Making a medical office a home: The efforts of Nurse Phyllis Peterson

The Student Health and Wellness Center, previously hidden away on the third floor of Tower Hall, recently found a new home on Tower’s first floor.

According to Nurse Phyllis Peterson, the move gave her department some much-appreciated visibility.  

“I think the students have gotten to know me, knowing my whereabouts better… They’ll go by and they’ll know I’m in my office and they’ll give me a ‘Hello, Phyllis!’” 

Many students have already made the acquaintance of the University of St. Francis’ nurse-in-residence. Peterson has been there in times of sickness and discomfort. 

She nurses upset stomachs, bloody noses and athletic injuries. She covers papercuts with bandages. She administers lifesaving medication. Sometimes she brings in her cream-colored Labrador retriever, Gretchen, for some extra moral support during finals.  

Peterson’s nursing is marked by attentive personal care, an approach she developed over nearly 50 years as a Will County-area nurse.

At 18, Peterson attended St. Joseph School of Nursing, then part of the St. Joseph Medical Center. Her class was the first co-ed class to graduate from the program. The curriculum was challenging; young nurses were given practical hospital experience their first year in the program. 

“We could work in the hospital as certified nurse aides… during the school year, too, after we finished our first semester… Even if we could work four hours, get patients down for the night, watching the nurses, seeing what they were doing, it was good experience,” Peterson explained.

After graduation, Peterson started work as a home health nurse, providing regular medical care to those who were at home rather than at a hospital. She witnessed the growth of the sector. 

“When I first started out… [we saw] 4 to 5 patients a day. By the time I left home health, because it had become so much of a popular asset in medicine, we were doing 9 to 10.”

Just like in hospital nursing, there are a lot of obligations of being on-call. 

“You get a call at 2 o’clock in the morning and an IV has infiltrated; guess what? You go and restart it,” Peterson said.  

Peterson went through a lot in her home health career. She was bitten by a dog and caught in gang fire. Once, she fell through a staircase while visiting a patient. 

“The outside stairs went to the second floor of the house and unfortunately they were wooden and they had rotted… I got up to the top and I must’ve found a weak spot in that stair, and whoof!”

“What caught me was my big nursing bag… So here I am dangling! Thank God, the stair in front of me looked a little bit better than the other that I’d just stepped on, and I pushed myself up. I wanted to go in there and say, ‘Move over, I need the bed, too!’”

Despite the occasional perils, Peterson greatly valued her time in home health. As she talks about the many people she has cared for, her eyes light up, as if remembering old friends.

“You get attached to the patient and the family; you become a part of the family. And sometimes you’re the only person that they see,” Peterson described. “Sometimes families just aren’t nearby, or something’s happened in the relationship, so you’re kind of the one and only.”

The biggest hallmark of Peterson’s home health nursing: She hugged every one of her patients. 

“I do hug my patients when I leave because I feel sometimes that’s maybe the only hug they’ve gotten that day,” Peterson mentioned.

After nearly 30 years of service, Peterson felt it was time for a change. This is when she brought her personalized care to the University of St. Francis. Just like in her previous role, no two days are exactly alike.

“Most of the time I’m seeing sick students… Periodically, injuries. Primarily, if they’re athletic-driven, I get in touch with the trainers over there, and we’ll work on it together.”

During the fall, Peterson has a lot of emails to sort out, ensuring all students have up-to-date health records and immunizations. She developed the Wellness Center in this particular regard.

“We were requiring immunizations, but we were not administering them. That needed to change. How do you tell a student to go to CVS or Walgreens if they have no form of transportation, or they’re in a foreign country? That was totally unacceptable.”

By Peterson’s intervention, the Wellness Center now provides any necessary immunizations in-house. No case is the same, and she is constantly working to meet the particular needs of each student. 

“We’ve had some very sick students. We’ve had students with cancer. We’ve had students who’ve had to have surgery for cancer... And if they’re local, I try to help with referrals,” Peterson said. “I want our students to go to someone who I know is good, and if I’m questioning it, I call a fellow nurse at the hospitals… The nurses know.”

But Peterson’s care does not end with the first visit.

“Say for example a student goes to the emergency room… I follow up with them and make sure everything is going correctly.”

If she retired, she says she would do more of the things she loves outside of work: quilting, playing piano, traveling in her motorhome. In the end, though, Peterson’s work at the university is just as much a labor of love, one she has no plans to retire from in the near future. The way she sees it, doing what you love is the best way to stay healthy.

“I call it my semi-retirement position here… I just couldn’t see me sitting at home.”