Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Jul 31/98) - Some nurses who venture North to work come from jobs at southern hospitals where they performed specialized tasks.

Once in the North, they could be asked to fulfil a wide variety of tasks, such as drawing blood from a patient. And without brush-up training, patient care could suffer.

That is where Donna Nicholson comes in.

Together with Suzanne Flokstra, Nicholson helps arrange education and staff development tools to ensure Inuvik has a hospital staff which rouses confidence.

"My job is really varied," Nicholson says in her hospital office across the hall from the physiotherapy unit.

"I'm on the computer. I shuffle papers on things to track education that's going on and to make sure people have the required forms for conferences and training."

Nicholson is also helping to ease the hospital's transition from Lotus software to Microsoft Office by setting up computer training programs.

Three months ago, Nicholson finished a nine-month stint working as a nurse in the hospital's emergency unit. There, she dealt with everything from scrapes and bruises to heart attacks.

She says her new job as a staff development coordinator is a welcome change and is one where she still uses her nursing skills because she must know a lot of the information she disseminates.

Nicholson earned her nursing certification at Mohawk College's Brantford, Ontario campus.

From there, she moved around Canada -- from Edmonton to Toronto, to small towns in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Labrador.

She briefly worked in Inuvik in the late 1980s, spent one year in Australia and has made other stops along the way.

"You can't do that with a family," the still-single Nicholson says. She eluded questions about her age, yet admitted that she is old enough to have been around when John F. Kennedy was shot -- and to remember when the Toronto Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup.

She does not know how long she will make Inuvik her home but says she loves the Northern lifestyle.

Outside of work, Nicholson enjoys making crafts.