Working as a Nurse in Boone, North Carolina--Gene Ray

Interview conducted with Gene Ray in his home in Boone, North Carolina, by project photographer Ashley Warren, as well as Madison Goodwin and Courtney Maness from Dr. Katherine Ledford’s Appalachian Stories course. In conjunction with Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and "The We We Worked" exhibition from the Smithsonian.

What did you do for a living?
"I started off as a nurse, working at Watauga hospital, LPN. I worked there for six and a half years then I went to the Watauga Nursing Home and I worked there while I was working at Appalachian State University. I started working there in 1978."

How did you decide on your career?
"I have always been the type of person that loved to take care of people and make sure that they’re happy and everything. After high school, I had a guidance counselor that told me I never would be able to go into nursing but I did. I went to Caldwell institute down there and worked for, let’s see...my schooling was 14 months and then I came out as an LPN. Took my state boards."

How would you say the work has changed since you started?
"Tremendously, tremendously. When I went into Nursing, it was more the patient. You took care of the patient, made sure that if they needed anything, or the family, or anything like that you would talk with them and make sure that the patient was comfortable and everything. Now, the way that I see it now, is its more education. You don't get that much one-on-one with the patient and the nurse. Most of the time the nurses now are more into a lot of book work and learning you know that and doing that and letting the nurses’ aids do what the nurses usually do, most of it. Not all of it but most of it."

Describe a typical work day.
"When I went in, I worked on, started off on evening shift and I was the medication nurse. What I would do, I would go in, we would get report from the nurses that were on before us and find out what each patient had had done. I worked surgical floor..."

Read the full transcript below.

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