Tracey Siegel: Middlesex County College

Tracey Siegel, R.N., B.S.N., M.S.N., C.N.E., likes to tell her nursing students the story of her first attempt to catheterize a patient. When she was a student more than three decades ago, she contaminated four catheters before successfully inserting the tube on the fifth try. It's a story she tells to send a simple message: "If I could do it, you can do it."
 
The message is one she wishes had been clearer when she was a "very shy and very awkward and nervous" young nursing student decades ago, when her teachers had little patience for rookie mistakes. She draws on those memories in her day-to-day life now as a nursing instructor at Middlesex County College in New Jersey. "I tend to try and pick out the ones who are struggling and really work with them," she says.
 
A clinical nurse for a quarter century, Siegel always enjoyed the opportunity to share her knowledge with new nurses—and always got positive feedback when she did. Finally, she said, she realized she would be a better fit in the classroom than at the bedside. In 2001, she learned of an opening at Charles E. Gregory School of Nursing, part of Raritan Bay Medical Center, and she jumped at the chance to teach.
 
For Siegel, college life isn't quite the idyll it can appear to be in the media. Siegel starts her workday at 8:00 a.m. and runs around campus juggling lectures and clinics with meetings, research on catheter care, student evaluations and other projects. If she had to give new nurse educators advice, it would be to "Get roller skates!"
 
And then there's the ongoing challenge dealing with diverse students. Publicity surrounding the nationwide nursing shortage has inspired all kinds of people to enter the profession, she says, but some are unprepared for the rigors of nursing life.
 
Still, there are major perks to teaching, says Siegel, who is embarking on her doctorate degree this spring. She enjoys free weekends and a slightly more flexible schedule and, unlike many nurses who leave the bedside to go to the classroom, she did not have to take a pay cut to teach because she teaches at the same hospital-based system where she was a clinical nurse.
 
Teaching also allows her to keep up her clinical skills and, at the same time, experience the joys of connecting with students and the satisfaction of passing on knowledge to the next generation. "I love when they get it, when they're in the unit and you're showing them something and their eyes get big and they're so excited. As they start to put the pieces together, that's what really makes my day worthwhile," she says. "And when the day comes that I can no longer walk the nursing halls and do clinical, there will be somebody to replace the rest of us to keep the profession strong."