Penny Phillips
Registered Nurse
Penny wasn’t born in Texas, but she got here as fast as she could. She came by way of Canada and Louisiana. She was raised in northern Ontario, then went to nursing school in Toronto where she got her diploma from George Brown College.
After working for a year on a bone marrow transplant unit, she decided she wanted to see something different. She secured a job in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, based on the fact that she didn’t know where it was – so different! – and that she had heard that Mardi Gras was a lot of fun. Both the job and Mardi Gras turned out to be great. She worked on an oncology/hematology unit then transferred to a burn unit.
Looking for something different again, she tried travel nursing and had a few adventures going to several hospitals. She ended up in a pediatric intensive care unit in San Antonio, which she loved and so decided to stay. It helped that she had also met her future husband, who was stationed in San Antonio with the Air Force.
They decided to make San Antonio their home and started their family, which eventually came to include two daughters and multiple pets. After not working – as if that is what at-home moms are not about! – for 16 years she decided that that it was time to pursue her love of nursing again and was welcomed home to Warrior’s Heart.
My Why:
Coincidences are too coincidental. When I decided to go back to nursing after a 16 year hiatus, during which time I was raising my kids, I didn’t know where I would fit in. I tried hospital nursing, which was what I had done for my prior career. It was very unsatisfying. The work was about how fast a patient could be admitted and then discharged, whether the patient was physically and emotionally ready or not.
The same week that I decided to quit the hospital job, a succession of coincidences occurred. I was picking my daughter up from youth group and decided to get out of the car to see what the kids were doing. I never get out of the car, I just text that I have arrived to chauffeur her home. After getting out, I ran into a friend who I hadn’t seen in a few months. She invited me to lunch the next day with another couple of friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. Normally, I would blow the lunch off, but for some reason, I went.
That friend, the one I hadn’t seen in a long time, was Heather Blair, the nursing director for Warrior’s Heart. When I told her that I wasn’t going to be doing the hospital job any more, she said, “Come and work with me at Warrior’s Heart” – and so I did. All of these events had to line up just so for me to get that job offer. I like to think that, thru “coincidence”, I was destined to work at WH, the most fulfilling job I have ever had.
