CLEVELAND, Ohio — Like any job, being the school nurse at Westlake High School has its mundane side, such as keeping track of vaccination records and warning kids not to vape.

But Tim Detwiler — who is a Top Nurse winner this year — also has been called to extract a person’s finger from a paper shredder. With an assist from emergency medical services, the finger was freed with no harm, just a little redness.

“That was the weirdest call I’ve gotten,” he said.

And when the marching band took a four-day trip to Universal Studios Florida this spring, Detwiler went along to oversee four locked bins containing students’ prescriptions and dispense them.

“I was the band nurse,” he recalled.

Detwiler is proof that nurses aren’t confined to working at the bedside. They can also be found in law firms, cruise ships and correctional facilities and other workplaces.

Nurses with a taste for adventure can even sign up to work at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, caring for critically ill people as they are flown to New Zealand for treatment.

“When I graduated many decades ago, hospitals were the primary places for nurses to work, but over the decades, there have been such a transition of what nurses do,” said Patricia A. Sharpnack, dean of the Breen School of Nursing and Health Professions at Ursuline College. “You can stay at the bedside and do that forever, or you can make choices that really are exciting.”

The Plain Dealer, cleveland.com and Advance Ohio are celebrating nurses during its Top Nurses awards ceremony on Sept. 12. A panel of judges reviewed 141 nominations and selected 10 Top Nurses Award winners, one Lifetime Achievement Award winner and one Top Nurses Team Award winner.

Now in its third year, this prestigious event celebrates the vital role nurses play in our communities and public health, whether they work in a hospital or a nontraditional setting.

Many nursing positions outside of hospitals offer better hours, but require caregivers to work without a team, Detwiler said.

“After you gain hospital experience, I would absolutely encourage anybody to go elsewhere,” Detwiler said. “I’m a solo practitioner in this building, whereas in the hospital, I would have other nurses around me for my shift. You have to really be confident and know what to do.”

Registered nurses held about 3.2 million jobs in 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While hospitals, ambulatory health services and residential care facilities were the largest employers of registered nurses, about 5% worked in government and 3% were employed by educational services, according to federal statistics.

Opportunities to work outside of hospitals are plentiful, especially for those who pursue advanced nursing degrees, Sharpnack said.

There are nurses at the highest levels of government. This year’s Top Nurse Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Rebecca Patton, was president of the American Nurses Association during the Obama administration and helped get the Affordable Care Act passed.

Currently, Patton is a professor of nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

“There are a ton of places where nurses now work in non-traditional jobs,” Patton said.

Many nurses remain in hospitals, but take on administrative roles.

Hospitals often tap experienced nurses to become executives to take advantage of their broad perspective on how hospitals work and can advocate for patients, Sharpnack said.

“We are there 24/7 so we know what operations are,” Sharpnack said. We know when things are broken, and we know how to overcome those. So nurses make good executives.”

At the Cleveland Clinic, nurses in senior leadership include K. Kelly Hancock, the health system’s first-ever executive vice president and chief caregiver officer. Kim Bell started as a colorectal nurse and has risen to be executive director of the Clinic’s Cancer Institute.

At University Hospitals, nurses in senior leadership include Patti DePompei, president of UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s and UH MacDonald Women’s Hospitals, and Jennifer Carpenter, chief nursing informatics officer and chief nursing officer at UH Rainbow and MacDonald Hospitals.

Other nurses find leadership positions outside of hospitals.

Elizabeth Click, medical director for Case Western Reserve University, previously was manager of wellness training at Progressive.

Brandi Lewis started at The Salvation Army in Cleveland’s Harbor Light Complex as a nurse in the organization’s detox program, and is now program manager for the organization’s substance abuse program.

More people would go into nursing if they knew that there were this many options, Sharpnack said.

“If you had told me when I first entered nursing that we would be in all of these areas, I would be shocked,” Sharpnack said. “And now I have a granddaughter who’s going to be entering nursing, and I say, the world is your oyster when it comes to nursing. We can’t even envision what it’s going to look like in the future.”

Julie Washington covers healthcare for cleveland.com. Read previous stories at this link.