Leadership Through Courage
Delivering the Vaccine to the Last Frontier Julie Drude, FNP Class 136, CNEP Class 81, DNP Class 26, doesn’t “do boats. I don’t like them. I hate boats.” Even though she was born and raised in Hollywood, Florida, and resides in Chattahoochee, Florida, she said “my extent of the beach and the waves is laying on the beach and sunbathing. I don’t do boats.” Why, then, was she pictured in front of a boat in Alaska as part of a widely circulated news story in January? The answer as to why she’s in Alaska is that Drude is a travel nurse, currently working as a locum tenens in Homer, Alaska. The answer to why there’s a boat in the picture is because Drude, fellow FNU graduate Kourtney Holder, DNP, Companion, DNP 2, and two other medical personnel were delivering the COVID-19 vaccines to Seldovia, a small town located on Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, about 25 miles from Homer. There are no roads to Seldovia -- the only ways to get there are across the bay via bush plane or, unfortunately for Drude, by boat.
On December 17, 2020, this group braved rough waters to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to the remote village of Seldovia, Alaska. Pictured (L-R): Candice Kreger, RN, FNU graduate Kourtney Holder, FNP, captain Curtis Jackson, and FNU graduate Julie Drude, FNP. (Photo by Janel Harris courtesy of Mako’s Water Taxi)
Drude began working as a travel nurse in 2012, with her first assignment being the rural town of Bethel, Alaska. She worked there again in 2015 and 2017, and in Valdez, Alaska in the summer of 2020. This is her first trip to Homer, however, with her assignment scheduled from December through March. So, despite her familiarity with rural Alaska, she was not prepared for her assignment on her fourth day in Homer.
That day, like many in Alaska, the weather was too rough for the bush planes to make the trip over the bay. The only way was by boat. Make no mistake, this is no pleasure cruise across a tranquil bay. It’s a rough trip. “Because it was the Pfizer vaccine and there is that window that you have to use the vaccine, we had to take a boat,” Drude said. “It was my first boat ride in Alaska. We braved six-foot waves and rough water and delivered COVID vaccines. I had total faith in the captain of the boat, but it was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. It was even rougher on the way back.”
“It was my fourth day here and they were like, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re going to Seldovia today to vaccinate’,” she said. “That’s where the picture came from. That was the first day that we got the Pfizer vaccine. Now, this Florida girl who doesn’t do much flying or boating has to get on a boat or a bush plane every Monday and Tuesday and fly over to the village of Seldovia.”
As scary and unpleasant as the trip was, Drude said it was well worth it.
Julie Drude 12 Frontier Nursing University • Quarterly Bulletin
“It was such an amazing moment to be one of the first people here in this community to deliver some vaccines
