URI nursing student McKaylee Swatt finds calling caring for ‘resilient’ kids
McKaylee Swatt was a young student growing up in Mechanicsburg, Penn., when a close friend was diagnosed with leukemia and Wilms tumor, a type of kidney cancer. Swatt traveled with her friend to Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to help her through her treatments. Already interested in health care, she watched and interacted with the nurses there, finding inspiration that would propel her future career.
“I always knew I wanted to be in the medical field in some way,” Swatt said. “Then, just going to treatments with her, I realized I wanted to be a nurse, and also that oncology—specifically, pediatric oncology—was the specialty I wanted to go into.”
Fast forward several years and the University of Rhode Island College of Nursing student is working toward realizing those ambitions after completing the Flynn Pediatric Oncology Nursing Fellowship at Hasbro Children’s Hospital this summer before her senior year at URI.
Swatt spent eight weeks working directly with young patients in the hospital, under the supervision of Hasbro nurses who served as her preceptors. She worked on the in-patient floor helping care for children who have been admitted; with the Children’s Integrative Therapy Pain Management and Supportive Care team; and in the hospital’s outpatient clinic, treating children receiving chemotherapy and blood transfusions. She also worked with a nurse researcher and completed a research project examining the effectiveness of neutropenic diets on decreasing infection rates among children receiving chemotherapy, finding that more research into the restrictive diet is needed.
“Under the guidance of the RNs at Hasbro, I got to prep medications, hand out medications, access ports. Your basic patient-centered care,” Swatt said. “In-patient, I was hands-on taking care of the patients, basically doing everything except hanging chemo drugs, which requires a specific certification. I got to do things I never would have been able to in school. So it has really enhanced me as a nursing student, and when I graduate, it will strengthen my confidence as an RN.”
In her third year at URI, Swatt was researching internship opportunities when she came across the Flynn Fellowship at Hasbro. The fellowship, a preceptor-based internship program, is sponsored by Fred Flynn in memory of his wife, Susan, who died of ovarian cancer in 2013. Inspired by the treatment his wife received at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, Flynn, a retired financial executive, raised money to support the palliative care team there. That fundraising soon expanded into the Flynn Foundation, which supports various health care student fellowships, including a palliative care nursing fellowship at HopeHealth Hospice Center in Providence, and the fellowship Swatt quickly applied to and was accepted into.
“You always have a dream growing up, but you don’t necessarily know if it’s going to work out,” Swatt said. “Overall, the fellowship definitely solidified my decision to go into this field. I am so thankful to Mr. Flynn and his foundation. I knew this was either going to tell me that this is it for me; it’s what I want to do with my life, or it’s not going to be it. These eight weeks really reinforced this field is something I can handle it physically and emotionally.”
Such emotional resilience is important, not just for patients, but also for care providers in one of the most emotionally taxing health care specialties. Swatt said it’s important to compartmentalize work and life, and to leave any difficulties she faced on her shift at the hospital. She said she leans on family and friends, and focuses on activities she loves like going to the gym and listening to music, to handle the emotions and find a balance in her life.
“Personally, I love pediatric oncology. It’s a field you have to be passionate about in order to work in,” Swatt said. “Obviously, you have some real sad times. But the kids are so resilient, so that really helps. These kids still live their lives and don’t seem to even know what’s going on. Obviously, they do to an extent, but they’re still just kids, so they act like kids. That, for me, helps me find the joy in treating them more than any other specialty.”
Swatt said the education she received during the fellowship is invaluable, from the advanced medical activities she was able to experience for the first time, like accessing an implanted port to provide medication, to softer skills like effectively communicating not just with her patients, but with their families, which plays a larger role in pediatric care.
“It was really important for me to get more comfortable with pediatric care because it’s so much different than adults. You have to deal with the family, not just the patient, who don’t have full say over themselves. I think having interactions with the families and the kids was a big learning opportunity for me,” Swatt said, noting the fellowship confirmed her specialty track upon graduating next May. “Everybody incorporated at Hasbro and the Flynn Foundation are amazing, and I am forever grateful for the experience they gave me.”