When Amanda Hansen, RN, CRRN, was in nursing school, she didn’t have a clear sense of direction for her career. That changed when she joined Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals 15 years ago. Now, she’s Madonna’s director of nursing for acute rehabilitation in Lincoln and a strong advocate for the unique experience of nursing at Madonna.
“I love being able to see what happens to people after these traumatic events and how they move through their life and get back to their family and their work and just taking part in their life in a new way,” Hansen said.
Hansen has spent all 15 years of her nursing career with Madonna. She started as a staff bedside nurse working weekend night shifts—an early introduction to the teamwork and flexibility that define nursing at Madonna. The schedule offered the balance her family needed.
“That’s always been something that has been great, is just that there’s always a lot of flexibility in nursing,” Hansen said. “You can always find something that works for everybody’s schedule. After a few years, I moved to weekday nights so I could be home more on the weekends, and I moved into a supervisor role.”
Night shift still holds a special place in her heart.
“I really enjoyed doing the night supervising,” Hansen said. “I loved coming to work. I had a great team that I worked with. I made a lot of really good friends and we worked well together. We took care of people and we had a lot of fun doing it. Night shift people are just really, really special and will always be really, really dear to me.”
From the supervisor role, Hansen transitioned to a nurse manager role and after a few years, to the director of nursing. She says her motivations may have changed over the years, but her commitment has not.
“When I started out, it really was about the flexibility,” Hansen said. “I learned a lot those first few years and then my career really started to grow. I started taking on more leadership roles. Being able to grow my critical thought process and problem-solving skills was really important and I was having a lot of fun taking on some new challenges.”
Today, Hansen says her passion is rooted in Madonna’s mission and the strength of nursing at Madonna, which she believes is defined by collaboration and a strong sense of community.
“It’s all about the community that we serve, including our staff and our coworkers and our friends here at Madonna,” she said. “I really love to get to collaborate with so many different people, from the bedside staff to the people in quality and risk and the therapists and nursing leadership. I really, really do think that is an important part of what I do.”