Shawn Chastka, RN has been in the medical field since she was 16 as a pharmacy technician. She aspired to become a nurse long before that. Shawn always felt the need to take care of people but thought becoming a nurse would be too difficult. It wasn’t until she was hospitalized for six weeks while pregnant with her second son that she saw firsthand what being a nurse could be like.
“I had to get so many shots, blood draws and IV’s [that] I realized if I could get them, I could give them. At that time in my life, I didn’t have the support I needed with the kids to go to college,” she said.
It was years later when her fiancé at the time asked her what she had wanted to do when she was younger. When she answered, he asked, “Why don’t you?”
At 42 Shawn started on her path to becoming a nurse. After earning her prerequisites, she enrolled at the Nursing School at Kilgore College in Texas, graduating with an Associate of Applied Science degree in Nursing, Summa Cum Laude. She reflects on how achieving her degree went well despite spending years thinking it would be impossible to balance work, school, and family. After graduating in 2014, Shawn’s first nursing job was on the cardiac telemetry floor at the same hospital where she had worked as a pharmacy technician. After relocating with her husband, she transferred into the behavioral health department. When the hospital changed ownership, she became a case manager. And during the pandemic, she returned to behavioral health and added same-day surgery responsibilities to her duties.
Even though she had years of experience under her belt, nothing could have prepared her, or anyone, for the pandemic that began in March 2020. Everyone in behavioral health did their best to take care of the patients while following COVID-19 mandates. It was almost impossible to have patients keep their masks on. Same-day surgeries faced bigger challenges in the department. While nonelective surgeries continued, elective surgeries were nonexistent during the first few months of the pandemic. Due to fear of spreading the disease, patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had to be sent home until they tested negative. While her hospital had policies requiring that patients going through elective surgeries were supposed to leave after three days, she heard about other hospitals discharging patients earlier. The burnout nurses faced mixed with the demand for more medical staff created a rise in the travel nurse industry, where they could be assigned to hospitals anywhere, and work for only a short period of time. The pay was much more than Shawn’s, which was a reason why nurses left hospitals to begin with. Hospitals faced challenges in trying to keep the nurses they had while hiring new ones.
Despite being worried about some of her relatives, who were battling cancer or who were elderly, it was her mother, Sharon Novak, who suffered the most. In November 2021, Sharon caught the Delta variant of COVID-19. After days of no improvement, the doctors told Shawn that there was no chance of survival. After 10 days of battling the Delta variant, she passed away surrounded by her family.
“I feel for the nurses that experienced this day after day. Not sure how they did it. I have seen many nurse friends break down,” Shawn said.
Now things are almost as they once were—but not quite. Mandates are lifted unless there’s a new variant that’s easily transmittable. Shawn noticed that most of her colleagues over the years began leaving nursing for other jobs or retiring. Shawn herself plans to become a travel nurse in a few years when her husband retires. That being said, more people have expressed to Shawn their desire to become a nurse like her one day. Shawn encourages everyone who’s interested to go into nursing because there are so many fields you can specialize in.