Steve Cordle
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Our healthcare hero this week is Natasha Hicks, a Registered Nurse working at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital Emergency Center Northeast. In her 16 years of service as a nurse, she has worked several other positions as well. “I moved around quite a bit in my early years,” Hicks recalled. “Until I landed in nursing school and graduated from Southwest Georgia Technical College (SWGTC) in Thomasville, Ga., in 2004.”
“I am married to a wonderful man and ‘great pain in the butt’ John T. Hicks and I am a mom/stepmom to 3 beautiful girls Gracie, Brecken and Kayden (ages 9, 12 and 15). I am originally from Boston, Mass. and John is from Memphis, Tenn. We currently live in Monticello and have a small farm.”
The story of how Hicks landed in the healthcare field is a rather humorous one. How she “chose” (or, she says, was chosen depending on how you look at it) nursing as a profession holds a lot of value in her overall perception of what she does and why she does it. While living in South Florida, in her early 20’s, she was attending college, but didn’t have much direction at the time. Hicks says, “I knew I needed to attend college, but had no idea what for. So, I just took art classes because they were fun and I didn’t have too many cares in the world.” After a year of classes, her student advisor called her to his office and told her that she NEEDED to pick a major. “It didn’t matter what I picked, but it had to be something,” she says. Her advisor handed Hicks a thick book full of all the majors that the school offered. “So, because I didn’t have any clue, Hicks recalled I closed my eyes and ran my thumb across the pages and randomly stopped with my finger pointed on a page. When I opened my eyes, my finger had landed on ‘Registered Nurse,’ so that’s what I picked.” Thus began her adventures in nursing.
Hicks goes on to say that, “God has such a good sense of humor! He knew this was what He had designed me for, but He had also given me a wild spirit that didn’t want anyone telling me what to do. I have met so many amazing people, heard their stories, had the opportunity to be a step in someone’s healing/dying/living process that it’s a huge part of my identity now. That wild spirit of mine has significantly tamed but has also seen me through so much. Nursing is 100% what I was meant to do and I am so grateful and blessed.”
Like all healthcare workers, COVID-19 has affected her work. Hicks does not consider herself to scare easy. “COVID scared me and has changed us all in so many ways. I’ve chosen to dig in.” Like other healthcare professionals, Hicks takes care of whoever needs it, while taking steps to protect herself to the best of her ability. She also tries to take care of friends at work by making masks out of surgical material when time permits. “I work with really smart, wonderful people,” Hicks said, “and try to care for them in small ways when I can.” When not at work, the Hicks’ attend Cornerstone Church of Christ in Thomasville, Ga., and are proud parents to a student of Aucilla Christian Academy. Go Warriors!
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