Like a lot of college students, Thomas Powell, Professor of Practice, didn’t know what direction he wanted his life to take when he started as a student here at the Mount in 2001. He was undeclared and taking anatomy and physiology, but by the time he graduated from the Mount in 2006, that direction had become crystal clear: When he walked the Mount’s Commencement stage, it was with a BSN degree. While he was a student, he began working at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in the post-cardiac care telemetry unit. Since Tom had previously worked there as a tech, he felt supported as a new graduate nurse and learned a great deal about cardiac care.
While he knew the general trajectory of his career now, his work at Vassar Brothers helped him to further develop his professional passions. Seeing extremely ill patients in critical care influenced him to pursue a career in the field, and he transferred to the cardiothoracic ICU after several years on the telemetry unit. Tom found the CT ICU very rewarding, caring for high-acuity patients who came in for correctible procedures. The great community of supportive and dedicated nurses at Vassar Brothers continued their great work and influence on him, and he enjoyed seeing the rapid progression of patients through the post-surgical process.
Tom worked the night shift there for four years, and decided in 2012 that it was time for a change. He transferred to the day shift on the Medical ICU where he found that nothing was routine and there was a great variety of diagnoses in the extremely complex patients. That suited him well, he notes: Tom likes having high stakes in what he is doing and enjoyed the increased responsibility.
Tom returned to his alma mater in 2014, when he became a clinical instructor in the Mount’s School of Nursing. He brought his students to the unit where he had worked since graduating, and found that his familiarity with the Medical ICU was invaluable in supporting their growth as nurses, as well as helping the future nurses to foster a strong relationship with the ICU staff. At the same time, Tom was also a student again, this time in the Mount’s Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program, and he received his MSN in 2018. While in the FNP program, Tom had great clinical experiences with his own primary care physician and with the hospitalist services at Vassar. As an NP, Tom now works with medical residents, performs complex procedures in the ICU, and responds to emergencies throughout the hospital.
With his updated credentials and experience in-hand, Tom became a full-time professor at the Mount just this September and teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs. And if that isn’t enough, he still works as an NP in the Medical ICU at Vassar! That’s because Tom wants to stay engaged in clinical practice, since it’s an invaluable enhancement to his teaching. His days have been busy, but it’s all been worth it, he says. For example, he has given lectures to non-traditional students using case studies of patients he has actually cared for, coming full circle from his Vassar days.
When asked about his experiences at the Mount, Tom was excited to acknowledge several professors who had a profound impact on his career in nursing: Drs. Tom Sarro, Dianne Murphy, Andrea Ackermann, and Linda LaRocco.
Tom has some simple, but poignant advice for young students considering nursing as a career. Thinking back to the days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he recalled that there were some workers who were considered “essential,” while others were considered “non-essential.” If you want to be the best professional you can be and get the most out of your working hours, there’s only one choice, said Tom: Be essential!