Annie Hruza always knew she wanted to work with children and help people, and since 2020 she has been doing just that as a pediatric nurse at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
Hruza first got a taste for working in a medical setting when she was in the Health Careers Academy at San Marcos High School, where she graduated with the certified nursing assistant certification required for California.
“I really enjoyed helping others, and it was so rewarding,” Hruza said. “Overall, I feel like I knew what I wanted to do when I was in high school — I wanted to help people.”
She then went on to go through CSU Channel Island’s nursing program before returning to Santa Barbara to work at Cottage Hospital as a new grad hire in the fall of 2020.
“Our environment is such a teamwork environment,” Hruza said about Cottage Hospital’s pediatric unit. “[We’re] like a family.”
Cottage Children’s Medical Center has 18 beds and Hruza said providers and specialists are usually there in the unit during the day, as well as pediatric pharmacists.
The unit is also designed to be cheerful and home-like for the children, with pictures of different animals on the walls, footsteps on the floor, and a playroom with air hockey, arts and crafts, and more.
“We try to make it as accommodating and normal as possible because kids are just scared,” Hruza said. “It’s just kind of hard, they don’t understand what we’re doing … but these procedures have to be done.”
Hruza said they see a variety of children in the unit, from newborns to teenagers, and from those needing emergency care to children with chronic health issues or who need oncology care.
She said the unit also normally performs surgeries on Mondays and Thursdays.
“That really helped me grow as a new nurse,” Hruza said of being able to work with so many different children and medical conditions. “There’s a lot of growth, I feel like, on my unit. It’s overall very positive.”
She added that growth is really encouraged and supported in the unit, and she recently got her chemotherapy certification.
Considering the children’s stages of development, as well as working with families and considering what parents say or want, is a big part of working in pediatrics, Hruza said.
“[Children] are stronger than we think,” Hruza said. “Kids can kind of bounce back. … Of course, there’s some cases that are sad, and it’s not always happy in the hospital.”
Despite the challenges and how mentally and physically exhausting working in a hospital can be, Hruza said seeing the differences day by day and watching patients progress in the right direction is one of the especially rewarding elements of this work for her.
With Hruza graduating the nursing program and being hired onto Cottage Hospital’s staff in 2020, she started her career right as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning.
“It was definitely a challenge with the visitor restrictions that were placed on family members,” Hruza said. “Also having to wear a mask all the time around young kids was difficult, because kids really benefit from seeing all of your expressions, and nonverbal communication is so important to gaining their trust.”
Hruza said that everyone, from nurses to patients and families seems much happier now with the lifting of the mask mandate and less-strict visiting policies.
“It’s overall very rewarding,” Hruza said. “I always wanted to work with kids. … I just really like kids in general.”