Lauren Bradshaw ’10 B.S.
Ever since she was five, she knew she wanted to be a nurse. “I used to put band-aids on my teddy bears,” recalls Lauren Bradshaw ’10. “I always liked to care for people who were hurt or sick.”
Now a nurse in the medical/surgical telemetry unit, specializing in renal and oncology, at Corpus Christi Medical Center in Corpus Christi, Tex., she knows she made the right career move. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says.
Bradshaw began learning about the nursing profession even before she entered Rivier College. She participated in the Health Occupation Students of America (HOSA) organization as a student at Nashua South High School, and earned her Licensed Nursing Assistant certification through them. She says participating in the program “got my foot in the door.”
She explored larger colleges farther from home, but Rivier’s small class sizes and nursing curriculum impressed her. “At Rivier, you get a lot of one-on-one interaction with your instructors,” she says. Bradshaw, who played soccer and ran track at Nashua South High School, played on the Rivier soccer team her freshman and senior years. As a Raider, she earned Great Northeast Conference Rookie of the Year and Rivier College Rookie of the Year honors her freshman campaign.
When she graduated from Rivier with a bachelor of science degree in nursing, she moved to the Southwest.
As a nurse, she can see how well Rivier prepared her for the demands of her profession. “Our instructors prepared us thoroughly, teaching us so much about today’s health care environment,” she says. “They were especially diligent in teaching us how to organize our day so that we can accomplish all that is demanded of us.” She adds, “Working in different environments, I can tell some of the other nurses didn’t have that.”