Pregnant at 16, married to an abusive husband and using alcohol and drugs to deaden her pain, the life of Josephine Dudley Evans could have turned out badly. Instead, she became a nurse, a writer and an ordained elder in her church.
Evans, 64, brings a wealth of life lessons and experience to her job as a night charge nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit at Grady Memorial Hospital. It took a detour, however, for her to reach that destination.
When she was in high school, Evans sang with her sisters in church and clubs and wanted to become a professional singer. A bad relationship and early pregnancy put an end to that dream, but as her life spiraled downward she remembered how much she’d admired an older cousin, who was a nurse.
With encouragement of family, Evans decided to become a nurse and graduated from the Rochester Hospital School of Nursing in Pennsylvania in 1970.
“The diploma program was hands-on all the way. Today’s programs are more academic, but they’ve lost a lot of the practicality of nursing,” she said. “You have to have good assessment skills.
Through experience you develop a gut feeling when something’s wrong with a patient and you know he’s depending on you.
“I tell younger nurses that they may have a degree, but until they have a patient crash on them after surgery, they haven’t had their first life lesson as a nurse. When someone’s having a heart attack there’s no time to look anything up. You just have to know what to do.”
Evans, RN, worked as a medical-surgical manager in a hospital and then took a job in 1973 as an occupational nurse at a steel mill in Aliquippa, Penn.
“I saw terrible accidents with men mangled or killed, but it gave me an opportunity to develop my assessment skills and learn to handle crisis situations,” she said. “It would be good training for the future.”
Evans lost her job when the steel mill closed. In 1986, she moved to Atlanta to seek new opportunities.
“My first job was at Crawford Long Hospital, but then I became a traveling nurse with an agency. I had never before made $1,000 a week, but by working two jobs I could give my children a good home and an education,” she said.
Evans worked on an as-needed basis in surgical intensive care units and emergency rooms in hospitals in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, as well as at the burn unit at Grady.
“I really enjoyed the ability to float to different hospitals and departments because you learn so much, but in 2004 I took a permanent job with Grady in the PACU,” Evans said. “I enjoy working at a Level One trauma facility, where you are exposed to people from all walks of life.”
Evans’ experience reads like a television ER drama show. She has seen teenagers fighting for their lives after violence or accidents.
“I’ve cried with them and prayed over them as I was hanging blood, knowing that I may be the last person to do so before they leave this Earth,” she said.
She has learned to recognize gang tattoos and symbols and the symptoms of crystal meth use, and has seen the catastrophic effects of gunshot wounds.
“Knowing these things doesn’t make me cold or callous with my patients. It just makes me more compassionate. We need to care for one another,” she said. “I know that alcohol could have ended my career, but God saved me from that.”
Evans keeps learning so she can be a more effective nurse and lay minister at her church, the Assembly of Truth Family Worship Center. She has studied depression, counseling, suicide prevention and recently attended a seminar on understanding self-mutilation.
“When soon afterward, I met a young woman who was cutting herself, I knew God was talking to me and putting things together for a reason,” Evans said. “He would give me the interpretation of how to help her.”
Evans wanted to share her life lessons so she self-published a brief autobiography, “When You Think You Can’t, You Can”(Xulon Press) in 2011. She’s working on a second volume about what she’s learned as a nurse called “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”
“God orchestrated a turnaround in my life. He gave this calling and nursing has been good to me,” she said.
Although she could retire in two years, Evans is learning computer skills from her 12-year-old granddaughter and researching RN-MSN programs online.
“I might want to become a nursing instructor,” Evans said. “I have run the gamut in nursing and I’m still learning. I like to learn and I like to help the younger nurses coming behind me.”
About the Author
