Sally Valdez was so enamored by nursing that, as a child, she turned her bedroom closet into an operating room and her dolls into patients.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a nurse,” Sally, now 54, says.
Nursing – you might say – runs in Sally’s blood. Her mother, Nancy Dachi Conser, was a nurse, and her 21-year-old daughter, Emily Valdez, has just become one.
A three-generation family of nurses is rare. But what makes Nancy, Sally and Emily even more unique is that mother, daughter and granddaughter all have been nurses at the same facility: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Nancy worked seven years at Children’s and finished her career there. Sally is going strong after 26 years at Children’s, and Emily arrived last September, fresh out of nursing school at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
The three would have never made the multigenerational milestone had Nancy or Sally heeded others’ advice.
In the early 1950s, a high school guidance counselor urged Nancy to consider becoming a lab tech, rather than a nurse. The counselor thought Nancy, at 5 feet and 100 pounds, wouldn’t be able to handle the physical demands of nursing. “I thought that was funny,” the now 84-year-old Nancy said from her home in Gresham, Oregon, on the outskirts of Portland.
In Sally’s case, teachers, family and friends had her head spinning, repeatedly telling her that she was way too smart to be a nurse and should be looking at medical school and a career as a doctor. Sally changed college majors five times before deciding to stick to her childhood dream.
“I just prefer to take care of people,” she says now. “And I just like the things you get to do being a nurse.”
Sally and Emily both acknowledge that they were drawn to nursing, at least in part, by their mothers and the stories they’d bring home from the job.
Sally also saw nursing as a career that would blend well with her goals of marrying and having children.
“I wanted to be able to have my work be a part of my life,” she says. “In nursing, you can do anything you want at any time you want in any state or country you want.”
Just like Sally, Emily and Nancy can’t remember a time when they wanted to be anything but a nurse.
Emily recalls being asked as a youngster to draw a picture of what she wanted to do when she grew up. Her picture, she said, showed her holding a syringe.
“I think part of it is my personality. I just love helping people,” Emily says.
Nancy says she’s not entirely certain why she chose a career in nursing, except that in the 1950s, nursing and teaching were considered the two main options for women.
But she loved the work and the special bond between nurses, especially their sense of humor.
“Nurses have kind of a special thing – certainly a special sense of humor,” Nancy says. “I realized how much I had missed that in my life when I was away from nursing [raising her children and traveling abroad with her husband, who was in the Foreign Service].”
Nancy and Sally have worked in more than one hospital in more than one state and in more than one specialty in their careers.
But working with children has been a passion for all three women. And it’s what brought them all to Children’s, where Emily works as a nurse on the respiratory floor at Scottish Rite and Sally is on the Vascular Access Team.
Nancy retired from Children’s at Egleston in 1999 when she turned 65. And now she’s the one eager to hear Sally and Emily’s stories about nursing school and life on the floor.
One of the biggest thrills for mother and daughter is when the opportunity arises where one gets to watch the other on the job.
“It’s really cool to see her at what she does because she’s really, really, really good,” says daughter Emily.
Sally has a similar reaction.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so proud of her,” Sally says of Emily. “She’s only 21 and already making such a mark.”
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BREAKOUT BOX:
Three generations – Here’s a brief work history of the Mother, Daughter and Grandmother who chose nursing and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Nancy: Graduated from Oregon Health Sciences University in 1956. Worked at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland for one year, then Albert Einstein Hospital Southern Division in the operating room in Philadelphia before returning to Doernbecher for nine months. She moved back to Philadelphia, where she worked on the pediatric floor of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. She took 20 years off to raise her family overseas with a spouse in the foreign service. Returning to the U.S., she took a refresher course in nursing at Georgetown University and then took a job at a nursing home for two years, Emanuel Hospital in Portland in rehab. She came to Egleston Hospital in 1992, working on the rehab unit until she retired.
Sally: Graduated from Georgetown University in 1986. She worked at Children’s National Hospital on the surgery floor, then ER. She worked at Northwest Community Hospital in Seattle and moved to Atlanta in 1991. She started at Egleston in ED for six years, urgent care for nine years. She’s been on the vascular access team at Scottish Rite for 11 years, bringing her total time at Children’s to 26 years.
Emily: Graduated from the University of Alabama’s nursing school in May 2017. She interned at Children’s Health Care and started fulltime in September. She works on the respiratory floor at Scottish Rite.
SMALL BREAKOUT BOX:
About Nursing at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta:
Children’s currently employs more than 3,400 RNs.
Children’s nurses across the system – including three hospitals as well as neighborhood locations across the state – manage more than 1 million yearly total patient visits from all 159 counties in Georgia.
Nurses are an integral part of the Children’s mission to make kids better today and healthier
Benefits for Children’s Nurses:
Children’s provides adult to pediatrics training for nurses who wish to make the transition into pediatric care from an adult hospital.
Children’s provides multiple education programs and ongoing professional development for all of its nurses.
Children’s provides programs aimed at making nurses’ lives easier in the office and at home.
Flexible scheduling options are available.
Nurses at Children’s have access to equipment, supplies, education and training to excel in their careers.
