CHENEY – It’s not everyday someone starts a new medical job in the middle of a pandemic.
So, it’s understandable that when new Lincoln Hospital Nursing Director Bonnie E. DesJardin, a Cheney resident, was asked how life at Lincoln Hospital compared to other jobs, she couldn’t answer.
“I don’t know what the normal is here,” DesJardin said, noting she’s been on the job here only three weeks. “I’ve been told some things, but I really haven’t experienced it yet ... I expected to come out here and start by really just seeing how this hospital is run.
“But with the pandemic going on, all of the normal stuff I would be doing is set by the wayside.”
DesJardin said much of her time is being spent making sure the hospital is able to separate potential COVID-19 patients and making sure good practices are in place.
DesJardin brings 25 years of nursing experience to her post in Davenport.
“I like to help people,” DesJardin said. “I always have, ever since I was a little kid. And I figured that if you are sick or injured, you are going to want someone who loves their job there to take care of you. And that’s me.”
She knew she wanted to be a nurse from an early age.
“I was a teenager,” DesJardin said. “I wanted a job. So, I went to the local nursing home and applied. I got my first job as a nursing assistant. I was still in school and worked on the weekends.”
DesJardin graduated from Lewiston High School in 1988. She met her husband, Rory, when she was 19 and the two married shortly thereafter.
By 1991, they had started a family.
DesJardin decided she wanted to continue her education and enrolled in the nursing program at Walla Walla Community College in Clarkston.
After graduating with her associate degree in nursing, she began her career as a nurse at Whitman County Medical Center in Colfax in 1994.
After some time in that job, she left to work in a private orthopedic surgeon’s practice there in 2001.
DesJardin kept that job for about nine years before deciding to do something new.
With her children older, she heard about an opportunity to become a traveling nurse in Montana.
The job was 13 weeks long and close enough to home to drive there, do three days of 12-hour shifts and return home.
She enjoyed that, and when another traveling position was available when she finished her 13 weeks, she took it.
That one was a bit further away.
“It was in Maryland,” DesJardin said. “I talked to my husband about it and he was very supportive.”
Over the next several years, DesJardin traveled all over the country working 13-week gigs.
During that time, her husband had been working at in Idaho designing bullets.
When he left that job, he accepted a position in Wisconsin at the same time DesJardin took a nursing assignment in California.
Over the next 13 weeks, a lot of money was spent on airfare.
Finally, the two decided to return to Washington. DesJardin took a job at Providence Holy Family Hospital in Spokane in 2014; her husband took a job as a professor.
DesJardin said she had always planned to return to school to earn her bachelor’s degree, but a verity of reasons kept her from doing so.
That would change at Holy Family.
“I decided now was the time,” DesJardin said. “There were three or four other nurses at the hospital that all decided we would go back to school together.”
They enrolled at Western Governors University. DesJardin completed the two-year program in eight months.
But she wasn’t done yet. DesJardin said she always thought she may be interested in teaching nursing, so she earned her master’s in nursing education degree.
While still at Holy Family, an interim leadership position was offered to her. She worked in that position until a permanent person was assigned.
DesJardin has returned to school to earn a second master’s degree, in nursing management. When the nursing director job in Davenport, she applied.
Jeremy Burnham can be contacted at jeremy@cheneyfreepress.com.
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