Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathrina Sierra
Kathrina, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have always had an affinity for anything that gets my heart rate elevated. I suspect there may be some undiagnosed attention span issue at play here. I find I need a rather large stimulus to work at my peak performance. Starting in high school, anything that did not pique my interest was completely ignored but the start of learning the sciences seem to engage my interest long enough to be able to crave knowledge about biology and how the body works. My grades allowed my admittance into the ‘University of California Irvine’ where I had initially intended to start the long journey into medical school. I began at UCI in the evolutionary ecology major but felt I could only do so many punnet square assignments that would predict the phenotype smooth vs. wrinkly peas. Feeling unmotivated and underwhelmed I changed my major to cognitive psychology which allowed for me to understand the underlying structures of the brain, how our brain chemistry ultimately determines the actions we take, and the person we truly are under the facade of our ‘skin suits’. Despite my interest in psychology I did not feel as though it was my passion and having started university at seventeen with no curfew, my grades would not hold a candle to the other students more dedicated to going to medical school.
I recall at the time, the boyfriend I broke up with told me he had considered becoming an EMT but never went through with a program. I had a two week break from UCI and with the free time that came with not having a significant other, I signed up for a two week course to become an emergency medical technician. Following my completion of university, I decided to work on an ambulance for a company that serviced 911 providers in Los Angeles County. I LOVED IT. Every call was either something unique, different, mundane, or mind blowing. Working in a busy station in central Los Angeles, there was no shortage of action for a hyper and eager 22-year-old me. One hour we would take a routine abdominal pain to the hospital and the next call could be a cardiac arrest following multiple gun shot wounds. I finally found where I belonged. That is, until I was reminded how difficult it was to navigate living on your own on the nearly 10 dollars an hour I was making as an EMT. I began nursing school and would work full time, 24-hour shifts while juggling nursing school and clinical. One serendipitous day, bringing a trauma patient to our local Level-1 trauma hospital, I saw a woman in the corner wearing a reflective flight suit. Her badge read ‘flight nurse’. There was an aire of reverence from the other medical providers and she looked cool as hell. I don’t know how I was pulling that off but I needed a flight suit of my own. Working 7 years in the hospital in the emergency room, pediatric emergency department and ultimately trauma unit of a large teaching hospital for Los Angeles County still could not adequately prepare me for where my life was headed. Coincidentally after another interesting parting of ways with a less than ideal partner, an opportunity to interview for a coveted flight nurse position was presented to me. On the day of this interview I had a flight scheduled to meet my sisters in Japan. This was an opportunity I was not willing to miss out on, I forfeited my flight and joined the panel interview with a group of 7 well-qualified nurses for one spot. Through an intense round of questioning and demonstration of my ability to perform patient care in multitude high stress situations, I was informed that day that I had gotten the job. I am getting my own flight suit (cue the tear). My office space is now a crammed Airbus EC-135 and I could not be happier. I take patients from small facilities with limited resources to hospitals where they can get the definitive treatment they need. These people are sick and at times it means transported them on ventilators and numerous IV medications to keep them alive during transport. We take traumas that the local fire department have elected are so critical that they need to be flown out. I am in awe every day of my coworkers and their similar zest in learning all things emergency and transport medicine that I do. I work with paramedics and nurses that could easily have been the most accomplished and sharpest providers at their hospital or fire department. At times I still feel the nagging complex that is imposter syndrome. Having spent nearly eight years in nursing, I decided it was time to go back to school. I am a year away from obtaining my Acute Care Nurse practitioner license. A masters degree in nursing will allow me to help patients in another capacity, however, until the day I can no longer climb the skids and get into the helicopter, I will be up there flying.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been a wee bit bumpy and immensely more curvy than I had anticipated. Regardless of the condition of the road I still ended up exactly where I am supposed to be. After college I had moved back in with my parents to help with expenses and because, well, EMT pay was not it. While living at home, my parents were going through a particularly heinous divorce in which I no longer could live with them. Christmas week I scouted for an apartment I could afford with the nearly non-existant savings I had and landed on a tiny studio in a less than ideal part of town. My first studio completely on my own was humble, the closet was in the bathroom, and until I could afford furniture, my dining room table was an inverted cardboard box with a smaller accompanying cardboard box as a stool. This tiny space could not comfortably fit a guest, but it was mine, and it was a sanctuary for me to come home to after a 60 hour shift on the ambulance followed by a 12 hour clinical rotation at the hospital. These struggles were not all for naught, the sleepless nights and times I had been so exhausted running calls through the night I wanted to cry have led me to my happy place both in my career and in life.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a CFRN or Certified Flight Registered Nurse. I fly in a rotor wing airship and do both interfacility transfers between hospitals as well as emergency response scene calls with the local fire departments.
How do you define success?
Success is so many things. Success looks completely different for everybody and transcends the prescribed: fatty bank account, attractive trophy spouse and unreasonably large house. For me success is trying something that makes me uncomfortable or terrified. Something that I had always wanted to try was aerial arts. After seeing a circus in Colombia where women descended from ceiling length fabrics, I was intrigued. Nearly a decade of terrifying practices later I am close to the skill level of aerial silks that these women had me in awe of. Ultimately becoming less scared of what is not fully understood or mastering a skill that once overwhelmed me to a near panic state. Success is having enough of what I need and making sure that those around me have the same.
