Patricia Nichols '98
Patricia Nichols '98 BSN, '10 MSN, RN, NEA-BC, CPXP has mastered the art of showing up.
It's a skill that she developed as a student-athlete at Holy Family University as a basketball scholarship recipient and one that she perfected when she became pregnant with twins – daughter Haley and son Kevin - during the second semester of her junior year. For Nichols and her now husband, Mike, who played on the men's basketball team, there was never an option to quit.
"Nursing. Clinicals. Basketball. Relationship. It was a lot. I was 21 and having twins, "Nichols remembered. "I had to figure out life so early, but that's all part of my story. It was definitely a crazy time. It took so much family and friends support to get through that. I look back now and say, 'How did I even accomplish that?'' I don't think you realize how strong you are until you need to be. Through that experience, what I learned is it always works out. You just stay true to who you are as a person."
Nichols, who always knew her true self was a nurse, credits athletics with developing the discipline, work ethic and will to stay the course. She even returned to competitive basketball for her senior year. She made lifelong friends through the athletic program.
"Quitting wasn't an option for me," Nichols said. "I knew if I had stopped going to school, I may not have gone back. It would've never been the right time. I would've never had enough money. I wanted to keep my basketball scholarship. I was so close to the finish line. I just wanted to finish. My kids gave me the motivation to finish. I wanted them to be proud of their mom."
Nichols enlisted the help of her parents, Sue and Andy, her older sister, Jen, her brothers Drew and Mark and her youngest sister, Bernadette Laukaitis, who has a freshman on the team during Nichols' senior season and is now the current Holy Family University women's basketball coach. Her best friend, Kara Fitzgerald O'Brien, became her third sister.
"They would sleep over and take care of my kids so I could study," she said. "I would have to get up early for clinical the next day. Everyone was awesome and trying to make it work. We were all in it together, and Holy Family was always a part of us. Holy Family is us."
With that support, Nichols finished only a semester behind her classmates and immediately landed a job as a telemetry unit nurse at Frankford Hospital. She served stints as an intensive care nurse and a critical care nurse educator before moving to Thomas Jefferson Hospital in 2010, the same year earned her master's degree at Holy Family. She currently serves as the regional director of patient experience at Jefferson Health North.
"I learned that you always show up in the nursing profession," she said, "because your team needs you, and I don't like to not be present. That's why I think being a nurse is such a privileged job to do. People need you in so many ways. I always wanted to be that person who is helping people in the hospital and teaching and bettering nurses."