Sylvia
When I see the needs of the neuro patients, I know I have to look after these people, just as a way to say thank you.
Sylvia, charge nurse on the front lines at The University of Tennessee Medical Center, traveled some 7,000 miles to get here. Sylvia grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, in the 1990s, one of the world’s worst civil wars endangered her family’s security and set her on the road to Knoxville Tennessee.
Her father, who owns a trucking company in Kinshasa, the country’s capital, had a large family but only enough money to send one of his children out of the country. “There were so many of us,” Sylvia says, “that he couldn’t afford to have all of us go. I was one of the youngest, but I liked adventures, so I said, ‘I’ll try.’”
She came to Knoxville, Tn, in January 1999. Her aunt, who had studied at The University of Tennessee earlier in the ’90s to earn a PhD in economics and accounting, advised her to attend UT. “She told me about the English program she went through,” Sylvia says. “She said, ‘They are international student friendly. They get people from all over the world. They teach the basic English that can get you ready for college.’” Sylvia mastered English and entered UT’s College of Nursing. Her first clinical training took place at the medical center unit on 10 East, at that time a mix of trauma and neurological patients. In caring for those who had suffered stroke, Sylvia found her calling.
“My mom survived a stroke in 1996, and my dad had a stroke last year,” she says. She understood the particular difficulties the families of stroke patients were experiencing because she had gone through them herself. “You just saw them crying—the mama was the breadwinner and she was in bed, and the kids didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell them, ‘I’ve been there, I know how you feel,’ and then try to do my best to help with the knowledge I had.”
The University of Tennessee Medical Center opened the neuro/stroke unit in the spring of 2007 as part of its ongoing effort to improve outcomes for stroke patients and their families. The previous fall, the medical center’s work had earned it a prestigious primary-stroke-center certification—the first in the region—from the Joint Commission, the group responsible for accrediting hospitals and other healthcare organizations.
The primary-stroke-center designation requires that nurses on the medical center’s 18-bed neuro/stroke unit complete eight hours of continuing education in stroke care each year. The nurses on the unit including Sylvia also educate families, patients and people at risk in the treatment, rehabilitation and prevention of stroke.
The nurses on the neuro/stroke unit are proud of the team they’ve organized to advance stroke care and prevention, and Sylvia believes her work is a way to give something back for the care her own parents received. “I like the people I work with,” she says. “It’s a great team. When I see the needs of the neuro patients, I know I have to look after these people, just as a way to say thank you.”
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