Healthcare Worker Appreciation Day did not go unnoticed on campus at Colorado Mesa University (CMU), with students recognizing these local heroes with self-care gifts.
The appreciation CMU students have for healthcare workers runs much deeper than the self-care gifts.
Almost every student has been guided through a medical concern by a trusted nurse or doctor, and many were inspired by their work to pursue a career in medicine on their own. One of these students is CMU nursing freshman Alec Thudium.
“So I have an allergy to nuts, and I wasn’t fully aware of how bad it was initially,” Thudium said, “So one day I had a smoothie with some almond milk. And long story short, it caused me a pretty severe allergic reaction, that ended me up in the hospital, and I was in the ER, probably for seven or eight hours.”
Thudium goes on to recall the stress of the event, and how he would have been in serious trouble if not for his local health care workers.
“I remember [my nurse] came with a wheelchair, and they were able to get me into the room and help me so quickly,” Thudium said, “It was really surreal experience because I was very close to death.”
Even after the climax of his scare, Thudium could not help but be inspired by the hard work going on throughout the ER.
“And so I had eventually woken up after recovering, and I was watching the nurses work, and what they were doing to me and other patients,” Thudium said. “And it really got interesting, so I decided that I wanted to try to do work in that same health care field, maybe even as an ER nurse or a practitioner.”
As a future health care worker himself, Thudium realizes the trials and tribulations of the job, and hopes for a continuation of current support for healthcare workers.
“I know that [work is] just really taxing on them, so I would say I’m sure they appreciate everything everyone’s doing right now with online posts and stuff like that,” Thudium said.
With people’s lives on the line every day, it is important you not only appreciate health care workers locally and across the world, but to also express this gratitude the next time you pass by a health care worker.
As a future healthcare provider, this article is very much appreciated. As a journalist, you may know the western slope is currently in a health care provider shortage. This is why it is so important that Colorado Mesa continues to support the growth and development of healthcare professions in our community. So it saddens me to see such conflicting opinions on this topic. In this article there is so much support for the doctors and nurses, but in a separate opinion based article from this author he criticized the school for expanding into other healthcare professions like the Physician Assistant, Occupational Therapy, and Physical Therapy programs. It is important to grow medical professionals from the ground up so that they do not later migrate to more saturated markets, and instead fill the provider gap locally. While articles like this supporting local health care heroes are amazing, it is also important to support local healthcare students in their education and not criticize their programs importance at CMU.