Katie Barefield's Story

Both my parents are alumni, so we always grew up coming here and doing stuff. I grew up going to the pool. I’ve always loved Hardin-Simmons football games.

I wanted to go to a private, Christian university. That was important to me. The tradition and the “Education Enlightened by Faith” was really important to me.

I think what’s special about nursing school is all your professors are nurses, or maybe they’re working on their master’s or have completed their master’s, but it’s nice because they understand exactly what we’re going through. Being educated with a foundation-based faith helped inform me to be the nurse that I want to be one day.

Hendrick Medical Center works a lot with Patty Hanks in that we do most of our clinicals there. Every week we are at the hospital for twelve hours, we’re on different floors, and then after our first year of nursing school, we were able to apply for what’s called a patient care technician. So, after your first year of nursing school, you can apply for this paid job to work through the summer and even throughout the semester. And, they’re really flexible with us because they know you’re still a student.

Our precepting we do at Hendrick. I’m assigned to one nurse, and I had to get twelve twelve-hour shifts with her. My nurse was amazing. I grew really close to her. She is really strong in her faith as well, so I was lucky to be placed with her. She taught me a lot that I didn’t know, just hands-on stuff that you don’t always get sitting in the classroom.

Hendrick is amazing, and the networking that we have with them is really helpful in preparing us for our future. Our senior year we took three exit exams, HESI exits, which cover everything we’ve learned. We took one and then we would have our remediation, which would help us prepare for the next one. Then we would have more remediation and then take our last one. So, that helped me prepare and know what I struggled with the most in preparing for my NCLEX.

Another reason I picked Hardin-Simmons was because Patty Hanks was right across the street. At a lot of schools you might be there for two years and then you have to go somewhere totally different for the last two years, but Patty Hanks is still very much part of the university as a whole.

I think to me, what makes Hardin-Simmons special is that it feels like a family. I love being able to walk around campus. You can hardly walk around and not see someone you know, or stop and talk to someone. Hardin-Simmons has been a blessing. I couldn’t have completed my nursing degree and walked towards this career if it wasn’t for this school and the people in this school who helped me get there.

Nursing definitely was a challenge for me and there were a lot of obstacles throughout the way. But, the people who touched my life at this school definitely helped me finish the race. Everyone at Hardin-Simmons is definitely a blessing.