From Museum Educator to Nurse: Meet CNL Student Luke Tokman
Meet Luke.
Gardener. Charlottesville native. Former museum educator (loves Tracy Emin) who once interned at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. Inspired to become a nurse during the pandemic and a current patient care tech at UVA Health. Finishing up his first year as a Clinical Nurse Leader master’s student and part of the HeArt of Medicine student group. Considering a future as an ICU nurse.
WHAT HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY SAID WHEN HE ENROLLED IN NURSING SCHOOL
“People were kind of surprised. Everyone was supportive, but a lot of them said, ‘Are you SURE you want to do that? It’s a big departure. It’s not going to be easy.’”
“People were kind of surprised. Everyone was supportive, but a lot of them said, ‘Are you SURE you want to do that? It’s a big departure. It’s not going to be easy.’”
Luke Tokman, a UVA Health PCT and member of the CNL Class of 2024
WHAT HEART OF MEDICINE IS LIKE
“There are about four medical students and four nursing students: two undergraduates and two from graduate programs, like mine. Each year, we plan two or three events together. The first event I went to was at the Fralin [Museum] . . . the curator at the museum gathered together art works that had to do with loss, either directly or indirectly, and then groups of medical and nursing students looked at them and talked about what they saw in the work and what they’d seen in the clinical setting. It kind of became like a support group. It was cathartic and a way for us to talk about the experiences we’ve had.
“I like that the discussion was interprofessional, too, because there aren’t a lot of spaces where medical and nursing students can get together in an unstructured way. This does that. It helps us remember that we’re all doing the same things, all providing patient care together. It’s ultimately better not just for patients but for everyone, because we’re working together with a similar frame of reference, remembering how we’re similar.”
“It’s definitely helped me stay saner and more optimistic, made me feel like I had a slightly more critical lens on care. When I approach a patient care situation, I feel like, ‘OK, let’s look at the big picture of the care and the story of this person.’ When someone comes into a hospital, you get a snapshot of someone’s life, but exercises like HeArt of Medicine help me take into consideration other things about a patient and their family, too.”
Luke Tokman, former museum educator turned nursing student
WHY HEART OF MEDICINE MATTERS
“It’s definitely helped me stay saner and more optimistic, made me feel like I had a slightly more critical lens on care. When I approach a patient care situation, I feel like, ‘OK, let’s look at the big picture of the care and the story of this person.’ When someone comes into a hospital, you get a snapshot of someone’s life, but exercises like HeArt of Medicine help me take into consideration other things about a patient and their family, too.”
UVA SCHOOL OF NURSING IN A WORD?
“Mosaic. Activities like this one make the community a lot richer. You have people bringing up different ideas and ways of approaching different issues, topics, things you’ve discussed in class, and it helps to have people with a very diverse range of experiences, professionally, personally, through diversity. It helps to have so many types of people, and our program really has that: people in their 50s, people just out of college, people from all over the world. There’s a lot of different vantage points.”
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