It could be a sniffle or a life-threatening illness that brings young patients and their parents to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's satellite clinics. As a clinical nurse supervisor, Beth Gansel, RN, BSN, has seen it all.
"Sometimes parents bring in very ill youngsters [to the satellite clinics] and we have to have the helicopter come to pick them up," said Gansel, who works at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta-Mount Zion urgent care facility in Morrow. "In many ways, it's like being in the emergency department, because we don't know what's going to walk in the door, so we have to be ready for everything."
Gansel began her nursing career in 1992 as a staff nurse. After working as a nurse educator for six years at Children's main campus, she became clinical nurse supervisor at the Mount Zion location. Her work is 10 percent administrative. She manages schedules for the 12 nurses who staff the facility, interfaces with the main campus at Children's and serves on various councils there.
"I'm the liaison with the staff at the main campus and that helps us feel connected with the mission and staff of the system," she said.
She also works with the nursing staff at the Mount Zion facility as their supervisor and sometimes confidant.
"In nurse management, you must be a very patient person. Everyone shares their personal life with you and you must be a good listener," she said. "Part of my job is to help them achieve a good balance between their home life and work life."
The other 90 percent of Gansel's job is clinical, including triaging patients, taking medical histories and assisting physicians with procedures. At each of Children's urgent care facilities throughout metro Atlanta, at least one or two physicians are on the staff at any given time.
"We have a more direct relationship with physicians here than we may have in a hospital setting, and we work in collaboration with them," Gansel said. "Also, here you're one-on-one with children all the time," she said. "And we, as nurses, need to have excellent clinical skills, because we make a lot more decisions."
Gansel said that the right candidate for a clinical nurse supervisor is someone who has plenty of experience working in the health care system and who also has excellent decision-making skills. Nurse supervisors have an average salary of about $70,000, according to nursing association surveys.
"It is so important to have strong clinical skills, because of the uncertainty of what you're going to see every day," she said. "We use our nursing skills constantly, and there's always something new to learn."