By Nancy Fowler

Meg Kurtz, ’11, will never forget her turn at a daunting initiation every nursing student faces as they venture from the classroom to clinicals in the hospital: starting her first IV line in a patient’s arm.

Nervously, Kurtz prepared the patient and sought out a vein. When she inserted the needle, it went in too far and at the wrong angle. She was startled by her instructor’s response. “She said, ‘Meg, you’re not spearing a fish!’” Kurtz recalled.

The comment stung. Later, when Kurtz began instructing students at St. Luke’s Hospital, she implemented a more nuanced method: Telling students they did a good job, suggesting a different approach and then wrapping it up with kudos for trying. She calls it a “compliment sandwich.”

“For my whole life, whenever I’ve gone through something, I like to reflect on, ‘How could I make that better for the next person that goes through it?’” Kurtz said.
Kurtz, winner of St. Louis Magazine’s 2018 Excellence Award for Top Medical-Surgical Nurse, strives to create plenty of space for students’ questions. “Being approachable is so important — and relationships are everything,” she said.

Fostering connections can also encourage camaraderie among staff and motivate patients, she said. Kurtz maintains a “Shout-Out” bulletin board on her St. Luke’s Hospital floor with themes ranging from nurses’ and doctors’ baby photos to a display of their prom pictures.

“It’s fun because if you couldn’t convince your patient to walk, you could say, ‘Hey, if come down the hall, you can see your surgeon in his powder blue tuxedo,’” Kurtz said. “And they’d be like, ‘Oh, OK!’”

Another of Kurtz’s brainstorms is a quick-reference booklet called “The ABCs of 8700,” named for her floor. It’s both practical and humorous, designating “A” for appendectomy, “H” for hypoglycemia and “U” for U can do it. Other floors have also adopted the guide and call it the nurses’ survival kit.

In all her efforts, Kurtz keeps in mind that every patient is somebody’s loved one. “As I’m training nurses, I’m always thinking that one day they might take care of my parents and maybe even me,” Kurtz said. “So I’ve got to be sure they are good enough to take care of my family.”