Glasgow Daily Times, Glasgow, KY

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December 22, 2008

Nurse enjoys blood work with Red Cross

By GINA KINSLOW

Amy Dunn is a third generation nurse.

Dunn, of Louisville, is a registered nurse for the American Red Cross.

“The career I’ve chosen was a gift from God,” she said, adding she thinks nursing is her ministry to the community. “I’m pretty passionate about what I do and I enjoy it. I like giving back to the community; taking care of people.”

It is something Dunn has enjoyed doing since she was a little girl. At age 12 she volunteered at a Louisville area hospital.

Dunn has been with the American Red Cross for two years.

Prior to going to work for the organization, she worked in pediatrics and in emergency medicine. She chose to leave nursing in a hospital setting and go to work for the American Red Cross for several reasons.

“I wanted to keep providing excellent care for the community and I had been previously working in emergency rooms so I know how much blood products get used and this was a change and different pace for me, and it still allowed me to give back to the community,” she said.

Dunn donates blood whenever she can, which is usually once about every eight weeks.

“Blood is one thing that we cannot produce synthetically. It has to come from a lab donor,” she said. “People don’t realize how much everybody needs it. I mean, if you are in an emergency situation, if you are in a car accident, you had a stroke, you had a heart attack, chemotherapy patients, premature babies, I mean the need for blood is really large. Less than 5 percent of the population donates.”

The hours she works with the American Red Cross differ from the shifts she worked in a hospital setting.

Typically, nurses who work in hospitals will work three 12 hour days. The number of days she works per week with the American Red Cross, she said, varies from week to week, but typically it is 40-plus hours per week.

With the American Red Cross, Dunn travels all across the state and into Indiana overseeing blood drives. She recently managed a blood drive at Western Kentucky University’s Glasgow Campus.

Her favorite part of her job, she said, is “seeing different people throughout Kentucky and Indiana and helping the community at large.”

Over the years, Dunn has managed to stay in touch with former patients.

“There are people I keep in contact with that I took care of in the hospital, because I did pediatrics for a long time and I did emergency medicine and floor medicine,” she said. “Actually, one of them goes to Western Kentucky in Bowling Green.”v

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