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Anne Hodges Fredrickson, BSN ‘57

How did you decide you wanted to be a nurse? How did you select FSU? I was always interested in people and human behavior. I first thought about becoming

an art therapist, but then decided to incorporate that into a nursing career. My family

encouraged and supported my attending college. One of my great aunts had been a

student at FSU when it was the Florida College for Women. When I learned FSU had a

BSN Nursing Program I knew that’s where I was going!

Describe a typical day for you as a nursing student. Tell us about your classes, studying and clinical work.

The nursing school was located on campus, but we were only on campus the first

two years, and as a result, I think we missed out on a lot of activities and camaraderie

outside the nursing area. We carried 18 hours of academic work, which was a very

heavy schedule. At that point, we did not go outside the University for Clinical

Experience. We received clinical practice experience in the well equipped nursing lab.

We practiced on each other which was not always a pleasant experience – like inserting

a nasal catheter to extract stomach fluids! We practiced injections on oranges, though

and we were relieved about that.

The most interesting classes for me were ones in physiology and anatomy; in

fact, I almost changed my major to Physiology and Anatomy! The hardest course for me

was organic chemistry. I just studied, and prepared myself as best I could, and did

pretty well with it.

Our third and fourth years (and summers) were filled with clinical experiences in

every clinical area open to nurses at that time. We even spent three months in the OR

at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. I was fascinated by the different surgeries. We

had to learn to scrub in on different cases and memorize what the surgeon was going to

want in the proper sequence. We also learned how to circulate in the operating room

and obtain needed items during the procedure.

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Tell us about a faculty member who made a special impact on you/your career. Dr. Joan O’Brien Hartigan, who now is very ill with lung cancer, made a special

impact on me and my career. She was the classroom and clinical instructor in

psychiatric nursing. She was very approachable, very open. She would reveal personal

information about herself periodically, which made you feel as if you could share the

same type of information with her. When I look back with the knowledge I have now, it

was a wonderful example of the use of the therapeutic relationship so critical in mental

health therapy. Our clinical experiences in psychiatric nursing were eye openers. They

were at the state mental hospital in Chattahoochee, Florida. I had never been exposed

to some of the behaviors I witnessed there. It just made it even more intriguing for me.

Even now, some of my favorite television programs are “Criminal Minds” and “CSI.” My

belief has been that most abnormal behaviors are simply exaggerations of normal

behaviors to a great extent. My career as a Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist has

been a fascinating one for me and I thank Joan O’Brian Hartigan for her example and

her mentorship.

What is your best memory while attending FSU?

My best memories are of my classmates – we were very close and still are. Other

good memories are related to the different experiences we had, such as our public

health experience. My friend and roommate Judy and I went to a town in north Florida,

and received our three month experience in a tri-county public health department. We

had our own caseload and we often went out into the north Florida woods to try to find

our clients.

One assignment involved going to see a pregnant woman for a routine

pregnancy check visit. We finally found the very large house out in the woods and down

a dirt road. We knocked on the door and a midwife we had previously met answered the

door, laughed and declared we were there because the moon had changed. The

midwives had told us about how the change of the moon would initiate our client’s labor.

True enough the midwife was there because the woman was in labor. In the large front

room was a large bed and a woman sitting cross-legged – sort of like a Buddha – on the

bed. This was a house of ill repute, the woman was the madam, and our patient was

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one of her “girls”. Judy and I were told to go heat water. The midwife enjoyed having the

“last laugh” on Judy and me!

We had several eye-opening experiences like that. In one of them, my roommate

Judy dropped me off at a client’s house while she went on to see her own client. I

knocked on the door and somebody said “Come in.” I almost fell over a person who was

sleeping on the floor just behind the door. She was a neighbor who had come to help

the woman, my client, who had recently had a baby. The neighbor was just taking a nap

on the floor. I was doing a six week follow-up mother-baby visit. As part of the

prescribed topics, we talked about contraception but neither she nor her husband was

interested in that. The room was dark – lit only by a fire in the fireplace. The family was

so poor they used pieces of their crumbling house in their fireplace for heat. I decided to

use this family for the nutritional study we were required to do on one of our clients.

Surprisingly, I found my assumption that they had a poor diet was not true. They had a

garden and grew various vegetables. The husband worked for a farmer who gave him

chickens, eggs and milk. When I did the analysis of their usual diet, they had a very

good and adequate diet. I learned the error of making assumptions! In reality all of our

experiences were interesting to me.

How did the major social/political events in the country affect you while attending FSU?

When I was attending Florida State, the social issues related to race affected my

roommate and me when we were in our public health rotation. We drove to the town

where we were to live for three months. We were headed for our apartment when we

had a flat tire just before we arrived in the town. This very nice, young, black man

stopped and said he would change the tire for us, and he did. He wouldn’t take money

for helping us. We drove to the apartment and went to the door. The woman who owned

the house opened the door and after the initial pleasantries she told us we must never

do what we did again. We must never allow a black person, especially a young black

man, to help us like that. The word had spread before we even got to our apartment! I

don’t know how.

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There had been a big news event in the tri-county area in which we were

assigned to do our public health practicum. The white, female Medical Director of the

Public Health Department, met and had lunch with the trained midwives, who were

African-American, in the back room of a local restaurant and it hit the papers. The code

of behavior did not allow African-Americans to meet and eat in the local restaurants

unless they were restaurants just for the black population. So it was news all over

Florida and the Medical Director was fired. As a result, we walked into a situation in

which there had already been racially sensitive events. I learned much I did not know

about racial inequality during the three months we were there.

How has your nursing degree from FSU influenced your career?

Earning my BSN from Florida State gave me a good foundation in all aspects of

what nurses could do at that time. Having a degree from a comprehensive university

program was certainly an asset whenever I applied for a job, and even when I wanted to

try some new area of nursing.

Tell us about your career since graduating from nursing school.

After I graduated, I married and moved to New York. I was planning to work at

Hillside Psychiatric Hospital on Long Island. They didn’t have a position when we

arrived, so I worked for a few months in the nursery at Hempstead Hospital on Long

Island, until a position became available at the psychiatric hospital. I worked at Hillside

for a year in the adolescent unit, which was pretty wild. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of

the patrons for this hospital. She would come to visit every now and then and that was

neat.

My husband was an airline pilot and we were transferred to Miami. I did not work

for a long time during our stay in Miami and then in the Alexandria, Virginia area. During

this time my three children (Cynthia, Andrew and Susanna) were born. The marriage

ended in divorce. When my three children were in school I began to work part-time in

the first aid rooms at the Washington D.C Stadium and the Armory during events. I also

worked part-time in a physician’s office.

I got a part-time job at the Alexandria Hospital on the psychiatric unit, which

evolved into a full-time position. I was certified in group therapy and soon became the

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Nurse Therapist. Several years later I became the director of the unit. During that time I

earned my Master’s Degree in Nursing from George Mason University in Fairfax,

Virginia and, also, created the Psychiatric Nurse Liaison position which became my very

favorite role over the years. The liaison position was one in which a Masters-prepared

psychiatric nurse would receive a physician’s order to see patients who were not

housed on the psychiatric unit. They could be on the medical/surgical units, the ICU, the

ER, OB, pediatrics, anywhere. They would ask me to see these people because they

were depressed, agitated, or hostile. I would do an assessment and report my results to

the physician as to whether or not the person needed to be seen by a psychiatrist. Most

of the time I, also, continued to see the patient on a regular basis. It was a wonderful,

autonomous position for a nurse!

A new Vice President of Nursing was hired, and later, when she left, she

recommended me for the Acting Vice President of Nursing position. I filled that role for a

couple of years until they found a replacement. I was not interested in keeping the

position, because I preferred clinical work. The new Vice President promoted me to an

Assistant Vice President position responsible for psychiatric nursing among other

responsibilities, which included continuing with the liaison role. After three years she

left, and I became the interim Vice President of Nursing again. Another two years went

by until a new Vice President of Nursing was hired and I became the Administrative

Director of Quality Improvement and Staff Development. In that position, I created and

implemented the Continuous Quality Improvement Program for the hospital.

Another psychiatric nurse and I opened our own group therapy private practice in

1973. My partner retired and I continue to maintain my own private mental health

practice. I retired from hospital work in 1999 and married my wonderful and supportive

husband, Arthur Fredrickson. Our combined family, at this point in time, includes six

adult married children (Art has three daughters) and an even dozen grandchildren.

Thirteen years ago, the American Nurses Association and its subsidiary, the

American Nurses Credentialing Center, created the Magnet Recognition Award – an

award a hospital can seek for its nursing staff. It focuses on nursing, how the institution

supports nurses and offers a myriad of opportunities for nurses. I was in the first class of

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nurses trained to be appraisers to assess hospitals, using a very long list of required

criteria. I retired from that in December, 2006.

Have you kept in touch with your classmates?

For several years, I wrote and distributed a newsletter for my classmates, but it

got harder and harder to accomplish due to our busy lives. One of my classmates, Elin

DeGraw, now faithfully keeps us all informed about what’s going on. Just let me sum it

all up by saying that in our 50 years of nursing: We’ve come a long way, Baby!!