When it comes to nursing, Jan Fadden seems to have done it all.
With 36 years of experience, she has worked as a floor nurse in local hospitals like the old St. Francis Medical Center and as a parish nurse around the Santa Barbara community. She’s cared for patients through home health and even traveled the world as a nurse, including to Cambodia and India in the 1990s.
“The options of nursing are never ending,” Fadden said energetically. “You can go wherever you want.”
Fadden currently provides medical care for homeless individuals in Santa Barbara through the Cottage Recuperative Care Program. The program is a collaboration between Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and PATH (People Assisting the Homeless).
PATH helps individuals find permanent housing throughout California and provides health care and employment training to help them maintain their homes.
The Cottage Recuperative Care Program has 10 beds for homeless individuals who they can stay up to 90 days. The program aims to get the patients healthy while they obtain the necessary documents to find housing.
“It’s a very challenging population,” Fadden said.
Most of the patients she cares for struggle with substance abuse, mental illnesses, diabetes, and wounds and illnesses contracted from living outdoors.
Yet as a seasoned nurse and acupuncturist, Fadden values an integrated approach to nursing; she stresses the importance of acknowledging all parts of a person’s life, not just problems with the body.
“I get personal fulfillment from listening to people’s stories,” she told Noozhawk. “I think when people are listened to, they tend to perk up, and they’re not as disenchanted with life. There is a possibility for them to have a better life.”
Fadden’s patients have incredible stories, too. The other day, she was treating a man who hadn’t spoken to his daughter in 20 years. As she was treating his wound, the phone rang; it was his daughter.
Stories of reunification are some of the most gratifying parts of her work.
“Everyone got emotional,” she said. “Often at PATH, once people get their lives more on track, they do reconnect with their family.”
Fadden is a UC Santa Barbara graduate and initially thought she wanted to become a physical therapist. However, she sought a more fast-paced career and found a fit with nursing. With a love of surfing and walking on the bluffs, Santa Barbara was the perfect place for her to land.
The nursing profession has changed in a positive way since she started out, Fadden explained. Newly graduated nurses are “more well-rounded” today because they care for the physical needs of patients as well as their emotional and spiritual needs. Fadden is also happy to see more men in the profession.
“Working at a hospital has gotten more complicated because of the computers,” she does admit, perhaps remembering the few computers that existed in 1983 when she began nursing. “There’s much more documentation, and that takes nurses away from the patients.”
Fadden, with a noticeable sense of adventure and curiosity, is passionate about her job because she is constantly learning new things.
“Working with this population (homeless), there’s always a crisis,” she said, noting that daily emergencies require her to be flexible with her schedule. “That’s why it’s so interesting. You never do the same thing every day.”
Fadden’s advice for those pursuing a career in nursing: “Guard your patience like a royal jewel. You can get really frustrated as a nurse. And work hard, because lazy doesn’t work in nursing.”
— Noozhawk contributing writer Maura Fox can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, and connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.