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• One mother's solution to the nursing shortage
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One mother's solution to the nursing shortage 

Dear Editor:

My son, Eli, wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon, but after his first year at the University of Iowa, he decided to switch to nursing, with assistance from the Army ROTC, which funded his books and tuition.

While a nursing student, he decided, during the mid 1990s, to work during his summers in the emergency department where I work and at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City as a nurse's aide during the school year to help support himself and to learn. He also completed ACLS and paramedic training and started doing critical transports for the Coralville Ambulance Service. It was during this time that I took Eli with me to ENA meetings in Iowa City.

After graduation, his first assignment was in the emergency department at the Army Hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas. He started teaching such courses as TNCC, ACLS, and PALS and becoming more involved with ENA on his own. He had caught the bug. His next assignment was Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, and again the emergency department after a short-term assignment in the ICU. In 2002, while at Fort Bliss, Eli was the ENA El Paso Chapter President at the same time that I was the ENA Cedar Valley (Iowa) Chapter President. This may be a first!

Eli passed his CEN examination last March before leaving the United States to go to Landstuhl, Germany. He has trained with the best at Ryder Trauma Center in Miami to prepare him for his current deployment as executive officer of the 160th FST (Forward Surgical Team) in Iraq. My son, Army Captain Benjamin “Eli” Seeley, RN, BSN, CEN, EMT-P, and I have taken turns providing inspiration for one another. He followed in my footsteps, and then took a few giant steps ahead.

If you, too, love your work, tell your children about it. They will believe that it is the best career if you, yourself, do.