National Nurses Week: Alyssa Kozlovsky: Call changed future career path

Alyssa Kozlovsky was on the path to being a dietitian when she got what would become a life-changing phone call.

Someone had offered Kozlovsky a job helping one of their family members get their medications on a weekly basis.

"So, I just thought I'm in college. That's easy money," Kozlovsky said.

The job ended up being a little more than the dietetics major was anticipating. She became a caretaker for the individual.

"I just realized that I had a passion for nursing and not dietetics," Kozlovsky said. "And so after he passed away, I switched my major to nursing."

She graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a nursing degree in 2018. Kozlovsky went to work at Saint Francis Medical Center upon graduation. She will be celebrating her five-year work anniversary this month.

Kozlovsky is a registered nurse, working as the charge nurse on the orthopedic surgical floor.

The environment is a fast-paced one. The majority of patients on the floor are rotated or discharged within 24 hours. Her job is to "be an extra set of hands" for whatever the other nurses on the floor need, including helping with discharges and admissions.

Through her position, Kozlovsky sometimes encounters the patients who are struggling the most, ones who have had lengthy intensive care unit stays and are rotated. She said the most rewarding part of her job was seeing those same people — who could barely get out of bed — walk out of the hospital.

As was the case in health care across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic upended much of Kozlovsky's work life.

"I had just recently gotten into the groove," Kozlovsky said when March 2020 rolled around.

Much of the first few months for her were spent trying to adapt not just to the pandemic but also completely switching her rotations from night to day shift.

"That was actually a whole different vibe because the way it works is different on each shift," she said. "And then, we went into the COVID world, and that was kinda scary, because at that point we were just trying to figure out what the pandemic was like, 'How sick were these people? and then, you know, 'What to do with them?'"

In essence, everything changed. The hospital was no longer doing elective surgeries, staffing levels were in constant flux, and a contingent of the nursing core were now traveling in for temporary stays.

Kozlovsky said she and others were "run ragged" during the height of COVID-19, since they've had more time to focus on individual patient care.

It's a rewarding profession but it can take a toll.

"You have to be the same person no matter what you may have just dealt with in the room next door, no matter what room you go in," Kozlovsky said.

She sometimes comes home with a smile on her face and other times she has tears in her eyes, she said.

Despite the challenges, Kozlovsky said that she enjoys her job because she gets to continue her passion for helping people. A passion she recognized because of a phone call in college.