“It’s the spirit of the kids, that’s the best part. Helping out the children, working with their families—that’s the best part of Riley.”
Even the historic blizzard of 1978 couldn’t deter Riley’s long-tenured nurse Deb Kilpatrick from serving children.
“A bunch of us were staying at apartments on 10th Street and our manager sent a four-wheel drive to get us. Six of us piled in the four-wheel drive that got stuck even before it got out of the apartments and we had to dig that out,” she chuckles. “We got into Riley to relieve the nurses that had been there all night. We slept on the floor in the new unit that was being created. I will never forget that time and just the camaraderie.”
Kilpatrick strolled through the storied stained-glass entrance of Riley Children’s Hospital in May 1977 to start her career as a nurse in the PICU. She’s seen so much during those 47 years serving parents, children and families of Indiana.
Kilpatrick says she always wanted to be a pediatric nurse. “I babysat a lot when I was in high school and I loved kids,” she says. She was bedside for the first two decades and then as an educator in the PICU for 19 more years. She’s been handling discharge phone calls for patients the past eight years. At the end of February, she'll retire to spend time with family and friends, read, take some nature walks and maybe even volunteer at Riley.
She says it’s the kids, first and foremost, that make Riley such a special place. “It’s the spirit of the kids, that’s the best part. Helping out the children, working with their families—that’s the best part of Riley.”
Decades of medical progress
She’s seen decades of medical progress, too, during her career.
"We witnessed incredible advancements in cardiovascular surgery and cardiology care, including starting our cardiac transplant program," she says. "Phenomenal innovation and improvements marched forward within each service Riley has to offer from oncology to neurosurgery, from metabolism to general surgery.”
She’s seen the positive impact of vaccines on patient care with kids who early on in her career would contract Haemophilus influenzae meningitis before a Hib vaccine was introduced or how research identified the correlation between Reye syndrome and children under 18 getting aspirin.
She says kids coming back to visit when they are better is a true highlight of all her memories at Riley. “But also, along the way, just the relationships I had, the friends I got to have, they’re lifelong friends from work. And we shared not only taking care of patients, but our lives and we grew up together.”
“I cherish the times I spent growing up at Riley in my career. I've had support all along the way with every manager, respiratory therapist, unit secretary, physician, patient care assistant, housekeeper, pharmacist, cafeteria staff, fellow nurse and so many others,” she adds.
Finally, she says, “If you like taking care of children, this is the place you want to be and you will get joy from your work. You'll meet beloved, darling children with spirits that soar and their parents. You'll meet wonderful colleagues along the way because they feel the same way. Everyone does their best and they put the children first.”