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03/01/2016
For NeCole Ethridge, being the ATI/NCLEX success coordinator isn’t just a job — it’s a calling…as in students are always calling her, freaking out over the "big test."
“They usually call me, ‘NeCole, I’m nervous. My NCLEX is tomorrow. What do I do?’" Ethridge said. “I say, ‘We breathe. First thing we do is we breathe and get oxygen back to our brain.’”
While instructors change each of the four semesters students are in the program, Ethridge helps students from the beginning of their time at ACC to the end — and sometimes beyond.
“The relationship is a long-term relationship. A lot of people think when you graduate our program, you’re done. Absolutely not. You don’t graduate and go,” she said. “I don’t know how to say it other than when you become part of the family, you stay after that."
A former American Career College student herself, Etheridge originally enrolled at ACC-Lynwood to be a vocational nursing student. If asked why, Ethridge will tell most people she had worked as a certified nursing assistant and wanted to advance her career. But that’s not the whole story.
“The true reason for becoming a nurse was because I have two special needs children and that was a new world for me. I came from a different background — corporate accounting actually. But once I was placed in the hospital with my children for months at a time, the doctors kept saying, ‘You should think about nursing. You’ve learned a lot.’ A lot of times people would meet me in a medical capacity and ask me, ‘Are you a nurse?’ and I’d say, ‘No. I’m just Dr. Mom,’” she said. “And it just went from there.”
Etheridge said she wouldn’t let the challenges of being a mom with disabled children prevent her from being a successful nursing student. Despite spending sleepless nights studying next to her daughter’s hospital bed for weeks at a times, Etheridge consistently made the honor roll and eventually was named class valedictorian.
“You have your good days and your bad days. We’ve learned — painfully learned — that you don’t judge today by yesterday. Every day will be different. Just take the opportunities you have now, take the good days you have now, and deal with tomorrow tomorrow. That’s what you do with children that have challenges,” she said.
“It was hard. But it was character-building. It was mom-building. It was womanhood-building. It was parenting-building, mentorship-building. All of those things that came out of that made me who I am now. So for my children, I can’t say how they would answer it, but what I can tell you is I wouldn’t change a thing. It made me the nurse I am today. Had I not had them, I wouldn’t be a nurse. I’d still be crunching numbers somewhere and I’d have been OK with that. But this is what I was called to do. This is what I’m good at.”
While at ACC, Ethridge was also elected by her cohort to be a program ambassador, and worked with campus leadership as a class representative. During her student exit-interview, Ethridge said she identified several needs to ACC faculty. She suggested the creation of a peer-led group organized by someone who had actually been through the vocational nursing program, worked with the actual software and understood the student's expectations for success.
One month later, she got a phone call asking her if she would be interested in filling that position.
Now Ethridge helps ACC students with tutoring, mentoring, decreasing stress levels, reducing anxiety, test-taking strategies, anything to help them pass their certification exams.
“Which is why my title is ‘Success Coordinator.’ I’m there to make them successful,” Ethridge said.
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