Student lives faith-based focus of online nursing program

Marian University nursing student Sara Garrabrant, right, listens to advice from Stephanie Tooley, director of pediatrics, pediatric short stay and child life for St. Vincent Health. Garrabrant is a student in the accelerated online nursing education program that is a partnership between Marian University and St. Vincent Health. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

Sara Garrabrant could have told herself that she didn’t have time to sit with the young woman who looked “scared to death” about giving birth to her first child.

A 28-year-old nursing student, Garrabrant already had to juggle so many parts of her life—as a wife, a mother and a college student studying for finals and working in a hospital.

But then she remembered being in a similar situation just 15 months earlier when she was giving birth to her own child—a girl whose premature birth caused the doctors to be concerned that the baby’s lungs may not have developed fully.

“The two greatest things I heard in the delivery room were my baby crying and the neonatal intensive care unit nurses saying, ‘You don’t need us,’ ” Garrabrant recalls about the birth of her daughter, Bethany.

So when she came into the labor and delivery room at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis and saw the frightened young woman, Garrabrant sat next to her.

“She had no childbirth classes. She had no idea of what would happen,” Garrabrant says. “She was scared to death. I just sat in the room with her and drew upon my own experience. To see her calm down was uplifting. Her mom told me later how much that meant to her daughter.”

Garrabrant pauses and adds, “It helps make me whole to help other people. I need that.”

Garrabrant is one of the 27 students in an accelerated online nursing education program that is a partnership between Marian University in Indianapolis and St. Vincent Health. First open to students in September of 2009, the 16-month program is designed for people who have at least a bachelor’s degree in a non-nursing major.

For Garrabrant, one of the appealing aspects of the program is how it connects two Catholic institutions that share a focus on faith and values, the same focus that she wants to bring to a career in nursing.

“It’s great to see the Franciscan values [of Marian University] in action,” says Garrabrant, a 2000 graduate of Roncalli High School and a member of St. Jude Parish, both in Indianapolis. “Part of the draw for me was also working for St. Vincent and the values they stand for. Their nursing staff there is wonderful. One nurse told me that we are the people who are going to be working next to her in two years, and she wants to make sure it’s done right.”

That attitude reflects the thinking of many of the students, according to Kris Shallenberger, the program’s outreach coordinator.

“They see how St. Vincent treats the whole patient—body, mind and spirit,” says Shallenberger, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Lebanon, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese. “And they see the belief at Marian University in serving the whole student—body, mind and spirit. And they like how both places come together to help people.”

Preston Meng also appreciates the job potential that a career in nursing offers, especially during a down economy. Meng had worked in sales and recruiting for nine years before he was laid off from his job in 2009.

Seeking a career that would help him support his family in the future, the 33-year-old father of two small children decided to return to school in May to start his education as a nurse. He is one of seven males in the accelerated online nursing program.

“They really seem to care about you as a student and want you to learn,” Meng says. “I really enjoy the small teacher-to-student ratio, too. I hope to have my bachelor of science degree in nursing in August of 2011. I think I’d like to work in an emergency room because of the pace, and that every day would be different.”

Garrabrant hopes to graduate from the program in May of 2011.

“I’ve known since I was 5 that I was going to work with horses or with kids,” says Garrabrant, who earned a bachelor’s degree in pre-veterinary medicine in 2004. “When the horse thing didn’t work out, I needed something that worked well for my family. I have aunts who are nurses so it runs in the family.”

She plans to work in either neonatal intensive care or labor and delivery.

“Just watching how the nurses interact with parents who are scared beyond belief is really inspiring,” she says. “It not only makes me want to be a better nurse, but a better person.”

(For more information about the program, call 888-682-2761 or visit its Web site, www.marian.edu/stv.) †