Joy Jackson’s nursing experience is enough to fill three résumés.
Jackson, RN, BSN, FNP, is a full-time nursing instructor at DeKalb Technical College’s Covington campus and a part-time staff nurse in the Emergency Department at Rockdale Medical Center in Conyers. During her 30-year nursing career, she also has worked in critical care, nurse management and has been a travel nurse, a family practitioner and a flight nurse. She was a paramedic before attending nursing school.
Why so many nursing specialties?
“I love the diversity. If you get tired of an area, you can do something completely different,” said Jackson, 54. “The variety of it is really neat. The sky’s the limit as to what you can do.”
Jackson brings her enthusiasm for the profession to the classroom.
“I tell my students that they are entering the most exciting profession in the world,” she said. “There is nothing like seeing the lights go on when a student just gets it. I try to bring passion to my students because I love what I do.”
Rosalind McIntyre, who graduated from DeKalb Tech in the spring, nominated Jackson for the 2011 ajcjobs Nursing Excellence Awards.
“Ms. Jackson is an excellent teacher and professional role model; she walks the talk,” McIntyre wrote. “She is demanding of her students, yet discerning enough to help them discover their abilities (or lack thereof).”
McIntyre also cited Jackson for bringing real-world experience into the classroom.
“[She] does not present herself as a ‘super nurse,’ giving students the impression that she has never made mistakes along the way. She shares her 30 years of experiences in ways that encourage her students to excel, to become members of a noble profession that can positively affect the quality of the lives of many,” she wrote.
“I like to stay in the trenches so I can treat patients and also give my students the benefit of my experience,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s students appreciate her ability to teach difficult material and to motivate.
“I thank her for her many insights and encouragement,” McIntyre wrote. “She’s a tough instructor, but we will all benefit from her passion for nursing and teaching. I feel very fortunate to be in her classes. I aspire to be as competent as [her] in my role as an LPN when I graduate.”
Hearing that praise was satisfying for Jackson.
“When you stand in front of a classroom, you know you can teach students the clinical skills,” she said. “You’re never sure if you can teach them about passion and compassion. It’s so nice to know that Rosalind got that.”
Jackson’s road to nursing was a rocky one. Jackson, who describes her father as a “weekend alcoholic,” said her own self-destructive behaviors were leading her astray when she was younger.
“I was on the road to drug and alcohol addiction,” she said.
An indifferent student in high school, an experience Jackson had when she was 17 left a lasting impression. She came across a man who had collapsed while mowing his grass. Neither Jackson nor the other two people there could help him. The man was turning blue so Jackson drove to the nearest police station, but it was too late. The man had died.
“I never again wanted to be in a position where I couldn’t save someone. I was driven to learn how to help people,” she said.
Her senior year, Jackson took a nursing/first aid class and earned an A. “My first one,” she said.
Jackson became an EMT in 1974, a paramedic in 1976 and enrolled in nursing school in 1979. Still, her direction wasn’t quite clear. Later that year, Jackson and a group of friends were on their way home from a night of partying when she crashed the van she was driving. Nobody was hurt, but she knew something was missing from her life.
Soon thereafter, she went to church during the Christmas season and was inspired to become a Christian.
“It made me look at nursing in a whole new light. That was a turning point. I never drank again,” she said. “It’s all by the grace of God that I changed. I now have a servant spirit.”
That spirit is reflected in Jackson’s extensive mission work. Over the years, she has volunteered for missions in Haiti, Africa, Peru, Honduras and Kentucky, and in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She also works with American Red Cross Disaster Relief.
Jackson has devoted her adult life to nursing and serving others.
“I never married. I dated a man for 12 years but I let him get away,” she said. “I’m a workaholic and I just love nursing. I guess I’m married to my profession.”
When she’s retired, Jackson would like people to remember “that I walked the talk. I would want people to say that I’m a caring and compassionate person and that I made a difference.”
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