Barbara Lee Pille

FIU was the only college in the area that had a pediatric track. I did CPR for the first time when I was ten years old on the side of the road with my dad. He was a firefighter, and he was one of the first firefighter paramedics. I learned very early how to take care of people. I was the oldest of six kids, and I took care of all of my baby brothers and sisters. From the age of 9, I could handle a newborn. I always knew that I wanted to work with kids, and I wanted to be a pediatrician. I liked working with people and working in groups. I went into nursing because I loved taking care of people, and my philosophy of nursing was that, when people need to be taken care of, there had to be somebody who could take care of them and teach them until they could take care of themselves. We take care of kids and hope they can take care of themselves and do it right. I learned how to write properly at FIU, and I knew how to pay attention to somebody else who knew what they were talking about. I had already been a nurse for 20 years when I went to FIU. I kept saying, 'I want to become a nurse practitioner,' and a friend of mine said, 'Come on, we're going for a drive.' He drove me down to FIU and said, 'Go in there and talked to the lady named Florence.' She happened to be the secretary for the Nursing Program. I walked out half an hour later, and I had signed up for the Nursing Program. I walked out and said, 'I will probably kill you for this.' He said, 'No, you won't.' Then I told my son that I was going to go back to school. I skipped one semester because I had to go home. My father died, and it took a couple of months to put my mother back on her feet. Then I came back and finished. I see people at their most distressed, and I put them back together. That's what I've been taught to do.