In addition to her role as a medical technologist at Kearney County Health
Services in Minden, Laura Horner also administers electrocardiograms and X-rays of patients.
She wouldn’t wish it to be any other way.
“I really enjoy the interaction with the patients,” Horner said. “I would
miss that if I were in the lab all of the time.”
Horner can fill all of the positions at the Kearney County hospital, in
part, because of a distance education opportunity that is provided by UNMC.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of
Nebraska at Kearney in 1994, Horner worked as a phlebotomist at various hospitals in south-central Nebraska as she and her husband, Jeffrey, moved to different school districts where he taught English, speech and drama.
Distance learning = degree
When the couple and their children moved to Minden four years ago, Horner knew of an opportunity through which she could earn a medical technology degree, via distance learning, in one year. She decided to go for it.
“After my husband earned his master’s degree, it all fell together that I
could go after the medical technology degree,” Horner said. “I had a college roommate who had gone through the program, and earning another degree was always a goal that I wanted to achieve at some point in my life.”
So, for 11 weeks, Horner and six classmates took morning classes at College Park in Grand Island, with the lectures originating from the UNMC Omaha campus. During the afternoons, they would do lab work, then study at night.
On-the-job training
In August, their coursework shifted to clinical training sites in North
Platte, Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island. Horner was among two students who completed their clinical training at Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney.
“It was basically on-the-job training,” Horner said. “We learned how to use specific machines, how to recognize when we got an error, how to perform maintenance on the machines, and how to read results to make sure they weren’t in error.”
During their clinical training, the students concentrated in the areas of chemistry, hematology, blood bank and microbiology. They also received a didactic lecture, originating from UNMC, twice a week. By spring, Horner had received her degree in medical technology, or clinical laboratory science.
“For me, it worked out great,” Horner said. “I didn’t want to uproot my family, and I didn’t want to travel to Omaha all of the time. It worked out absolutely wonderful.”
Life in a smaller community
A native of Kearney, Horner and her husband have three children, Austin, Jadyn and Kenan. Horner said she and her husband, who grew up in the 318-person community of Scotia, enjoy the smaller community setting.
While Minden has only 2,800 residents, it is home to Harold Warp Pioneer Village, an annual Christmas festival and a renovated opera house, and the community is less than an hour from Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island.
At the Kearney County Health Services, Horner works 10-hour days, three days a week, and she is on call every third weekend and two nights a week.
“I love it; I was hesitant to start here because of the big change in size between Good Samaritan Hospital and Kearney County Health Services, but it has been great,” Horner said. “I like the hands-on experience with my patients and getting to know people in the community, through my job.”