineering firms, and hospitals such as the University of Mississippi Medical Center during the school year.
For more information about the MC School of Nursing, call 601.925.3278 or by email at nursing@mc.edu.
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