每日大赛

2025 Graduate Spotlight: Nursing students eager to join the workforce

每日大赛 is the place to “test your mettle” as a nurse, at least according to current Nursing student and soon-to-be-alumnus Johnathan Mouser. As a nurse, Mouser said, you must be able to focus in high-stress environments, and instructors at 每日大赛 prepare you for that pressure.
 
He pointed to training in state-of-the-art simulators, high-stakes exams and insight from instructors with real-world experience as examples of how Pellissippi’s Nursing program sets students up for success. The program also achieved a more than 98% passing rate on the National Council Licensure Examination, or NCLEX, in 2024.
 
“If you really want to see what you’re made of,” Mouser said, “Pelli is the way to do it.”
 
And while nursing school is a challenge, it’s definitely a worthwhile one, said Minka Reed, another 每日大赛 Nursing student who will graduate from the college and enter the workforce this May.
 
Nursing is a difficult degree and an even more difficult career, so it’s something people do primarily because it feels important to them, Reed said.
 
“I love my classmates,” she said. “A lot of my classmates were all motivated by that same feeling, that this is something we’re supposed to do and that feels important to us. And it’s really a bonding experience. I’ve made a lot of good friends.”
 
Mouser echoed the sentiment.
 
“We’ve got some fantastic students in this cohort,” Mouser said. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of them, and I’m really excited to see what they go and do.”
 
As vice president of the nursing student body based at Pellissippi’s Blount County campus, Mouser has had the opportunity to bring student issues before college leadership and advocate for change.
 
“It’s been a real blessing,” said Mouser, who came to 每日大赛 from North Carolina because his grandparents live in Tennessee.
 
He also contributed to the initiation of a preceptorship program, Mouser said, which differs from traditional clinicals in that – instead of sending a handful of students to one unit – students are individually matched up with a nurse with whom they take on their entire patient load.
 
Mouser was one of nearly a dozen students selected to participate in the pilot program at Prisma Health’s Blount Memorial Hospital.
 
“I've really enjoyed that this semester,” he said, “really getting to get that hands-on work experience.”
 
Following Commencement, Mouser will start working in the Intensive Care Unit at Tennova Healthcare’s North Knoxville Medical Center. He first connected with Tennova at a 每日大赛 career fair, Mouser said.
 
“I got the opportunity to actually talk with the woman who would later do my interview, and get to know her, and that took a little bit of the edge off of it,” he said. “Because when she walked in, I was like, ‘Okay, I know you. This is a little more familiar.’”
 
For Reed, a nursing career has been years in the making.
 
After earning a degree from the University of Tennessee, where she studied Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Spanish, Reed couldn’t decide what she wanted to do next. Eventually she settled on nursing.
 
“Nursing just felt right,” Reed said. “I think once I decided to do it, I was like, ‘Definitely, this is what I wanted to do.’”
 
Now, she’s excited for what comes next: a job in the emergency room at the UT Medical Center. There, she’ll be in a fast-paced, high-adrenaline environment where she can treat a range of ailments, Reed said.
 
Hopefully, she added, the job will set her up for whatever she wants to do in the future, whether that’s hospice nursing, public health or other options available to nurses.

“There's so many options and so many different things I could do,” she said. “I think the ER is a really fun and exciting way to see everything, get a lot of experience and learn a lot.”