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Vol. 18, No. 18
January 19, 2022
‘Caring for Our Own’ program at MSU supports local nurse By Anne Cantrell / MSU Mountains and Minds
Local business pg. 6
Sports pg. 14
Cowboy Hall of Fame pg. 21
BOZEMAN — As a nurse, Adessa Durglo’s goal is to treat her patients the way she would want her own family members to be treated. It’s a simple concept, and — as she watched her grandparents near the end of their lives and wanted something more for their care — it’s what led her to nursing in the first place. Durglo, an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, graduated from high school in St. Ignatius in 2011 and then began taking classes at MSU. Her father had gone to MSU, she said, and, with Bozeman about a four-hour drive from St. Ignatius, it felt like a good distance from home. She also earned a track scholarship and participated in the high jump, long jump and triple jump as a Bobcat student-athlete. Durglo originally planned to pursue a career in physical therapy, and she received a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from MSU in 2016. But, she said, something was missing. “I felt like I was kind of on the right path, but there was something more I wanted to do,” said Durglo, now 28. She wanted to help others, and she was
Adessa Durglo now works at Tribal Health in St. Ignatius.
interested in working with older people. Durglo also knew that she eventually hoped to return to St. Ignatius — a community of approximately 800 people. “If I wanted to come home, [St. Ignatius] is not really a big place for geriatric physical therapy,” she said. “I couldn’t make a whole career out of it here.” That’s when she found MSU’s nursing program. “It just felt right,” Durglo said. w w w.va l le yj our na l.net
“I knew I could come home and serve an older population. And I knew there were so many different areas I could go into. There’s so much you can do with a nursing degree.” She applied to the college’s accelerated program, in which students earn a bachelor’s degree in just 15 months, and she received a spot on the waiting list. Then, less than a week before classes were scheduled to
PHOTOGRAPH BY TAILYR IRVINE
start, she learned that a spot had opened. The only catch was that it was on the College of Nursing’s Great Falls campus; at the time Durglo was living with her sisters in Bozeman. “That was a little crazy,” she said. “Just before classes started, the college asked me if I could be in Great Falls by the start date. I accepted and had to move myself and figure out finances
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