Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s Katina Bell was pleased to be named state “Rookie of the Year” by the Mississippi Nurses Association this week, but she has many other goals for her career.
In fact, back when she started nursing school at Mississippi Delta Community College, she was already thinking about the long term.
“As I got into school, the wheels started turning — ‘How much higher can you go with this?’” she recalled. “So now I’m thinking, go ahead and obtain my (bachelor’s degree in nursing); go ahead and obtain my master’s. I’m looking into administration. I want to do research one day.”
She’s also focused on helping her community. And that had a lot to do with her winning the honor, said Rannie Winbush, who compiled the application materials.
“She came to mind with her achievement and how well she was accelerated during her orientation, as well as her involvement with other professional organizations and community service,” said Winbush, the coordinator of the hospital’s nursing residency program.
Bell, 30, is originally from Jackson and now lives in Itta Bena with her husband, Derrick. She joined the hospital’s telemetry unit in May 2009 after graduating from MDCC.
“I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, ever since I was a little girl,” she said. “My mama said I used to play nurse with my dolls.”
She attended Lanier High School in Jackson but left in 1997 without graduating. She worked at Lowe’s in Madison and The Clarion-Ledger and took some classes at Hinds Community College, but for a while she was too embarrassed to pursue a GED.
Eventually a friend from church guided her through the GED process, and she earned her certificate from Mississippi Valley State University in April 2006. Having no doubt about what she wanted to study, she enrolled in MDCC’s nursing program.
Bell said MDCC gave her a good foundation for what she does now, but she didn’t focus only on classes while she was there. She also was president of the Mississippi Student Nurses Association and chairperson of the first Nursing Excellence Banquet, which raised more than $6,000 for nursing scholarships.
Others noticed what she was doing, too. Winbush said a number of people at MDCC and Hinds expressed support for Bell and provided information about her work during the “Rookie of the Year” application process. “They all had wonderful things to say,” she said.
Bell decided early in school that if she graduated from a nursing program, she would mentor others later — and she’s followed through on that. She has started Little Ladies of the Lamp, an organization for high school girls interested in nursing. Members can get advice on grades, class selection, American College Test preparation and other topics.
But she has other goals for the group, too.
“It’s not just recruiting to nursing but to also help our young ladies, because so many of them are falling into all the bad things in society — drugs and premarital pregnancies and dropping out of school,” Bell said. “So if they know that their dream is within reach, and they have somebody there to kind of help them, then they’ll be willing to keep pushing towards their goal.”
Bell said the hospital’s doctors and the rest of the staff have been “overwhelmingly supportive” as she continues to learn new things.
“I learn something new evry day. There’s a question to be answered every day,” she said. “But the good thing about it is, I’m never hesitant, because everybody’s open. And if they don’t know the answer, they’ll find it.”
As part of a scholarship program, the hospital paid for her tuition, books and expenses at nursing school. In return, she committed to work there two years. But she already knows she wants to stay beyond that. She’d like to work in the intensive care unit next and eventually the emergency room.
She also is an evangelist at United Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland, and she said God has been her motivator from the start.
“He’s the main reason for my success,” she said. “It’s not of me; it’s not of the hospital; it’s not of the teachers or anybody else. It’s all because of him.”
