Nursing Interview Essay

Margaret Eipperle
My grandmother, Margaret Eipperle, worked as a nurse for her whole life. She lived at home in a small town on a farm and traveled to Des Moines, Iowa to work at the hospital there for about twenty years. Margaret is now 90 years old, but still remembers when the years long ago when she was very busy, caring for hundreds of patients around the clock. I interviewed her at her home in Omaha, Nebraska and asked her about her time working as a nurse. The interview was recorded using my IPhone and transcribed on my laptop.
GROWING UP IN WESTPHALIA
Growing up, I was the sixth child of eleven siblings. We lived on a farm, in a very small town called Westphalia in Iowa. Throughout my childhood I had to help out on the farm every day, it was just a part of our lives. And later I had to do a lot more around the farm since my older siblings went to school or got married. I had to get up every morning at
I had to sweep the floors, clean the utility rooms, and wash the walls every day, and make my rounds on the patients on my own time. And six weeks before I graduated I told the nun there I was sick but she didn’t believe me. So for the treatment I had to take aspirin around the clock to where my ears were ringing. That’s how they knew I had enough aspirin in my system. I ended up having Rheumatic fever and then after I graduated I had to stay in bed for three months and back then there was no penicillin. After I finished my training I continued to work for Mercy Hospital as a nurse. Being a nurse I was always very busy. Every day I had to sweep the floor and wash the utility rooms, and sterilize the room for the next patient and all that and had to buy my own syringes and needles and had to sharpen the needles themselves. I worked a lot of hours. There was before the state requirement for overtime pay. We couldn’t leave until the next nurse showed up to relieve