An exclusive interview

Optimizing care for a nurse’s individual skills

“I started way back when at Ohio State. I went to Ohio State originally in 2005, and I have a bachelor's degree in health information management and systems. I was a student intern working on the medical information side of things and realized I may have been missing some of that clinical piece. I think it was January of 2005 when I found out my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. That was hard for our entire family along the whole course of her journey. Through her cancer treatment, she said the nurses made all of the difference. I finished my bachelor's degree at Ohio State, and I'm realizing I was still missing that clinical piece. I decided I wanted to go into nursing, and I did a second accelerated degree program at Mount Carmel. I did both bachelor's degrees in five and a half years - I don't recommend that, that was a lot in a very short period of time. That second degree program was 13 months. I gained a BSN on the back end, and I started at the James Cancer Hospital in March of 2011. I've been there ever since. I started in the bone marrow transplant unit and worked with the bone marrow patients for about four years. Now I'm in the ICU - an ICU dedicated to oncology patients. There are not a lot of ICUs out there that do just oncology patients.”

Justin Kelly is a staff nurse at the Ohio State University (OSU) Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, where he also served as a 2021 Nursing Government Affairs and Advocacy fellow. He received a bachelor’s in Allied Medical Professions from OSU in 2009 and a bachelor’s in registered nursing from Mount Carmel College in 2011. In 2020, he earned his master’s in healthcare innovation from OSU. In 2011, he began working at the OSU Comprehensive Care Center as a staff nurse working in the blood and marrow transplant unit, and in 2014 moved to the James Medical Intensive Care Unit.

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