Whether she is wearing her nursing, teaching or coaching hat, Mary Margaret Finney, MSN, RN, has children close to her heart.
By day, Finney is an assistant professor of nursing at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega. Some days she teaches pediatrics in class on campus; other days she supervises clinical instruction in a hospital.
On Wednesdays she switches to site coordinator and distance-learning instructor at Gainesville College. Her satellite courses extend the reach of nursing education by simultaneously teaching students at North Georgia and Gainesville colleges, as well as staff in the WellStar Healthcare System. She recently completed her master’s degree in nursing education online.
On Thursdays, she works in the pediatric intensive care unit of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. Most days she’s up and out the door of her Roswell home by 5:30 a.m., but she’s not complaining.
“I think burnout happens when you’re not in the right area of nursing,” said Finney, who has been in pediatrics since she graduated from nursing school in 1987. “My mother was a nurse and she did everything she could to convince me that pediatric nursing was not what I wanted.
“She knew it was demanding and sometimes heartbreaking — that it was a lot more than rocking babies — but I knew it right for me.”
Like the Energizer Bunny, Finney is blessed with high energy and stamina, but she also knows the importance of balance. On Friday nights during basketball season, she dons a coaching hat and whistle at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church gym in Atlanta.
“I was playing softball with my sister at the church, when they decided to start an in-house youth basketball league and asked if I would be interested in coaching,” Finney said. “We started with eight teams, and now we’re up to 14 teams of 10 kids each.”
Players aren’t required to be church members, and come from different communities and backgrounds.
“Our goal is to teach skills and the fundamentals in an encouraging, positive environment,” she said.
The kids play on a half-court with 8- foot goals. Every child plays at least half a game, and everyone gets a uniform and a trophy at the end of the season.
“We keep score, but the play is more cooperative than competitive, and if it ends in a tie, there’s no overtime. This age group couldn’t take it, and neither could we,” Finney said.
With volunteer help, the league plays six games every Friday night.
“I referee two games and coach a third, so that’s three hours of yelling and running up and down the court,” Finney said. She’s usually hoarse at work on Saturdays, but she thinks it’s worth it.
“It’s a lot of fun and kids need a safe place to play where they can be nurtured and have positive interaction with adults who aren’t their parents,” Finney said. “As a single person, it would be easy to draw into yourself. This renews my faith in humanity.”
After caring for children with every kind of devastating disease and condition, with outcomes that are not always successful, “this gives me an opportunity to work with kids who are healthy, and I have a chance to help them grow,” she said.
“There’s nothing like the look of a kid who has hit her first basket and turns around to grin at you . . . or having one little boy ask if I’d grow up with him to the next league so I could still be his coach. No amount of money could replace that.”