Liza Witmer, endless opportunities

Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

This months healthcare hero is Liza Witmer, a nurse and Director of Business Development at Select Specialty Hospital, where she started as a clinical liaison in May of 2007. “I actually started before the hospital was built,” Witmer said. “It was my job to educate on this 'new' type of hospital and to assess patients for admission to us for Specialized Acute Care.”
Witmer was lead to Select Specialty Hospital when she heard of a “new” hospital being built, and at the time was a marketer for Big Bend Hospice (BBH). She went to meet with the CEO to introduce herself and make sure they knew about BBH. About two days later, Witmer received a call offering her a job as the clinical liaison. She accepted and about a year later was promoted to her position of Director of Business Development.
Witmer hadn't really planned to be a nurse. Originally from Jefferson County, Witmer graduated from Aucilla Christian Academy (ACA) and went to USF. Her major, initially, was Speech Path, but she changed it to Psych. Prior to graduating she moved to North Carolina and says “life started happening, before I knew it I was married with a toddler.” Witmer had never even considered nursing, but when she was working as a manager in a group home for severe and profound mentally retarded adults, she got a push. Part of her duties were distributing medication to the patients under the nurse's license. “Bonnie, the RN, said to me one day, 'you should consider going to nursing school,” Witmer recalled. “The rest is history.” Witmer started attending the local community college, got accepted into the nursing program and then graduated Surry Community College's ADN program.
She has now been a nurse for 22 years and worked lots of different places. She first started nursing at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in the SICU. Since moving back to Jefferson County in 2000, she's worked at both TMH and CRMC in the ICU, as well as in home health, hospice and as a subacute unit manager at SNF.
Though she may not have planned it, Witmer loves being a nurse. “I love the opportunities that it allows,” she stated. “We have the ability to work in lots of different areas doing lots of different things.” You don't just have to be a bedside nurse or administrator, Witmer loves that being a nurse can allow her to work in so many places, such as hospitals, rehab centers, insurance companies, community health and so many more. As she says, “The opportunities are endless.”
Though Witmer could go anywhere and do anything, her current goal and desire is to continue help Select Specialty Hospital get “put on the map,” as she put it, in our area. “This was a new healthcare concept,” Witmer explained. So she decided then she would make it her goal for people to know about it.
Witmer is an old resident of Jefferson County, having moved to Macclenny when she was two, putting her in Florida, and then to Natural Bridge Road in Woodville, attending ACA from sixth grade to graduation. “When daddy (Jerry Bullock) wasn’t hauling me down Old Plank or Fanlew dirt roads to catch the bus in Wacissa,” Witmer recalled. “I was staying with my Grandmama Bulloch in Monticello.” Though she moved away for a while, she eventually moved back to the area in 2000 and purchased her father's property in 2013, where she and her family have lived ever since.
When she isn't focused on her work at Select Specialty Hospital, Witmer enjoys fishing—mostly saltwater—and playing games such as dominos and cards. She also enjoys spending time with her husband of 15 years, Buddy Witmer, and their wonderfully blended family of his three kids, her two and their one four legged.
When asked if there was a specific story that she might want to tell, Witmer couldn't come up with just one. All her stories, though, revolve around making a difference in someone's life. “When the open heart patient comes back to visit you, to say, 'thank you for saving me,'” Witmer lists, “when the family of the hospice patient you took care of tells you, 'I never knew the dying process didn't have to be horrifying;' or when a patient come back to Select to say 'thank you for that last chance. When everyone else have given up, you all gave me that one last opportunity to get well.' Families being given hope.” That's what it's all about for Witmer. Giving people hope.
Being a nurse is a lot of work, and can be challenging. Witmer says those challenges are different depending on your field, but that the center of everything you do should be what's best for the patient. Witmer may not have planned to be a nurse, but it's a profession she loves and take pride in. And, as she says, “As a nurse, you make a difference in everyone's life that you touch...make sure it's a positive difference.”