A brand new day

Hi, my name is Marie Hawkins. I live in Boise, Idaho and work at Intermountain Hospital a psychiatric mental health hospital. I've been an RN for 20 years, started my career in Seattle at Harborview Medical Center Burn Unit. Nursing was not my first professional health care choice until I realized I could do more to help heal as a nurse than I could in medicine. Over the years I have been a strong advocate for higher education for nurses. When I met my educational crossroad I knew it was time to make a decision what path to take in the final lag of my professional nursing career. Over the years I've been blessed to have worked in several specialty of nursing arenas and found that psychiatric care has been a consistent foundation to my practice. While working as a "floor nurse" I gravitated toward patients with mental health disorders and pediatric patients. These two patient types were not the favorites of most nurses so I had both the pleasure and opportunity to offer my gift of nursing to them. And now, I can take it all to a higher level one that I am looking forward to for the remainder of my nursing career.