Michigan Rn Jobs

Profile: MSU medical school dean Marsha Rappley

Dr. Marsha Rappley has survived cancer, coped with the death of a sibling, earned a medical degree, led a university medical school and raised two children.

Just don’t expect her to sit through a scary movie. Or one with a sad ending.

“I feel like I live in that world. It’s too real for me. I have too much empathy for the characters, and its not a cathartic experience. It’s a disturbing experience,” Rappley said.

The physician and dean of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine is known to set students, faculty and visitors at ease with her calm, but commanding presence in the hallways of the school’s Secchia Center in downtown Grand Rapids. Working with students is her greatest job pleasure.

“I started out to be a teacher ... then I went into nursing and medicine and loved all that. Now, I’ve combined the two,” she said. “I think I still have my love of teaching, and it’s gratifying to me that I’ve come full circle."

The early years

Born in Flint, Rappley, who turns 60 this year, is the eldest of Charles and Barbara Rappley. She is sister to the brother of Mark, who died in 1993, and his sister, Jayne, who lives in Phoenix.

His parents moved from North Dakota to Michigan where his father took a job as an engineer at General Motors. The family moved to Livonia Rappley when he was three, and Charles moved to a Fisher Body plant.

When she was 4, Rappley’s younger sister, Jayne, stopped breathing and was rushed to Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, where she would spend the first two years of her life enduring multiple surgeries and a tracheotomy.

“She had a form of cancer and tumor that we still don’t understand very well because we don’t have records from the time,” Rappley said.

Rappley recalled the experience earlier this year at an event surrounding the opening of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.

“I understand what a good children’s hospital can do for a family in need,” she said. “My mom said to me that she was scared to death to walk into the old children’s hospital in Detroit because it was very dark and gloomy, but she knew my sister was getting the best care.

“And now we have this beautiful place (in Grand Rapids) for people to take their children when they need this kind of care.

Spectrum Health RN - Pediatric Critical Care Unit - Weekend Option ...

Other: Time management and organizational skills. Effective written and verbal communication skills. Working knowledge of computers and their application preferred. Working knowledge of a variety of health care equipment. Ability to make quality, independent decisions. Ability to instruct and direct the work of others. 80% of time spent standing and/or walking. Ability to lift up to a 60 pound weight load. Very frequent lifting and bending, pushing and/or pulling loads. Able to work effectively and efficiently under tight deadlines, high volumes and multiple interruptions. Unit Profile: Spectrum Health's Helen DeVos Children's Hospital is the only hospital in western Michigan dedicated to providing comprehensive care to children. It serves as a referral center for newborns, infants, children and adolescents throughout the state. We provide medical care generally not available at community hospitals. It does not compete for patients. Helen DeVos Children's provides many unduplicated services. It is a special resource for local health care centers and hometown physicians. It receives no direct state aid and depends upon private support to expand health care programs and services. Helen DeVos Children's has 179 inpatient beds. The average length of stay for patients, excluding newborns, is 4.2 days. The average length of stay for neonatal patients is 11.4 days. More than 138,000 visits are made to Helen DeVos Children's Hospital annually. This includes more than 7,700 admissions and nearly 131,000 outpatient visits. Last year, we served children from 76 counties in Michigan and from 45 different states. Our Pediatric Unit consists of both general pediatrics as well as Pediatric Heme/Onc/BMT. Our general Pediatric Unit consists of 46 beds with all private rooms and includes a variety of diagnoses from medical to surgical. It includes pediatric subspecialties of Neuro, Pulmonary, Nephrology, Cardiology as well as Pediatric Surgery and Trauma. Pediatric resident staff is available in house, 24 hours a day. The Pediatric Heme/Onc/BMT unit is a 15-bed unit with 7 positive pressure beds with hard-line monitoring to accommodate BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant.) We are the regional referral center and have 6 Pediatric Oncologists and 2 BMT physicians on staff. The nursing staff in Pediatrics work closely and collaboratively with physicians, social workers, child life and discharge coordinators to provide care.

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