Nurses are the backbone of our health care system. From lending an empathetic ear to administering medications to sitting with us when it feels like the world is falling down around us, they are there—making us feel human while seeming superhuman themselves. The nurses within these pages are the ones you nominated for their lasting influence, and they are truly the champions of our West Virginia centers of care. Read their stories, discover what inspires them, and be inspired yourself.
Rodney Fields
RN Logan Regional Medical Center Specialty: Intensive care / coronary care
Rodney Fields worked as an ER technician at Logan Regional Medical Center in the early 1990s. When he got married in the late ’90s, he shifted to coal mining to better support his family. But health care was his real passion—he’d long dreamed of a career in nursing. So after he was laid off several times, in 2015, he took a chance. He returned to LRMC as a radiology transporter, got into the nursing program at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, and, with the support of his wife and family through some lean years, graduated in 2017.
Since then, Fields has worked in the difficult and demanding Intensive Care Unit / Critical Care Unit at LRMC. While many nurses left his unit under the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, he stayed with the work he loves.
Building relationships is one of Fields’ strengths as a nurse. “Over the years he’s made a real rapport with the doctors—they trust his knowledge,” says wife Michele Fields, a nurse practitioner who knows that doctors’ respect for nurses’ skills can be hard-won. He is a dedicated mentor to new RNs in his unit, she says, and volunteers to help out on other floors for situations like rapid response and difficult IV sticks. When it comes to patients, Fields makes a priority of keeping them informed about treatment plans and progress. His coal mining experience comes in handy. “We have a real high percentage of older miners that have lung disease,” Michele Fields says. “He really connects with them.”
Fields’ LRMC colleagues and patients honored him in 2023 by voting him ICU Nurse of the Year during National Nurses Week. “I’m just real proud of him,” his wife says. “He loves it. He feels like he’s finally doing something for somebody.”
READ ABOUT OTHER 2024 CHAMPIONS OF CARE
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