The View From Pill Hill: A Day in the Life of an SPU Student Nurse

Spencer Hendricks leads a double life. One day, he’s sitting in class like a typical Seattle Pacific University senior, and the next day he’s entering notes into a patient’s chart or putting in a catheter, which, he says, “is the pinnacle of nursing-student experience.” During Winter and Spring quarters of his junior year, Hendricks spent two days a week at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. It was part of the roughly 950 hours he will spend working in a clinical setting over the course of two years in the SPU nursing program. “Clinical experience is required because nursing is about people, not just about what is in the books,” says Lucille Kelley, dean of SPU’s School of Health Sciences. “We’re preparing students for the profession of hands-on nursing.”