Posted on December 17, 2024
We continue our TidalHealth series “Grow With Us” and our December profile of Sara Bohnsack, MBA, BSN, RN, Department Manager in Patient Care Management (PCM) at TidalHealth Peninsula Regional.
We’ll find out from Sara exactly what the team does in PCM, why that’s always a new challenge, and more importantly, how a young lady with a degree in photography from UMES eventually found her way into nursing, even though she had no initial desire to pursue that career after watching her mom excel at it for more than 40-years here.
Monthly, we’ll introduce you to team members, like Sara, who began their career at TidalHealth and advanced in the health system and beyond, and/or who have taken their careers to the next level with significant certifications and achievements.
Sara, take it away!
Thanks, Sara, for the opportunity to grab a little time to learn more about your career at TidalHealth. Let’s get this interview rolling by having you introduce yourself to our readers by telling us about where you’re from, where you grew up, family, what brings you happiness in life…the Sara Bohnsack story. I am from Salisbury, born here in this hospital! I graduated from James M. Bennett and then went to UMES. My husband Stan and I celebrated our 17th anniversary in September. We have three absolutely wonderful children. Abigail-14, Ella-7, and Owen, who just turned 1 in October. Our lives pretty much revolve around whatever Abigail has signed up for, mostly volleyball or band activities. Ella keeps us on our toes with her constant need to know all the things and wanting to keep up with her big sister. 😊 Owen is just an easy going fellow, thank goodness! He is our fat, happy, baby and we are thankful for him. My happiness is in the sounds of my household, it’s usually loud and chaotic but it is music to my ears.
A loud house is a great house! Before we get into your career as a nurse and your transition to PCM, you’ve got to tell me more about this degree in photography from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Being a “camera nut” myself, I’m curious to know why, what you planned to do with it, and why that didn’t pan out? In high school, I was in the VPA-Visual and Perfroming Arts program-and fell in love with photography. When I found out that UMES had a developing program in their Art Department, I was so excited to join! I am not sure I knew what I wanted to do with photography as a career, I just knew I loved doing it. My absolute favorite part of the whole degree was interning in NYC with a Product Photographer for a small magazine company. I got to go all over the city to take stock photos for later use as well as set up marketing photoshoots. While photography will always be a passion it was extremely hard trying to find a job that I could grow with.
Like me, are you always the one taking the family photos and offering to help tourists on the beach with their family vacation photo? I was always the family photographer for years. But being a mom has changed my outlook and patience level 😊 I much rather someone else take the picture now.
I hear you! For me, it’s lighting and framing. What do you find most intriguing about it? Photography is my art form. I can see everything through the lens. I can see the smallest speck of dust and how the light hits it and makes it glow. I love the freedoms photography can bring. I can take a picture of a family sitting on a bench or I can take a picture of the leaf that fell on someone’s shoe. It’s still art either way.
So, enough shutterbug talk, let’s get down to brass tacks. You started at then Peninsula Regional Medical Center in 2008. Walk me through your career here before nursing. My photography career brought me to PRMC. I saw a posting for the Film Library and found that I could bring some of my photography knowledge forward to that position. Once in the hospital though, I quickly became interested in the medical world. I took a course the hospital offered in medical terminology to better understand my role. I used the knowledge I learned there when I went to nursing school! My time in Radiology was just the best! They are all such wonderful, kind, helping people. I learned so much and really credit my desire to pursue nursing to them.
As we said in the introduction, your Mom was a nurse at the Salisbury hospital for 40-years. That’s admirable! Tell us about her. My mom worked in L&D for a long time. I think there are several still there that remember me as a kid coming to visit her at work. I remember many nights where my mom would bring my sister and me to the doc on-call room to do our homework or watch one of the three channels that played on the incredibly small tv there. One of the nurses would always give us graham crackers and ginger ale or coloring sheets.
And still, with all that in your blood early, you never gave that career much thought, and you even told me your Mom said, “don’t do it just because I did.” My mom loved her career as a nurse but always told us it was the hardest job, too. I remember her telling us not to become nurses when we were little but I think it was more so we didn’t feel obligated to do what she did. My mom was an incredible nurse, but I might be a little biased 😉
There must be story, then, as to why you eventually went that clinical nursing route. While working the Film Library, an admin position with Interventional Radiology became available. I wanted to stay in Radiology but also see what went on behind that closed door. My time spent in IR was what spurred me to pursue nursing. I was in absolute awe with how much they knew, how smart they all were, that I wanted to learn everything that I could from them.
You start on nights, right? What’s it like for a new nurse, new career, and all of a sudden night is day and day is night. Did that take some getting used to? It absolutely took some getting used to. The biggest adjustment was trying to still be awake for all the daytime things that everyone else was doing. I remember many days where I would only sleep for a couple hours so that I could still go to sleep that night and get on a daytime routine until my next night shift. It was hard but I still loved it. Thankfully, my daughter was in school, and I could sleep until she got home.
But, you also told me you wouldn’t have traded nights for anything because of the learning opportunities it created for you. Absolutely, the teams that work nights learn to become so independent but also work together to get the work done. It was a great learning environment to not be distracted by some of the daytime “noise.”
I can 100% understand that. So, how did you choose Case Management when the time came to “put a little normalcy” into your life and get that dayside job? As a charge nurse, we would be responsible for anticipating the next day’s discharges. I would review Case Management notes and wonder what exactly they did. When the position was posted, I went to Kaye Hudson on 5 East and asked her a ton of questions. Then the interview with Donna Pusey really sold me. It sounded challenging and like someplace I could grow as a nurse.
Your Associates in Nursing from Wor Wic, Your BSN from Western Governors University and then, and this is pretty cool, from Western Governor’s you obtained your MBA in Healthcare Management. Was that in tandem with the move? I had started my BSN prior to my move to Case Management. My MBA, I started shortly after my BSN and then completed after accepting the Manager position.
Did the TidalHealth Tuition Reimbursement program help you? It did! Especially during nursing school since I had to significantly reduce my hours, it was a blessing to have that help!
What has that MBA allowed you to do that maybe you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do? When I started looking into graduate programs, I thought about a Master’s in Nursing but when considering what I wanted to do in my career, leadership was calling to me. I enjoyed the “set your own pace and style” of education Western Governors offered, so when I found the MBA in Healthcare Leadership, I was sold. The program focused heavily on finance and business in the healthcare fields. If nothing else, I think it has helped give me confidence in becoming a leader.
I’ve been a “guest” of this hospital a few times so I know what PCM does, but for someone who might not have that interaction with you and your team, what do you do for our patients? We are primarily responsible for discharge planning. When a patient arrives at the hospital, we assess for needs upon discharge and then help execute those needs. We work together with a multidisciplinary team to help move the patient to their next appropriate level of care. We also assess for Social Drivers of Health, non-medical factors affecting health, connecting patients to community resources and partners whenever available.
As someone who spends their entire time advocating for the patient, how important do you feel it is it for us, as a patient, to advocate for ourselves, too? It is incredibly important to be able to advocate for yourself! Empowering patients to make decisions for themselves, encouraging them to take steps to improve their health and well-being is a major part of Case Mangement.
I’m sure it’s not the go, go, go excitement (and maybe that’s not the best phrasing) of bedside nursing, so what is it that appeals to you most about Patient Care Management and its own set of daily challenges? Case Management is incredibly fast paced and challenging. It may not be as physically demanding as bedside, but our brains are exhausted by the end of the day. Those that enjoy Case Management like a challenge, a puzzle. We are fixers and strive to solve the problem.
And looking at it from a leader’s perspective, how important is it for you to draw upon the experiences of those who mentored you to help you mentor others? I have drawn from many leaders to help shape my leadership style. Even with great differences in personality, leadership skills can be shared. With experience comes confidence and I think that is the greatest skill to guide others toward.
Incredibly well said. Get you out of here with this one, Sara…what’s the best piece of advice you have ever received in your 16 years at TidalHealth? You don’t want to burn your bridges! TidalHealth has a wide reach with many connections inside and outside of healthcare. Keeping positive working relationships will be key to continuing success.