Pauline (Peters) Kliewer

                       Pauline(Peter)Kliewer                                                

 
             

1.  My name is Pauline Peters Kliewer.  I was born in Tofield, Alberta, Canada.  I am the youngest of seven children.  One of my older sisters is also a nurse. 

 

I graduated from the Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) in 1960 with an RN, from the University of British Columbia School of Nursing (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) in 1961 with a BScN, the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in 1969 with an MA in Psychiatric Nursing and  Far Eastern Studies, and the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in 1986 with a PhD in Interpersonal Communication.

 

I married Henry Kliewer, we have two adult children: John, an attorney and Laura, a school teacher.

 

My first job was a night charge nurse on a surgical floor at the Vancouver General Hospital. My salary was $300/month. I also worked at several small rural hospitals.  In one hospital I was an RN in the first Intensive/Cardiac Care Unit in the area. I also worked in staff education at a Children’s Hospital.  I have worked as a supervisor of a Public Health Department and several Home Care Agencies.  Most of my career was spent in Nursing Education as faculty in an Associate Degree program, three Baccalaureate Degree programs, and two Masters programs.  I served as the chair of the nursing Department at CSUFresno for 4 years.

 

2. In the 1950’s, students staffed the hospital.  As seniors, we were often charge nurses, especially on nights.  The Vancouver General Hospital is spread over a whole city block, and is connected by underground tunnels.  One slow night, we wrapped a nurse’s aide in a sheet, put her on a stretcher, and called an orderly to take her to the morgue.  Shortly before they reached the morgue, she sat up on the stretcher.  The orderly took a few days off, and I was almost thrown out of nursing school.  Thankfully, the night supervisor had a sense of humor – not all of them did!

 

3.  Nursing was certainly not as technical in the 50’s as it is now.  We interacted much more with each other, and with the patients.  We had a lot of fun in school, as well as at work.  I respect today’s nurses for their knowledge and technical skills, but I don’t think they have enough fun!

 

4.  My best bit of wisdom I received from a patient in a Cardiac Care Unit.  He told me he could always tell which were the best nurses when they walked into his room.  The best ones looked at him first, then the monitors, the worst ones looked at the monitor only.  This was almost humorously validated by the nurse who called a respiratory code on a child that was up playing and the pulse oximeter had fallen off!