Jake Powers: Finding his purpose as medical-surgery nurse caring for patients

WATERLOO — Jake Powers has not always known what path to take in life.

But encountering situations where he felt “helpless” spurred him on to becoming a medical-surgical nurse. It’s a career in which he is making a significant difference on a regular basis.

Powers, 32, works at MercyOne Waterloo Medical Center and has dedicated his time in the medical profession to helping people. He works close to 13-hour shifts overnight three to four days per week.

Every day is different, and Powers says a lot of the time it’s a “balancing act” as he goes about figuring out how best to manage his time.

His day-to-day consists of anything related to the handling of medication schedules for patients in and out of surgery, to assessing their side effects, checking for vital signs, and talking with family members, doctors, and others to learn more about what’s best for the patient.

One day will be a 20-year-old patient who has appendicitis, the next may be a 100-year-old patient suffering from pneumonia. Sometimes the patients are only there for hours and other times for days, weeks or months.

“It’s time management, it’s critical thinking, it’s the skills of actually doing IVs, placing Foleys (catheters), answering phone calls, and dealing with doctors and dealing with families,” Powers said. “There’s a lot of different hats you’re going to wear, and it can be tough at first, for sure.”

He is being recognized as one of The Courier’s Cedar Valley Top Nurses in 2023. In the midst of a crazy work schedule, he still finds time to be a loving husband and father to his wife Hailey, son Sean, 1, and dog Leo. The couple also has another baby on the way.

Family is important to him, and it’s one of the reasons he got into the nursing profession. He comes from a family tree of public servants – most notably his mother, Lisa Monson, a MercyOne nurse for close to four decades, and his father, Tim Powers, who was a firefighter for 30 years.

“Helping people and being in the medical field has always been in my blood and my family,” Powers said. “I was raised with a lot of empathy and humility and sense of community and sense of service.”

When Powers graduated from high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He worked on an aircraft carrier and through three deployments. After his military service, he was still uncertain about a career.

A few traumatic situations in his past proved years later to be one factor that led him to become a nurse.

In those instances, he described himself as “helpless” when dealing with different emergencies. Those experiences led Powers to a point where he didn’t want to ever feel like there was nothing he could do to help someone.

“As cliché as it sounds, I just wanted to help people,” he said. “I want to try to avoid these negative things and don’t want to feel helpless whenever these kinds of things arise.”

Powers always loved to read about science and noted his first opportunity to apply what he knows in an emergency room was “really cool.”

Combine that with a drive to find a “job where he could give back,” a suggestion about getting his certified nursing assistant certification stood out. In 2015, he became an emergency room technician at MercyOne, falling in love with the profession to the point where he got his bachelor’s of science degree in nursing. He became a registered nurse in 2019.

“He cares. Point blank he cares,” wrote colleague Kristen Laird. “He would go out of his way to see if there is just one more thing the patient needs or if we need to check another test or get another opinion just to ensure the best was getting done for his patient. You don’t often see that consistent level of care and concern, especially from a newer nurse.”

Another spark that led him to become a medical-surgical nurse happened early in his tenure as an emergency room technician when he saw a nurse administer Narcan to a patient who had overdosed and wasn’t breathing.

“The patient popped right back to life right like that,” he said. “Witnessing that and witnessing that the nurse was the one that did that — it was inspiring, to be honest. I just watched this nurse save this young woman’s life because she knew exactly what to do when that time came, did it exactly right and got that patient back, and it was like nothing had ever happened.”

He’s always working to become the best nurse he can be.

“That’s why they call it nursing practice, because you’re never perfect at it. There are always more things to learn,” Powers said.

“And the medical field is constantly changing, too. Research about different kind of diseases and different kind of treatments and medications is changing. I’m doing my best to stay on top of that and to continue to get better at my skills and my clinical decision making.

“It helped give my life and my path self-worth. And it still does,” he said.