Mother & daughter nurses to celebrate graduation together

Like mother, like daughter. Clare and Lauren Szymanski will have good cause for a double celebration this May when they both graduate from UD's Department of Nursing.

Furthermore, after graduation, both will be employed in labor and delivery at Christiana Hospital.

When Clare graduated from Wilmington Nursing School as a registered nurse in 1975, she recalled that her personal goal was to get her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Delaware.

But, marriage and motherhood intervened, although she kept on working as a nurse in the ob/gyn field in hospitals and doctors' offices. One of the doctors she worked for encouraged her to return to UD to get her bachelor's degree, even offering to pay part of her tuition.

It was a busy time for the family, Clare recalled. She had four children, and the youngest was still a baby. Her husband, Michael, a professional land surveyor, was starting his own business. However, he encouraged her to take the opportunity to go back to school, and she began taking one or two courses at a time, beginning in 1991. Now, 10 years later, she has achieved her dream.

Daughter Lauren has always had an interest in medicine. She was a babysitter for a doctor, and then began working in the office, taking blood pressure, running the autoclave and doing other routine procedures. She thought, at first, she would like to go to medical school and was enrolled in pre-med courses at UD, but nursing began to look more and more attractive to her.

"The woman doctor I worked for was cutting back on her practice as she tried to balance her career and family, which included three young daughters.

After all those years of study and work, that was a hard decision for her to have to make," Lauren said.

"I told her to think long and hard about becoming a doctor and all that it involved," Clare said, recalling a talk with her daughter.

Instead, Lauren decided to enroll in nursing and discovered she loved it. At first, she was interested in pediatrics, but she found out that, like her mother, the field she really liked was labor and delivery.

Clare has been working at Christiana Hospital in labor and delivery two days a week and has served as a preceptor for UD nursing students while, at the same time, doing her own practicum at a clinic at the Henrietta Johnson Community Center in the Southbridge area of Wilmington. She said the course in cultural communications, taught by Larry Purnell, nursing, has been invaluable to her in dealing with women from different backgrounds. "Whenever I have a question or problem, I e-mail him, and he has an answer for me," Clare said.

Lauren has been working as a clerk in the emergency room at Christiana. When she applied for a full-time job in an internship program in labor and delivery for new nursing graduates, Clare thought she would have to give up her own job because of the hospital's policy against family members working in the same area.

However, the policy was altered, and the supervisor announced that her goal was to hire good nurses and she wanted both of them.

Actually, Clare said, there are different areas of labor and delivery, such as Caesarian sections and high-risk pregnancies, as well as different shifts, so the chances of working together at the same time are slim.

The University of Delaware is a family affair for the Szymanskis. "My husband studied at Delaware for a few years. My older son, Eric, graduated in 1997 as a communication major, and my younger son, Michael, will be a freshman this fall, majoring in hotel, restaurant and institutional management," Clare said. Her youngest, Alyssa, like most 10-year-olds, is undecided about her future.

–Sue Moncure

Photo by KATHY FLICKINGER