The Best Place to Work

With more than 130 years of combined nursing experience, three Le Bonheur Associates exemplify what it means to care for others with compassion.

Sabrina Para, RN, Kristy Traver, RN, and Dawn Billings, RN, all took different paths in their nursing careers, but each of them has devoted their lives to helping people during some of the scariest and most vulnerable times of their lives.

Innovating Better Patient Care

When Sabrina Para was in nursing school, she did a rotation at Le Bonheur and discovered her passion for working with kids. She applied for a job and was initially hired to work in an infant care unit called Pediatric Acute Observation (PAO).

Para eventually made the transition to the Post Anesthesia Care Unit and spent years helping patients recover as they woke up from surgery. During her time in the surgery
department, Para observed some patients have their surgeries canceled as surgeons or anesthesiologists deemed them not approved for surgery.

Ever the innovator, Para was one of the first nurses that organized and developed the Early Admission Surgical Express(EASE) program for surgery patients which was later renamed the preoperative screening department. Prior to surgery, patient families receive a call from a preoperative screening nurse to ensure they have followed the instructions from their care team and are ready for surgery. They also confirm that Le Bonheur has an accurate medical and anesthesia history for the patient so the hospital is able to provide safe care.

“I love putting the puzzle together to make sure we have everything on the patient’s chart ready to go for surgery so there won’t be any concerns or problems when they show electronic charting and provided feedback to help make the system work better for pediatric patients.

“In 2020, we still had so many patient forms on paper and we transitioned them to be electronic,” Para said. “This allows us to look back on past surgeries and diagnostic tests which provides more information, a better continuity of care as well as safer and more quality care.”

As she celebrates a remarkable fiftieth year as a Le Bonheur Associate, Para’s words of wisdom to nurses are to get involved and be proactive, and help the hospital improve by identifying areas that can be better.

“Reflecting on my career, I’m most proud of how we implemented electronic charting to streamline patient care and better care for them in the process,” Para said. “We have come a long way as a hospital from a small four floor building to a big beautiful new space complete with wonderful artwork and state-of-the-art technology.”

Calm in the Storm

Car accidents. Severe illness. Gunshot wounds. Kristy Traver has seen it all during her 40 years in Le Bonheur’s Emergency Department (ED). When Traver began her first Le Bonheur shift in 1986, she was immediately drawn to quickly thinking on her feet and responding to the needs of the children in her care.

“When I first started, I worked nights in the emergency department. My very first day out of orientation, I was the nurse in charge of the emergency department with two other nurses who had just graduated,” Traver said. “The ED was very small. There were no cell phones or computers, the hospital had paper charts and an overhead paging system to contact doctors and Associates.”

While a lot has changed over the years, from enhanced technology to a much larger ED with significantly more patient beds, Traver’s passion for taking care of children and families during some of the toughest moments of their lives has not.

“I am at Le Bonheur because I like my patients, my coworkers and doctors. I like what I do and I’m always learning and growing,” Traver said. “In my role you see people at their worst, you are taking care of not just the child but the whole family, so it is important for me to be able to help families navigate the situation.”

As an ED Charge Nurse, Traver directs her fellow nurses on the floor, prioritizing patients and ensuring they have the resources they need. Traver says it’s imperative that she remains calm and flexible to help her staff succeed.

Traver enjoys that the ED provides the opportunity to do a little bit of everything — no two days are alike and she is able to care for kids of all ages with a variety of medical concerns. Families count on Traver to be prepared to care for children from infancy to adulthood and treat whatever illness or injury they walk through the ED doors with.

When Traver’s husband had a heart attack, she learned even more about walking in the shoes of a patient and their family, making her an even more compassionate and understanding nurse. With her daughter set to graduate nursing school later this year, helping others is a family value that runs deep.

“The advice I give to my daughter is ‘you be the nurse you want to work next to and help your fellow nurses when they need help’,” Traver said. “Be a sponge, look things up and ask questions, those are the qualities that make for a great nurse.”

Bridging the Gap

For more than 35 years, Dawn Billings worked in the recovery room of Methodist North and University hospitals. In 2023, an opportunity to work with kids materialized closer to home. Le Bonheur was seeking a school nurse supervisor in Tipton County to oversee 13 full-time nurses that care for 10,000 students across 13 schools. Billings was hired and has flourished in this new chapter in her career.

Le Bonheur’s school nurse program helps bridge the access gap for kids to receive health care and provides the resources they need to stay in school. According to Billings, without school nurses there would be increased absenteeism and learning loss as students would miss valuable time in the classroom to address medical concerns.

Not only do the school nurses under Billings’ supervision help manage routine childhood illness, bumps and bruises, they are also able to assist with more serious medical needs and provide resources to families.

“We have kids with chronic medical conditions that require care, like diabetic students who need insulin shots and asthmatic students who need help with their inhalers,” Billings said. “We are able to provide that assistance, and we hear from parents that they feel better knowing there is a trained nurse in the building.”

When a student receives a new medical diagnosis, Billings and her team are able to facilitate a referral to a specialist at Le Bonheur or assist with navigating the necessary care.

Not only do parents and students like having a robust school nurse program in Tipton County, schoolteachers and administrators are grateful for the resource, too.

For Billings, helping children and families is what’s kept her at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (MLH) for 40 years and counting.

“It’s always been about the mission, the patients and patient care that has kept me in nursing at MLH,” Billings said.