What do a call a nurse who juggles a husband, six children, two jobs and studying for a master’s degree? Super Nurse? Wonder Nurse? How about Rashonbah Rogers?
Rogers, RN, BSN, is a float nurse for Kaiser Permanente, where she works 32 hours a week in various departments wherever she’s needed. Two days a week, she works in the Emergency Department at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. She’s also pursuing an online master’s degree in nursing from South University.
How does she do all that and spend time with her family?
“Time management,” said Rogers, 40. “I have to set aside time for everything. My entire day, every day, is planned out on a calendar. My husband also helps out a lot with the kids.”
Rogers was nominated for the award by her half-sister, Laskisha Holman, who works as a lead lab assistant for Kaiser Permanente. Like Rogers, Holman plans to become a nurse someday.
“My sister motivates me a lot. She gives me that extra push to keep my eyes on the prize – to be a nurse,” Holman said.
Although they grew up in separate households and didn’t really know each other until Holman was 16, the sisters have a lot in common. They love to take care of people, which Holman sees in her sister’s work.
“She loves it. Her heart is really in it. She doesn’t do it just for the paycheck,” Holman said.
Rogers’ road to nursing was long and winding. She was sick as a child and spent plenty of time in the hospital, including celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas there. She was impressed by the nurses who treated her.
“I spent a lot of time with them and they were great to me,” she said.
Inspired by her experience, Rogers was prepared to enroll in nursing school when she realized that the heavy load of clinical rotations would be too much to handle. She had young children to take care of.
Instead, she worked as a phlebotomist and a nursing assistant at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon. She took a job as a lab assistant at Kaiser Permanente when she moved to metro Atlanta.
Rogers worked in that job for nine years but never gave up her dream of being a nurse. After her beloved grandmother became sick, she rotated care duties with her mother and sister.
“One of the things she said to me was, ‘Why don’t you go back to school? You should be a nurse,’ “ Rogers said.
Rogers enrolled in the nursing school at Clayton State University, where she was a standout student and a leader. She was elected as the first vice president of Clayton State’s Student Nurses Association and as the West District Director for the Georgia Student Nurses Association. She also won several nursing awards before graduating in December 2009.
Unfortunately, Rogers’ grandmother passed away 11 months earlier. “She knew that I had always wanted to be a nurse.”
Not that she needed it, but Rogers recently took a personality test that recommended a career as, what else, a nurse.
“I love taking care of people. It’s part of my make-up. It’s something I do naturally,” she said. “I was meant to be a nurse.”
