Loanne Martin, assistant professor and program manager at Baker University’s School of Nursing, works to ensure that Baker is properly preparing students to be nurses. She also works part-time for Health Connections.
Loanne Martin, assistant professor and program manager at Baker University’s School of Nursing, was unexpectedly inspired by a mean-spirited teacher in Holland, Mich.
“I saw how badly she treated children in my second grade class, and I decided I’d try to ‘fix things’ and become a teacher,” she recalls.
Things didn’t quite work out that way.
After graduating from Holland High School in 1964, she enrolled at the Swedish Covenant School of Nursing in Chicago but didn’t complete the course.
“I suppose I became rebellious when I left home,” she says. “I ran off to Minnesota and married a very unsuitable guy.”
After 12 years, three children and a divorce, she returned to nursing. She received a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Minnesota in 1992.
She did a variety of nursing jobs but worked mainly in intensive care at North Country Hospital in Bemidji, where she met respiratory therapist Stephen Martin.
“He’s a very suitable guy,” she says with a laugh. “We’ve been married for 29 years.”
They moved to Lawrence in 1992 when Stephen came to Kansas University to complete a doctorate. Martin accepted the teaching position at Baker’s School of Nursing in Topeka.
Martin is mainly in charge of scheduling and program evaluation. She works with students and nurse preceptors at places like Stormont Vail and Veterans Administration Hospital in Topeka and Health Care Access and Heartland Medical Clinic in Lawrence to evaluate students during placement. She also works with employers to evaluate nurses for up to three years after qualification.
“It’s important for us to get feedback and evaluation about our courses and how they prepare the students,” she says. “It helps us to develop, revise and change our curriculum as needed to make it better.”
Martin loves the variety in her job.
“I love being involved in so many aspects of student nurses’ lives as well as the teaching and program planning,” she says.
She works part-time as part of a nurse triage service with Health Connections, where patients can call 24 hours a day to speak directly with a nurse.
“This keeps me connected directly with patients and doctors and the practical side of nursing,” she explains. “Nursing continues to change and expand. It requires more than using a set of skills. Nurses work holistically. They look at the patient’s whole life in order to bring about full recovery. I tell students they’ll learn 95 percent of nursing after they graduate, but they can’t do the 95 percent without learning the 5 percent first.”
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