Heather Yager, a Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing BSN student, made the decision to switch to health care after working as a financial advisor for over a decade. Originally from the Richmond area, she made the decision to enroll in nursing while being a full-time mother to her two-year-old son, Tucker. “Tucker and my husband Josh have been my rock during this whole journey. I want my son to be proud of his mom going to work every day,” Yager said.
The health care profession is not uncommon in her family as she stated that her grandmother was her greatest influence to becoming a nurse. “My grandmother, with whom I was extremely close, was a nurse for nearly 50 years. She experienced an end-of-life care situation at St. Francis Medical Center over the timespan of a month and a half. During this process, I was overwhelmed by the care she received from fellow nurses, the respect she garnered from physicians and other care team members,” she said.
She was visited by old coworkers, nurses from other units where she had received care during that stay and former patients that she impacted during her time as a nurse. When asked why she chose BSMCON, she stated, “When she passed and we were walking out of the hospital, I turned to my husband and told him that day that I wanted to go to nursing school. If I could create an ounce of impact that she had during her time as a nurse, the world would be a much more compassionate place,” she said. “I also found out after her passing that a majority of the nursing team that took care of her were BSMCON graduates, which really solidified my choice in nursing school programs.”
Yager’s clinical experience includes working as a summer nurse extern for the patient care center at St. Francis Medical Center along with working as a tech on the progressive care unit at Memorial Regional Medical Center. She is currently completing her senior immersion on the new life labor and delivery unit at St. Francis Medical Center and is also a patient care technician there as well. Yager has accepted her first RN position on the same unit at St. Francis Medical Center that will begin in July.
