Like many nurses, Linda Thomas, BSN, RN, CCRN, knew she wanted to be a nurse when she was in high school.

“When I was a junior I high school, I was always interested in taking care of people. I lived on farm, so we did a lot of doctoring animals.  I felt very compassionate; I wanted to make people feel better. It wasn’t a case of money.”

Since her early days in a small diploma nursing program in the 1970s, Thomas rapidly rose through the ranks of nursing profession, working in many different specialties and facilities before she came to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, Fayetteville, NC, where she serves as clinical educator for critical care and participates in numerous committees.

The Dream Begins

To start fulfilling her dream of becoming a nurse, she attended a small diploma program in Orangeburg, SC, in the 1970s. 

Thomas started her career in med/surg. However, she soon found herself a reluctant OR nurse. “I really didn’t want to, but my director of nursing wanted some good leadership skills in the OR. She said, ‘If you want to get promoted, take this position,’ so after much resistance I took it and worked there for about 12 years.”

When she moved on to other facilities — her husband was in the military, which meant frequent relocations — she gained experience in labor and delivery, emergency and ICU.

Then, as now, nursing shortages were common, and Thomas quickly learned how to keep up during understaffed periods. “There were times when there weren’t enough nurses to meet the need. I worked in smaller facilities without a lot of nursing staff to draw from. I never got the flu, and so I was the one who had to cover for the staff who did.”

Professional Advocacy

In addition to bedside nursing and education, Thomas is active in national and local professional organizations, serving in the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, and the policy and procedure committee at Cape Fear Valley.

“I’m currently the local chapter president for AACN, and I have served on the national AACN review panel and advisory board team.” In these roles, she has spoken nationally and locally on a variety of topics, such as performance improvement and continual lateral rotation beds and positioning.

Her dedication to the profession led her peers to nominate her to the Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina program.

Education a Priority

Education has always been a priority for Thomas, whether it is seeking her own higher nursing degrees or helping new nurses at Cape Fear Valley.

The constant relocations because of her husband’s military career made completing a BSN a challenge, but she finally earned the degree. “Each time I moved, I had to start over. I finally got it in 1990 at UNC Chapel Hill, and then I immediately went back to start my master’s from East Carolina University. Now I’m working on my PhD.”

Thomas serves as a preceptor for nurses enrolled in BSN and MSN programs, and she counsels, tutors and mentors staff nurses at Cape Fear Valley Health System. For a semester, she stepped in at the last minute to help instruct first and second year and nurses on the weekends for a local community college.

“I mentor a lot of students who are going back for their MSN and BSN,” she told ADVANCE. “I think their biggest needs are the ability to put the picture together. They are given a lot of facts in nursing school, and as they come out and start to work in the real world, they know the facts but can’t put the picture together.”

Thomas tries to get her students to see beyond black and white, to recognize a patient can have more than one problem and to think through the nursing process. “Look at the patient as a whole person and consider how each part fits into the picture,” she advises her students.

Communication barriers also present a challenge to novice nurses, Thomas has found. “New grads and new nurse are afraid to talk, and I want to help them build the confidence to say ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ or ‘No, I don’t know, help me understand.’ With the types of patients we’re seeing, you have to do that efficiently if you’re going to survive in an acute-care setting.”