Gina Hitchner remembers the moment when she realized she wanted to become a nurse. “I was sixteen, and right before my older brother’s graduation, his best friend Brian got rear-ended.” The accident was so serious that Brian had to be airlifted to Harborview. “My mom let us all be in the room when they took him off life support, and I was crying so hard that she asked one of the nurses if she could take me out of the room. So, this nurse took me out and she just sat with me and held me. I don’t remember for how long and I don’t even think she asked me anything or tried to talk to me. After that I thought, I’m going to be a nurse.” Gina still thinks about that nurse now that she is in the profession herself. “I realized that she had to have been so busy that day, and here she was taking the time to hold this poor little teenager, and I just thought that was so amazing of her to do that.”

Gina carries the memory of that interaction forward in her career. She began as an LPN in a hospital setting before getting her bachelor’s degree through the University of Providence and becoming an RN. Gina joined the Providence Hawks Prairie Internal Medicine clinic in 2016 as a triage RN, fielding calls and walk-in patients and determining the most appropriate care for each patient. “What I value is the way in my position I get to look at the whole picture. Nurses can look at every angle. Not just the medical side, but also the emotional side.”

Clinic life after the pandemic

Gina’s clinic is in a pilot program where a remote team handles triage calls. This allows the clinic to utilize Gina and the other nurses, she says, “at the top of our license.” Gina does blood pressure and hypertension visits, testosterone injections, diabetic education, wound care, and determines if a visit should be “flipped” to a provider visit or sent to the ER. In this role, she sees firsthand how the effects of Covid are still reverberating through her patients’ lives. “So many people were putting their regular illness maintenance on hold,” she says. “It was difficult to convince people to get the care they needed when they were afraid they might get Covid in the process. And I think we’re still seeing the backlash of people neglecting themselves because they were so afraid.”

But while the pandemic was a struggle, it also brought out the best in the team. “We had to work together to cover for one another, and everyone had to push out of their comfort zone.” She says her clinic team works together like a well-oiled machine. “Most days, our atmosphere here is pretty light. Everyone likes to be humorous, and our GIF game is very strong.”

Matching care to a clinic’s unique character

Recently, Gina began training nurses at other clinics, and she’s on a mission to bring that sense of teamwork and community to the other clinics in her area. One big change Gina is pushing for is to do trainings on-site at the different clinics, rather than have nurses come to her. “Even though we want to unify everything so we’re all working on the same page, each clinic does things differently, and providers are different. Being trained in your own clinic really helps you understand the dynamic of that place and those providers and MAs and the resources they have.”

A blend of humility and humor

When it comes to working with patients, Gina says, “You have to use your medical knowledge and be pretty confident in that, but at the same time, be honest with yourself: if you don’t know something, ask.” My old manager said, ‘you ask more questions than anyone I’ve ever met.’ I feel like you have to. I’d rather admit I don’t know something than hurt someone because I didn’t know what I was doing. And I try to pass that along when I’m training.”

The other key is the one that Gina saw firsthand as a teen: empathy. For Gina, that often means using humor to uplift patients. “I had this young boy with a traumatic brain injury,” she says, “and he had staples in his head that needed to be removed. I could tell he was super nervous, so I told him ‘you just yell at me anytime this hurts, because this is the very first time I’ve done this.’ And he looked at me, and I told him I was kidding, and it made him relax a bit to see that I was joking around.”

Clinic nurses for our Providence Swedish communities

Our Providence Swedish clinic nurses like Gina are equipped with the best health care technologies and regular training opportunities that allow them to deliver quality care with a full range of specialties including:

• Primary care
• Otolaryngology
• Neurology
• Heart and vascular
• Pediatrics
• Family medicine
• Float pool
• OB/GYN

Interested in becoming a clinic nurse with us? View all open roles.