Stepping across the stage for UNMC’s December commencement marked a milestone for Ian Rich and his family, extending his family’s commitment to nursing.
Rich, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing ’24, became a third generation UNMC College of Nursing graduate, following aunt Lisa Kerr Johnson (’75) and grandmother Dixie Kerr (Scott) (’51).
Rich, who now works in the medical intensive care unit at Nebraska Medicine, said his career path was heavily influenced by his family’s involvement in health care. Aside from his aunt and grandmother, Rich’s mother is a speech-language pathologist; his father is an occupational therapist.
The guidance he’s received from his family, he said, has given him a unique perspective of nursing and health care throughout his educational, and now, professional career.
“It’s been great being able to hear the different viewpoints and stories from my family members’ times in the field of nursing,” he said. “It has taught me many things that I could not have learned from classes in nursing school.
“However, the field of nursing is always changing, so this allows me to tie in both this information and new information to provide exceptional care to patients.”
Kerr Johnson said she’s enjoyed following Rich’s progression through nursing school and can see some of the influences the family’s involvement in health care has had on him.
“I love to hear Ian’s stories and (about) his influences that will lead him along his career,” Kerr Johnson said. “Early in his intensive nursing year, he emailed me to say how he had started pharmacology and loved it.
“He told me he thought that had been inherited from me,” she added, with a laugh.
Kerr Johnson, who transitioned to a career in pharmacy after receiving her associate’s degree in nursing from UNMC, said nursing has continued to play a significant role in her career, particularly through 28 medical mission trips to Haiti. One of the teams in which she was involved helped establish the only BSN program in Leogane, Haiti.
Though she eventually chose to pursue pharmacy and even initially considered it while in high school, she acknowledges her mother’s background likely played a role in her initial choice to pursue nursing.
“My mom’s education probably influenced my ultimate decision,” she said, adding that she might have played an equal role in Kerr’s rediscovery of nursing. “As a mother of seven children, she did not work as a nurse during my young years. I probably influenced her more to go back for her nursing refresher course when I was at the College of Nursing and gave her my nursing pharmacology book to study.”
As a student nurse, Kerr worked at a hospital and was recruited by a surgeon to work as his nurse in central Nebraska following her graduation in 1951.
“She operated with him in the operating room as his surgical nurse, saw and cared for those patients post-operatively and worked in his office to see patients,” Kerr Johnson said. “She even responded to emergencies after hours.”
Kerr Johnson added that moving to a new location, previously unknown to her, was an example of her commitment to health care.
“She left school and moved to a new, unknown place as she was committed to providing care not common in rural Nebraska,” Kerr Johnson said.
Rich, who was awarded the UNMC College of Nursing’s Irma Kyle Kramer Award for Academic Achievement, acknowledges that the influence he’s felt throughout his journey has placed him on a path of success. He’s determined to forge a career that both pays respect to his family’s history while making his own, unique mark on the profession.
“I am where I am today because of the influence my family has had on me, but I want to make my own path in the field of nursing,” he said. “I know my family members have provided great care for their patients, so it is important for me to follow their lead and continue providing exceptional care for my patients as well.”