Kristina Brakebill Houck

“Patients give you patience,” according to Kristina Brakebill Houck. “I am blown away every day with the courage and perseverance that my patients show towards their difficult health situations.” Kristy, as she’s called by her family and friends, is a registered nurse working full time at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA.  Just two years into her career after graduating from Messiah College in 2009, Kristy works on the trauma acute care floor, or the “drama” floor, as she and the trauma staff lovingly call it.

Kristy and her fellow nurses handle a wide variety of patients who have suffered trauma injuries, emergency surgery, or those who are dealing with psychological, drug, or alcohol problems. She has earned her trauma certification and is also a skin resource nurse, having obtained additional training in wound care, pressure ulcers, and care prevention. Because of her trauma work, as well as the time she spent working on the surgical acute care floor, Kristy has already experienced more than a half dozen rapid response situations, more than some nurses experience in a 20 year career.

Those who know Kristy are not surprised at her accomplishments to date. Just five feet tall and petite, she rarely stands still, and has the energy of a hummingbird. Kristy decided when she was very young that nursing was going to be her career, and during her high school years at Walkersville High School, she was a student volunteer at Frederick Memorial Hospital, and also worked at a local pharmacy. While in college, she traveled for two medical mission trips. The first was to Niger, Africa, where she spent six days working in a temporary clinic. There were no doctors, only nurses, and Kristy practiced her nursing skills in an environment much different from the United States. The second trip was to Thailand, where she spent one month working in a hospital, visiting villages, and teaching Thai nurses her skills. “It was very challenging because Thailand is much farther behind in medical technology as compared to the United States,” Kristy said. “I had to improvise with available supplies and find ways to make things work.” These experiences were invaluable to her nursing training and also gave her a better understanding of global medicine and experience with illnesses that don’t exist here.

Kristy received scholarships from The Pauline Stauffer Scholarship Fund and The Rotary Club of Frederick Endowment Fund. “Without these scholarships, I would not have been able to attend Messiah College,” said Kristy. “Messiah’s nursing program is one of the top-rated programs in the country, and my education would have been completely different if I went to school elsewhere. With Messiah’s ties to Hershey Medical, I was able to do my clinical training there, giving me a leg-up in becoming employed at Hershey.”

Kristy’s advice for new graduates is “take every opportunity presented to you and run with it, even if it’s not in your field. You’ll learn something valuable from each one and this will help you reach your goals.” She now shares her experiences with nursing students at Messiah College and members of the Nurses Christian Fellowship Club, encouraging them to stay-the-course during the challenging times of study and clinical training.

Kristy is currently taking classes to become a nurse practitioner, and expects to complete her course work in 2013. She plans on specializing in adult care and gerontology, and her dream is to run her own clinic. “I’ve really learned a lot from my patients. Dealing with so many different types of people has made me a better person, and I’m very grateful for all these opportunities.”