Amanda Lugar

Amanda Lugar, RN

at CapRock Hospital

JENNY TWITCHELL Special to The Eagle

Nursing combines the science of medicine with the art of helping, a combination perfect for Amanda Lugar, RN, an emergency room nurse at CapRock Hospital.

“The anatomy and physiology of the human body makes sense to me, and I’ve always found medicine interesting; it’s neat to see how that led me to decide I wanted to be a nurse because I also wanted to help people,” Lugar said. “To be real honest, it’s the smartest thing I ever did. It means so much to me.”

Lugar has been a nurse for 16 years working in emergency rooms in both Virginia, where she’s from, and Texas.

“I worked really hard to become a nurse,” she said. “I put myself through school, and it means so much to me. It’s something that I feel like my heart and soul is in it, and I feel if you have a gift to do something and you don’t share it with others, that’s a waste of something that could be benefi cial for others.”

Loving it and feeling called to do it may be the only way to stick with it – it’s not for the faint of heart, she said.

“I tell you what, especially working in the emergency room, if you don’t love it, you won’t keep doing it because it’s hard; it’s not easy,” she said. “You’re dealing with people on the worst days of their life a lot of times. They are scared. They don’t know what’s wrong with them, and they come to you for answers, and sometimes you can give them answers, and sometimes you can’t.”

In emergency rooms, most of the time the job is to rule out life threatening situations and send patients on a path where they need to go, Lugar said. Sometimes there’s diff erent personalities or some people have a fear of medicine, which has really ramped up the last couple of years considering COVID-19.

“There’s been a lot of distress, a lot of personalities to deal with, tough things, sad things, you do see some happy moments oddly enough, but it’s very emotional,” Lugar said. “It’s very diffi cult thinking on your feet the whole time, and if you don’t love it, you will fi nd something else to do real quick.”

Lugar’s quick thinking and caring heart combine to make her an exceptional emergency room nurse, said Mendy Haney, MSN, RN, director of patient care services at CapRock

Hospital.

“Other than her fantastic critical thinking skills as far as being Johnny-onthe-spot, she is such a compassionate nurse,” Haney said. “She has such a big heart, is very loving and kind.”

When traumas come in, Lugar is all business and jumps into action, but she never loses her personal touch – something that came in handy during the COVID surges, Haney said.

“When COVID was in full force, we had some inpatients that had been here for a while, and one was really sick – she was a large patient who couldn’t breathe on her own, but she needed a bath,” Haney said. “Lugar went and personally herself bought supplies to bathe her, bought perfumes, and lotions, and things to help her feel better about herself. She took the time to bathe her and make her feel comfortable because when you have to get totally naked in front of someone you don’t know, it’s really diffi cult, but Lugar spent an hour and half bathing this woman - it took that long to cover her, so she didn’t feel exposed to everyone, and so she felt like a human being. It was so touching. It made me cry.”

Being a nurse isn’t glamorous. It’s not like the television shows. It’s hard work, Lugar said.

“You’re not fl irting with cute residents; you don’t go to work looking all pretty; my tennis shoes are not cute shoes, they are functional shoes, so it’s not this glamorous thing,” Lugar said. “It’s hard sometimes - it’s telling people their family member has passed or telling them things they don’t want to hear.”

But Lugar said she’s not one to back down from a challenge.

“Just because something can be diffi cult doesn’t mean it’s bad or that we should shy away from it,” she said. “If you come at things with the mindset, ‘This is another problem for me to solve,’ and if you take the negative connotation out of the diffi culty and look for a positive way to work through whatever the diffi culty may be, it puts things into perspective.”

Having that mindset benefi ts the patients, and everything Lugar does as a nurse is for the benefi t of the patients, she said.

“Everything we do, every step we take, every action we make is all about the patient,” she said. “Being an excellent nurse means you are putting your patient’s wellbeing above all else. You are being the patient advocate. The safety and care and comfort of your patient is of the utmost importance, more than anything else. Doing the right thing by them is number one.”