Celebrating Nurses 2009 : Marsha Long
Celebrating Nurses 2009 : Marsha Long
'It’s what I fell in love with'
Special Sections Writer
After two long stints in other fields, Marsha Long has earned a lot of fans caring for seniors at a nursing home in the comparatively short time she's been a nurse.
"Actually, I wanted to work with babies and pediatrics," she said. "During my nursing school we had a geriatric project. That kind of changed my mind. It's really sad — some of these people don't have anybody. It's what I fell in love with. It's what I wanted to do."
Long, 58, grew up in Union County along the North Carolina-South Carolina line southeast of Charlotte. She went to South Piedmont Community College in Polkton to become a licensed practical nurse, and for the past four and a half years has worked at the Jesse Helms Nursing Center in Monroe. Before becoming a nurse, she worked as a bookkeeper at a grocery store for 20 years and worked at a transformer manufacturing plant another 15 years after that. The move to a career in health care came gradually.
"My husband had a lot of illnesses over the years, and a lot of home health nurses came out," Long said. "That put the idea in my mind."
A stack of testimonials from coworkers, patients and patients' families accompanied Long's nomination as an extraordinary nurse. One family praised her for going "beyond the requirements of her job, such as coming in on her day off to decorate her hall for holidays or baking one of her wonderful cakes to share." Another family said their relative likes Long "because she talks racing with him."
"Marsha is always smiling and she always projects a very caring attitude," wrote another family member.
Long makes it look easy, but nursing is harder than it looks, she said.
"It's rewarding work," she said. "It's something you need to be committed to. A lot of people say, ‘That's an easy job.' It's not an easy job. It's a little bit harder job than what I thought it would be. But we need nurses."
Long works an evening shift at the nursing home, and spends much of her time dispensing medication and updating patients' charts.
"In every job you have a lot of paperwork," she said. "I wish I could spend more time with the patients because they enjoy that."
Patients like to hear about Long's activities on her days off, such as attending NASCAR races, skeet shooting and fishing.
"They'll ask me, ‘Did you catch anything?'" she said. "They just like to be a part of it. One family member found out that I like to shoot skeet, and I got invited to a tournament last October. You get in with the families and it's lots of fun."
- Debra Allen , Rockingham Co. Health Dept
- Diane Bell, Randolph Cancer Center
- Thomas Brown, Randolph Hospital
- Leslie Butcher, Brenner's Children's Hospital
- Lenora D. Clapp, NC Dept of Corrections
- Cynthia E. Knust, Moses Cone Health Systems
- Marsha Roddenberry, High Point Regional
- Marsha Long, Carolina Medical Center
- Jan Parker, Hospice of Greensboro
- Sarah Turner, Kids Path/Hospice
