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Good morning, Fearless readers:
Happy December. We are in the homestretch of 2024 — can you believe it?!
Two of today’s stories feature women in health care. Did you know 70% of health care jobs globally are held by women, but women only make up a quarter of leadership roles in the industry? Tara Geddes, a Le Mars nursing leader, talked about this at our Fearless Annual Celebration.
In this week’s Fearless e-newsletter, you will find:
- A story about Tara Geddes, who had a medical scare in her own family that emphasized the need for empathy in health care.
- A story about Carol Mefford, who began her nursing career 58 years ago.
- Three more ideas from Abi Reiland, one of this year’s 90 Ideas in 90 Minutes speakers.
- In case you missed it: Read some inspiration from three women named Sages Over 70 by dsm magazine this year.
- Lots more!
— Emily Barske Wood, Business Record special projects editor
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A medical scare helped Tara Geddes, a Le Mars nursing leader, better understand empathy
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AS TOLD BY EMILY BARSKE WOOD
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Tara Geddes grew up in a medical family. Her mom was an obstetrics nurse, and her dad an emergency medical technician. She knew early on that she also aspired to a career in health care – but she had zero desire to ascend to a leadership role.
She started her nursing career in 2001, first providing specialized care for surgical and oncology patients. Experience in the field would eventually change her perception of leadership.
Having built some management experience, in 2014, Geddes joined Floyd Valley Healthcare in Le Mars as community health manager, a public health position particularly important during the pandemic, before being named the chief nursing officer in 2021. In that role, she’s been instrumental in the hospital’s expansion of its birthing unit at a time when many are closing. As she’s risen through the ranks in her industry, she obtained education for the skills she felt she lacked — first a bachelor’s degree in business and then a master’s degree in health care administration.
Geddes and her husband, Scott, reside in Hinton and have five children, Delaney, Brooklyn, Addyson, Chloey and Easton. A terrifying medical experience in her own family has informed the kind of care she hopes to provide patients.
The following story has been formatted to be entirely in her words, and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I have five children — four girls and one boy. No. 3 and 4 were twins. They were born in January 2010, nine weeks early, which we had experienced before when our other girls were also nine weeks early. They spent about six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. It was a really uneventful and typical NICU stay. But when we got home, one of them quit breathing for short periods of time.
We ended up finding out that she had sepsis, an infection in her blood. Then a couple of days later, her twin sister did the same thing, and she also had sepsis. She was admitted to the hospital and her course was drastically different from her sister’s — so much so that we were not sure she was going to make it.
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She ended up turning the corner. We brought her home, but she started having seizures. We took her back to the hospital and she ended up having hydrocephalus, which is fluid on her brain. They transferred her down to Omaha, where we spent about six months in the intensive care unit.
Obviously, my initial fear and concern were for our daughter, who was critically sick. But then behind the scenes, you have all of these emotions and these worries that you’re working through: Am I going to lose my job because I need to be down here to take care of her? How are we going to pay our bills? Are the other three kids getting what they need? We had another infant back home, who couldn’t be down in Omaha for six months with her sister, so we tried to make sure that her care was being met and that she was meeting all those developmental milestones that children go through. Then you worry about your marriage — how do we navigate this together?
As women, we always feel like we have to take on everything. We have to be that super mom and a super-important employee. How do you balance all of those things? I think when life throws you those challenges, there isn’t always a balance with it. Sometimes your focus has to be on something different. But yet you still have these guilty feelings: I wasn’t the best employee, I wasn’t the best mom and I wasn’t the best friend. Trying to navigate that was the biggest challenge.
It’s different for every family but for my husband and me, getting through that time looked like the opportunity to sit down and say, "Here’s what we have. Here are our priorities and how we can divide and conquer." I had to keep in mind that although his feelings may be different than my feelings, we both have the same goal in mind. We had to acknowledge that it’s going to be uncomfortable for a while. We’re not going to have the life that we typically had prior to her illness for a while. This is a season that we’re in. While I had the mom guilt or the woman guilt where I couldn’t be everything to everybody, he took the typical dad role and worried about how to make sure that he was providing. That wasn’t my priority at the time, but that was his. We had to recognize that we’re seeing the same thing in different ways, but we still wanted to be able to support each other and have faith in each other.
Being part of the medical community prior to that, but then going through it from a personal side, opened my eyes to how short life can be and how drastically it could change.
We had some experiences that I would never replicate on patients that I cared for. That really shaped who I was and how I talk to patients, how I approach them with empathy and compassion, and see that side of the experience to know what families are feeling. I’d been a nurse for over a decade by that point, but to see how some don’t have that bedside manner and the ability to look at things from the patient’s perspective, that really shaped me.
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Passion fuels local nurse through nearly 6-decade career
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BY MACEY SHOFROTH, FEARLESS STAFF WRITER
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When Carol Mefford began her nursing career 58 years ago, nurses didn’t use gloves at patients’ bedsides. It was considered rude.
She graduated from college the same time Lyndon B. Johnson passed Medicare. She worked as an oncology nurse at the beginning of the field’s development. She used to have patients in her care for two weeks after they received total joint replacement surgeries.
She’s now 78, and she believes she’s the oldest bedside nurse in the regional area. She’s spent nearly six decades witnessing medical advancements and, as she describes it, "performing miracles." She sees no reason to stop anytime soon.
"It’s a joy to me, and that’s why I’m still here. When it’s not a joy, or my back goes, or health-wise I can’t do it anymore, then I won’t," Mefford said. "But I still can, and that’s a blessing to me."
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Fired up to help
After graduating from the University of Iowa in 1968, Mefford began her career as a public health nurse in Des Moines. She worked with vulnerable populations and cared for patients with transmittable diseases. She helped women who had received illegal abortions get evaluated at Broadlawns Medical Center.
She cared deeply about helping the underserved and underprivileged, a passion that she still lives with today. She holds strong convictions that she’s unafraid to express.
"I was on fire then — hell on fire — to help the world," Mefford said.
She spent time teaching nursing students, then moved to oncology as the field was developing. She won Nurse of the Year at Iowa Lutheran Hospital in 1983 for her work in the specialty. She remembers mixing oncology drugs at the bedside with no protection while pregnant, back when pain management for cancer patients was virtually nonexistent.
Today, she works on a floor at Lutheran, where patients are seen for various illnesses and surgeries; she cares mostly for orthopedic patients. After working through the COVID-19 pandemic and having the illness four times, patients with the virus are the only ones she won’t take.
The impact she’s able to have on each patient’s life has fueled her through 58 years of nursing.
"Nursing can be a calling," she said. "And I was called."
Running the floor
Mefford didn’t feel the need to move into nursing management or administrative roles. She believes her decades of knowledge and experience are best used by serving her patients and fellow nurses.
"We look at advancement in nursing as going up the ladder. I don’t see it that way. Be a clinical specialist. Lead the others so that they, too, are specialists on the floor. Because knowledge is power, and we need to reward those that stay at the bedside," she said.
She’s naturally a leader on her floor. She loves teaching newer nurses and encouraging them to find what fits them best in nursing. She feels a responsibility to support them as they explore the beginning of the profession that she loves so dearly.
She’s also witnessed firsthand how changes in staffing and nurse shortages have increased the workload for everyone. With increased patient-to-staff ratios, the stress is higher and there’s less time to teach. She feels nurses are overworked. But, she explained, if your heart’s in it, it’s worth it.
"What I say to young nurses is, ‘We have an opportunity to make a difference in the life of someone every single day,’" she said.
Not slowing down
Mefford’s energy doesn’t wane outside of the hospital either.
She enjoys cross-country skiing and has even taught her co-workers. She and her husband love to travel, swimming with sharks off the coast of Mexico and whitewater rafting in North Carolina. She’s also an Audubon Woman and spends time caring for birds at county parks.
"If I’m not at work, I’m at my health club. And that’s one of the reasons I can still run that hallway," she said. "Keep moving. Use it or lose it."
Her passion for her family and community keeps her going, as well. She and her husband have two grandchildren. They spend time at Ankeny sporting events. They sponsor Japanese exchange students attending DMACC and support them in acclimating to their new home.
She’s thinking of moving to an active senior center with her husband when she turns 80, but there are no plans for her to leave nursing at this time. Her two 12-hour shifts a week bring her joy, and that’s what matters the most to her.
"Have I had some personal tragedies in my life? Yes, I have. But the joy of nursing is when you walk in there, I don’t care what my challenges are. It’s so rewarding to me. I can leave anytime I want. That changes one’s attitude. I still love it. I go in by choice," she said.
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"SILENT GRATITUDE
ISN’T VERY MUCH USE
TO ANYONE."
GERTRUDE STEIN
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Abi Reiland shares her remarks at the 2024 90 Ideas Event. Photo by Duane Tinkey.
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From the Business Record’s 90 Ideas in 90 Minutes
Abi Reiland, who spoke at 90 Ideas in September, shared three bonus ideas with us. Reiland is president of commercial real estate at Sara Hopkins Real Estate Team (REMAX Precision Urban Office) and also the owner of 80.35 Wellness. Here are her three extra ideas.
Back to the basics
Acknowledgment and meaningful connections can be sparked in just a few words that apply to every human you encounter in a day: Please. Thank you. I appreciate you.
Smile
If you can merge the basics (noted above) with a smile, you now have a superpower. Making a positive impact in the world and the lives of those around you doesn’t require a lot of effort. Smile. Smile at employees. Smile at peers. Smile at strangers. And you’ll reap benefits as well. Smiling triggers the release of serotonin and other happy chemicals that boost your mood. So whether it’s selfish or selfless, smile.
Attitude and effort
My husband and I tell our kids constantly that there are only two things you can control in life: attitude and effort. Sometimes, regardless of attitude and effort, we fail. And that’s OK. As an entrepreneur, I’ve failed more times than I would like to admit. But each time, I assessed myself and my team based on the attitude we approached the project with and the effort we gave. If the result is still a failure, we learn a lesson and move along. The measurement for success should be less about short-term comparisons and wins, and more about the long-term attitude and effort that will inevitably result in great things.
Read more of 90 Ideas and watch this year’s speakers.
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'Running fixes things': at the first Every Woman's Marathon, we asked women why they run (Essence). They shared their abortion stories on the campaign trail. They’re not done fighting. (The 19th). Luna: Johnson blocked proxy voting for new moms (Politico). This serial entrepreneur connects startups that need financing with business accelerators that can help (Forbes). Put down the vacuum (The Atlantic). A California teen skipped through high school, college, and law school in 4 years. She just passed the bar at age 17: 'I wouldn't trade it for anything' (Entrepreneur).
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BY JANN FREED, LEADERSHIP COACH, FOR DSM MAGAZINE
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Here’s a quote from the three women who were named Sages Over 70 by dsm magazine this year.
Bobbretta Brewton: "Even though the challenges facing our community, like homelessness and education, are complicated, their solutions don’t have to be. Life really can be simple if you do your best to listen to others, especially the ones on that corner you’re afraid to go to now. Go where your compassion is."
Connie Isaacson: "Do your best to succeed at home first, and don’t confuse your career with your life."
Mary Lou Neugent: "Be generous with your time, be generous with your heart and be brave. Find something you’re passionate about and it will lead you to an opportunity to serve."
See stories about all of this year’s Sages.
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At its core, Fearless exists to help empower Iowa women to succeed in work and life. We believe that everyone has a story to share and that we cannot progress as a society unless we know about one another. We share stories through featuring women in our reporting, featuring guest contributions and speakers at our events.
We are always looking for new stories to share and people to feature. Get in touch with us!
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