Member Story – Nicola Callahan

“We’re experiencing a much greater reliance on telemedicine and remote care.”

Nicola Callahan has seen and experienced a lot over her 43 years in nursing—17 years as an LVN and 26 as an RN—but nothing like the changes in the health care landscape brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s causing us to look at nursing differently,” she said. “We’re experiencing a much greater reliance on telemedicine and remote care. We’re seeing more patients, collecting our data virtually…but we’re still being nurses.”

Nicola works for the California Department of Public Health to license and certify health facilities throughout the Southern California area. Her work ensures the safety of patients by making sure procedures are followed.

And when those procedures aren’t followed? “I’m educating care teams about best practices,” Nicola said. “How can we do things differently for a better outcome?”

Creating wellness and caring for others runs strong in Nicola’s family. Her grandmother was a school nurse and her mom “took care of us at home, and we were never sick or went to the hospital.” She remembers experiencing caring nurses firsthand when, as a teenage mother, she lost a child. “It showed me there was a niche I could fulfill.”

Nicola has experienced the full gamut of patient care in her more than four decades of nursing, and because of the evolution of her work due to COVID-19, she’s shaping the care of more people than ever before.

During National Nurses Week, we pay tribute to the commitment and compassion of Nicola Callahan and her fellow RNs, LVNs and CNAs.