Scott Garrard earned a degree in medical administration and management before deciding that good clinical care therapy would help him grow as a leader.
By Maureen Gilmer, IU Health senior writer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org
Some nurses will tell you they’ve known since middle school that nursing would be their career of choice.
Others have taken the more winding route to the profession, giving up one dream to pursue another, even if it means going back to school.
Scott Garrard is in the latter category. He earned a bachelor’s degree in management, then enrolled in a master’s program in health management. Part of that program involved an incidental internship at IU Health Methodist Hospital, where he worked in operations.
From there, he took a full-time job in IT project management at Methodist, then moved into project management with the operations team from his internship days.
In 2013, after seven years in the business, the ambitious leader decided to make an impressive transformation. He went back to school to get his nursing degree.
“I decided that I needed to expand my skill set,” he said. “I wanted to be in a leadership position but thought I was limited in what I could do because I had no clinical training.”
In his project manager role, he has worked with doctors and nurses and says he has always been interested in clinical work, medicine and patient care.
After graduating from an accelerated nursing program in 2014, he moved into a bedside nursing role and never looked back.
“If you told me when I left the nursing program that I was going to be a bed nurse for 8 years, I would say you are crazy, but I really love my job, the people I work with and the aspect of my life. next to patient care.”
During the past eight years of working in the cardiovascular intensive care unit at Methodist, he has begun to take on more leadership responsibilities as shift coordinator and nurse in charge while remaining on-site. hospital bed.
However, a week before Thanksgiving, he left CVCC and has since moved into another new role – clinical executive director at 2 North, a cardiovascular surgery unit that cares for so many patients. fired from CVCC. He is now responsible for the day-to-day management of the unit from a nursing standpoint, he said.
“I still get a good dose of clinical care. I can interact with patients, maybe not directly as a nurse, but by assisting the nurses who are doing it.”
Support and teamwork are so important in healthcare, it has never been more important in the past 2 and a half years due to the pandemic, especially in the state’s largest hospital.
“It was extremely difficult,” said Garrard. “We have to rely on each other, not only physically but mentally and emotionally when things get really bad. Just getting through it day in and day out has been extremely difficult.”
However, he said he has never regretted his decision to pursue a career in nursing.
“I looked at it like, ‘this is what I signed up to do.’ I feel like it’s my calling.
Working at Methodist, which regularly cares for the sickest of the sick, is both a challenge and something to be proud of, he said. As the new Downtown hospital continues to be built across the street, he looks forward to the day when everything will be under one roof, confident that patients and team members at both Methodist Hospital and IU Health University will benefit from it. improving service, care and accessibility.
During his time away from the hospital, the married father of two young children admitted to being a golfer, to the point of naming his son Ryder. When he’s not golfing, you can see him hunting, fishing, and spending time with his family.
Photo by Mike Dickbernd, IU Health photojournalist, mdickbernd@iuhealth.org
