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Photo by Becca Sabot
Jan Baller
“When I am at work I don’t think about home and when I am at home I don’t think about work. You just have to separate the two.”
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Photo by Becca Sabot
Jan Baller
“What has meant the most to me was when one of my co-workers, after helping me care for my patient, said ‘I hope if I am ever sick that you're my nurse.’”
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Photo by Becca Sabot
Jan Baller
“I don't consider myself outstanding, but I do try to give the best care I can. Maybe that is outstanding. I think it should be the norm.”
RN, Emergency
Regions Hospital, St. Paul
Jan Baller used to wear a white hat starched so stiff it took four bobby pins to keep it on her head. The first word on her name tag was “Miss.” As for the male students in her nursing program at Duke University, she has no idea what their name tags said. “I think there were two, and I never saw them,” she says.
Forty years later—an incredible 27 of those spent working emergency room overnights—Baller wears scrubs. Her name tag identifies her as “Jan B.” Last names are gone now for security reasons. Her four children—who learned to not wake up their mom after school—are grown.
When you work in the emergency room, change is constant, and a zen-like acceptance of that fact defines Baller as a nurse and a human being. “You’re ready for anything at any time. You can have a bad day, and the next day is going to be totally different.”
In the ER, that means everything from strep throat to stab wounds. “When I first started working at Ramsey [now Regions], we rarely saw a gunshot wound or stabbing. Now we get more and more,” Baller says. Every major trauma or code blue patient takes a team of doctors, nurses, and techs to stabilize. “I am often amazed to hear that some of our patients have made it through what did not seem survivable.”
