From TV News to a Career in Nursing
By Matt Windsor
Long before Lindsey Mann joined the Accelerated Master’s in Nursing Pathway (AMNP) at the UAB School of Nursing, she was spreading the news about the innovative program.
After graduating from the University of Alabama in 2006 with a degree in journalism, Mann landed a job as a marketing producer for a Birmingham television station. “One of our reporters did a special report on the AMNP program, which gives people with an undergraduate degree in a non-nursing field a fast track to becoming a registered nurse and earning a master’s in nursing degree,” Mann says. “It was my job to make a promo commercial for that segment, and it stuck with me.”
When Mann lost her job in a major layoff, she found herself at a crossroads. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she says. Mann had a prepaid trip to the Dominican Republic already planned, so she spent that week on the beach thinking and praying about her decision. “By the time I came back, I had decided to go for a nursing career.”
Mann applied to several different nursing schools, but when she received an acceptance letter from UAB, she quickly turned down the other offers. “This was the fastest and most prestigious way to become an R.N. and to advance quickly in the nursing profession,” Mann says. “And I didn’t want to stay unemployed very long.”
She didn’t. Mann joined the third cohort of AMNP students in 2010, received her nursing degree in May 2011, and immediately landed a job in the cardiovascular surgery unit at UAB Hospital. She works full-time in the unit while completing coursework online for her nurse practitioner degree. (The AMNP program allows students to follow a clinical nurse leader track or apply for admission into a nurse-practitioner track.)
“I like the idea of seeing someone grow and treating their kids someday,” Mann says. “I’m a very relational person, so I look forward to working with people.”
Mann also loves “feeling truly capable for one of the first times in my life,” she says. “When I was working in media, I would be telling stories about people who had had unfortunate things happen to them, but aside from donating money, that was all I could do. When you become a nurse or paramedic or a doctor, you gain this whole set of practical skills. Now if I see an accident on the side of the road, I can stop and really know what to do to help. That gives me so much happiness and confidence and fulfillment.”