Hello! This is Shanley Duncan from the December graduation class. I hope everything is going well, I know how hard it is to work remotely and how nursing schools are struggling to stay on track right now.

I just wanted to send a little update on my nursing career! I got my license in February and am currently deployed with CAL-MAT as a COVID nurse. We are at a federal medical site, and have seen more patients than any site other than New York. I worked 4.5 weeks of patient care and was then promoted to Medical Clinical Group Supervisor/Charge Nurse and am now Chief Nursing Officer. It is a makeshift hospital and we have to work with what we have. We are now turning into a permanent site (for the time being) of 80 beds.

I just wanted to let you know how useful the care plans that our instructors instilled in us are. We are working with paper charts and I find some of the pages very similar to the care plans that we did. I wanted to say thank you for helping me prepare for this job. We work 7 days a week, 12-14 hours/shift. In June alone I worked 385 hours. I never envisioned myself in this situation but I like it!

I just thought I would share my experience so far. Stay healthy and go Vikings!

Sincerely,

Shanley Duncan, Class of 2019