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For Jan O’Fields, making a difference in people’s lives is her number one goal.

O’Fields, a 1997 graduate of the Practical Nursing program at Northeast Technology Center near Kansas, Oklahoma, discovered early in her life that her love for the health care field was the perfect outlet for her deep concern for people.

O’Fields works at the W. W. Hastings Indian Health Service facility in Tahlequah, and she recently won the Licensed Practical Nurse of the Year Award for the Oklahoma Area Indian Health Service. The Oklahoma area actually covers three states: Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. She was nominated for the award by her supervisor in recognition for her efforts to bring more cultural awareness into the facility.

“They really have given me pretty much free reign on doing that,” said O’Fields. “We had very few translators in our facility for the Cherokee Elders that come in. They speak some English but frequently they just agree with anything you say and don’t really understand. I just wanted to make sure we could provide the best health care that we could for them.”

O’Fields arranged to have Cherokee language classes for the employees free of charge. She has gone through the hospital and made sure that each department has a list of translators that are available in the facility should any need arise. She is on both the pain management committee and the comfort care team and was instrumental in translating the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale into Cherokee.

The Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale was developed in 1981 by Donna Wong, a nurse consultant, and Connie Morain Baker, a child life specialist, who were working in the burn center at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa. They frequently saw children who were in pain and, because of their young age, had difficulty communicating how they were feeling. O’Fields and Marilyn Cochran, the Cherokee language instructor at the hospital, realized the graphic scale had benefits for the elderly who also had difficulty communicating how they were feeling, both due to their age and the language barrier. The scale features a set of six faces with varying expressions ranging from “no pain’ to “the worst possible pain.” Each face is described in English and Cherokee with a Cherokee/English phonetic pronunciation guide.

“We are also working on a picture book to help any in-patients who may come in over night when there aren’t any translators available. The book is an “I want” book with pictures named in their native language so that they can communicate their needs,” O’Fields adds.

O’Fields says her involvement in the cultural aspect of her health care service began when she was involved with hospice care at Hospice of the Cherokee in Tahlequah, a job she started in 1999.

“I had a patient who was full-blood Cherokee. As a person dies, they go back to their native language, and that’s it. I had heard this and didn’t really believe it, but I saw it first-hand, and found I could no longer communicate with him, even though I am almost a full-blood. The language in my family had pretty much been lost after my grandfather died. So, I had to rely on my patient’s family translating to me to tell me whether he needed anything or whether he was in pain. I saw a need in me that I needed to fix, and things fell together for me to help my co-workers, also.”

Although not fluent in the native language, she now knows a lot more medical vocabulary and can understand more than she can speak.

“I can sing it,” she says with a smile. “I’ve always been able to do that because I went to church with my grandfather as a child, although I didn’t always know what I was singing. The hard part about it is making your tongue hit the right positions and I could do that because I’d done it as a child.”

She graduated high school at 16 and went to nursing school but found she was too immature to be serious about it. When Northeast’s new East Campus opened near Kansas in the fall of 1996, she realized she now had no excuse to follow her dream.

“I think the nursing program helped me in different ways, especially the medical aspect. I had worked as a nurse aide in my younger days but I learned a whole lot more. While I was at Tech I was president of my class, which taught me some leadership and increased my self-esteem. I think that has helped me tremendously in my career.

“When I graduated from the program I had somehow managed to not do a hospice rotation. In fact there were two of us who didn’t do hospice and we were so excited that we didn’t. Then I went into it and just fell in love with it. God works in mysterious ways.”

Indeed. O’Fields was appointed to the Oklahoma State Board of Nursing in March, 2004, and was recently elected to the office of secretary/treasurer, a position she will assume in March, 2006.

Currently, Jan has her sights set on becoming a registered nurse. She has started taking on-line courses and needs three more classes to be eligible to enroll in an RN program. She hopes to go to either NEO A&M College in Miami or to the University of Oklahoma’s Tulsa campus.

“My long term goal I set for myself while I was at Northeast was to become an RN. My short-term goal was to work for the Indian Health Service to provide care for the Cherokee people. So, I have met one and if I don’t get too old I want to be an RN.”

O’Fields is a single parent with two daughters: Samantha, 22, and Barbara, 12. She also currently works for Carter Hospice in Tahlequah. In spite of her busy schedule, she has found time to go back to Northeast and speak to the nursing classes on the importance of culture in dealing with the elderly and on the topics of death and dying.

“I feel a sense of accomplishment,” she says regarding her hospice work. “Sometimes the family members of a patient get a little scared or a little anxious and they call you. I have gone out in the middle of the night simply because the family was scared and they didn’t know what to do anymore. By the time I arrived they had called an ambulance to come. When she looked out the window to let me in that family member just sighed deeply and was just so glad that I was there. My patient who was restless was calmed as soon as she heard my voice. I sat and held her and spoke to her and comforted her. The ambulance left and I calmed the family.

 “There’s almost as much emotional care as there is physical care in dealing with the elderly, O’Fields says. “I like to be able to see that I have made a difference.”

Northeast Technology Center is proud to name Jan O'Field a Northeast Tech Champion.