Barton builds sense of confidence and love as clinical nursing instructor for SCC
Through a clinical instructor partnership agreement with Columbus Regional Healthcare System, Alex Barton, a Beaverdam native, serves as a clinical instructor for Southeastern Community College. With roots firmly planted at SCC as an early college, Nurse Aide I and Associates Degree Nursing graduate, Barton, a full-time CRHS employee, works to boost confidence in patient care skills with first-year ADN students and practical nursing students.
“They are smart, they have amazing instructors, they are studying and doing all these things to prepare for class,” Barton said. “But they’ve just got to get out there and get their hands in it, and that’s where I help them through it and cheer them on.”
A typical clinical day for Barton starts at 6 a.m. with students arriving at CRHS 30 minutes later. She is with students until 3 p.m. on the sixth floor and aids them in bedside skills. With students assigned to hospital patients, Barton said her students are getting the real-world, hands-on experience they need to provide quality bedside care. Each morning before clinicals start, Barton gathers a report of the floor and assigns tasks to students in conjunction with what they are learning in the classroom at SCC.
“In that way, when they go to take their test, they can say that they took care of a patient with this or that,” Barton said. “It helps them know the answer because they actually experienced it at the hospital.”
Getting experience with reports and checking vital signs, Barton said, are some of the most important skills to learn on the hospital floor. Keeping patient records updated and organized is one of the biggest responsibilities of a nurse. During physical assessments, Barton listens and watches while students work with patients. She listens to patients’ lung and heart sounds with students, and she provides a helping hand where needed. After assessments are completed, Barton provides feedback on what was done right, missed or needs improvement.
“Immersion is the best way to learn,” Barton said. “So, when nurses need help with anything, I always tell the students to go with them and do anything they can to help. Go, watch, learn and do to get yourself all in there.”
At the end of the day, Barton has a debriefing session with her students. They talk about what they learned, their frustrations and what made them nervous. She said this was a good time for students to ask questions.
“I just love building them all up, and I love helping them get confident,” Barton said. “I love teaching them the things that I’ve learned because that’s a big deal for me. Especially coming from a background in oncology, I want them to care for that patient, love them and treat them like a family member in a safe manner. If I can instill that into my students now, the rest is going to fall into place.”
Barton’s road to nursing
Barton’s inspiration for a nursing career path stemmed from her mom, but it was not from her mom’s own career path in nursing. Barton’s job shadow experience with her mom turned her away from the profession, and it took a life-threatening situation to change her mind.
Following her mom’s cancer diagnosis and going to doctor’s appointments with her, the experience “opened a compassion that I didn’t know I had for people and for loving people and for taking care of people.” At 16 years old, Barton knew that nursing was the correct career path for her after seeing how doctors and nurses cared for her mom.
“Seeing her go through aggressive treatments for cancer, she lost her hair and lost everything that makes you human,” Barton said. “It just stripped her down, but when I saw how those doctors and nurses treated her, I said yep, this is for me.”
Barton earned her Associates Degree Nursing in May 2019 from SCC, her Bachelor’s Degree Nursing from UNC Wilmington in December 2021 and her Master’s Degree Nursing Education from UNCW in December 2024. Barton chose SCC because it was close to home, and she knew of the “great experience” her mom had in SCC’s nursing program.
“Southeastern’s instructors were really good, and I didn’t know at the time that I wanted to go into teaching,” Barton said. “Now that I’m helping with clinical instruction, I can see now how my instructors gave me an example of what to be like.”
Retired SCC nursing instructor Penny Horne was a “phenomenal” role model for Barton, who showed her compassion and understanding of the profession. Barton’s instructors helped “fuel that fire” for nursing early in the program. She described Horne as a cheerleader for student success, and she aims to do the same in her clinical setting.
“I want to see them succeed, and I want them to get it,” Barton said. “I want to help them build confidence, and I just love cheering them on.”
Before Barton could help build confidence in her students, she had to build her own confidence as a student. She overcame this obstacle and grew as a student and nurse in the process.
“I’ve always been timid, and I’ve always lacked confidence,” Barton said. “I’ve always been one of those people who’d rather watch people and follow them.”
With no other choice but to perform the tasks required of a nursing student, Barton said the decision to pass or fail was the final push out of her comfort zone. Clinical and lab sessions as a student boosted her confidence in skills and patient care, and she is applying those confidence boosting techniques at the hospital.
Barton recalled Med/Surg II with Horne and Labor and Delivery with Jessica Hill as her favorite courses in the ADN program. Hill, now serving as Dean of Nursing and Healthcare Training, was described as a confident and “well put together” instructor who wanted to see her students succeed. Barton said she enjoyed Hill’s Labor and Delivery class because it was “fun and different from conventional nursing.”
“So, for my mentorship during the last semester at Southeastern, I was lucky to do mine at Donayre Cancer Care Center,” Barton said. “With my mom having cancer, all of my nursing is wrapped up in oncology, and that is my love at the end of the day.”
Under the mentorship of SCC nursing graduate Jonathan Soles, Barton gained more confidence and pushed the limits of her comfort zone even further. SCC nursing graduate Sherry Ashley trained Barton on infusion therapy during her mentorship. Barton credits Soles and Ashley for helping shape the nurse she is today, and she said her mentorship experience played a big role in the educator she has become.
“I always tell people that Mrs. Sherry is the reason that I am the way I am with patients,” Barton said. “She really showed me how to give everything to them: the love, the patience and attention they needed. I always tell my students now to spoil those patients rotten because that makes all the difference, no matter how big or small, in the healing journey.”
As a newly pinned and certified registered nurse in 2019, Barton worked at Walter Surgical Associates in Whiteville. While there, she worked closely with doctors and learned about bedside operations and minor procedures under them. At the same time, she worked on her bachelor’s degree online.
After earning her bachelor’s degree and lots of prayer, Barton chose nursing education instead of nurse practioner as her next career advancement. As a Columbus Career and College Academy graduate with a firm foundation in Nurse Aide I and as a registered nurse, Barton said her transfer to UNCW for her bachelor’s and master’s degree programs was a seamless process with no issues.
Outside of work, Barton is actively involved in her church at Cypress Creek Church, where her husband, Jeff Barton, is the pastor. Together, they enjoy making music, reading books and exercising at the gym. They have two daughters, Eliza Jane and Josey Kate, and they enjoy walks together in nature and at parks.
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