Working as a radiologic technologist meant that Galen College of Nursing student Rebecca Abner was able to earn a good living near her home in southern Kentucky. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as fulfilling as she had hoped.
“It just wasn’t enough. I always wanted more,” Abner said.
She could see the issues her patients were suffering from, but she couldn’t personally intervene to help them get better. Seeing patients repeatedly come through the door in her former jobs at a primary care facility and an urgent care center led her to finally start the process of becoming a nurse.
“I realized I wanted to help people instead of doing their X-rays every day,” Abner said. “I wanted to be part of saving their lives and getting them on the right track.”
Abner found her way to nursing like many Americans have — caring for close family and friends. In 2011, her grandmother, Christene Belcher, was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in 2014, her grandfather, Harold Belcher, suffered a stroke. This led to Abner working as an in-home caregiver in addition to her job as a radiologic technologist in eastern Kentucky.
While frustrated with the lack of help she could provide in her role, she confided in a friend. The friend, Aleshia Church, already had a connection to Galen. Church graduated from Galen’s Hazard, Kentucky campus in 2023 with her Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN).
“I’ve known Rebecca for about 10 years and have always seen that she had such great potential,” Church said. “I went to nursing school at Galen Hazard and would go to her house as a place to study and unwind, and she was intrigued. I told her that she had what it took to be a nurse, the compassion, the heart. She has a heart of gold and just needed the encouragement.”
“I’ve never seen someone as compassionate as her. I just adore Rebecca,” Church added.
One day, Church went ahead and started the application process for Abner.
Suddenly, Abner had her admissions interview in Hazard, took her TEAS, and within a few weeks, was enrolled and starting nursing school in January 2024.
“I was scared to death, ‘oh my gosh, this is really happening?'” Abner said. “I thought, ‘she’ll apply, I won’t get in,’ but I wasn’t expecting it to be that real. I had a lot of fear, but I was excited at the same time. I had to face my fears, absolutely.”
At Galen, Abner’s nursing education has been everything she hoped it would be. From learning new nursing techniques in lectures to shadowing professional nurses or applying those techniques during clinicals, Abner now feels ready to hit the ground running when she becomes a registered nurse.
“I feel like I’ve gotten a really good, fast-paced education,” Abner said. “My favorite clinical will have to be advanced med-surg. The nurse that I got to work with — Galen graduate Macy McGee at Hazard ARH — was amazing, and she taught me so much. She made me feel better prepared to graduate in the next few months.”
During Abner’s time as an in-home caregiver to her grandparents, she saw a few incidents where nurses and other healthcare providers treating her family did not show compassion. She vowed to never be like that if she could become a nurse.
“I feel like I came in this with compassion, but I also feel like I’ve never been to a school or facility that focuses on compassion like Galen,” Abner said. “I felt like they built and grew on my compassion and they made it feel like it’s an absolute thing you need to have.”
“I witnessed firsthand what it was like for someone to not have compassion for others, and I swore I would never do that to another family,” she said. “I want patients to feel like I can be their advocate and I can help them more because I have that compassion.”
With Abner set to graduate at the end of September 2025, she’s already thinking ahead for her next move. She said she wants to start working in an emergency department before potentially moving into another department within a healthcare facility.
It’s the next chapter in Abner’s career that started as an in-home caregiver, then was a radiologic technologist and has evolved into becoming a nurse. For those that knew her in her old line of work, it was only a matter of time before she’d start her nursing journey.
“X-ray technicians are also utilized for patient care, and she was very good for what she did,” said Shannon Bunch, a nurse practitioner who worked with Abner at an urgent care site. “She was very organized and compassionate, and she probably should have gone into nursing in the first place.”
“I strongly encouraged her to go to nursing school, and I knew that she would do great,” Bunch said.
Maintaining a focus as a single-purpose nursing college allows Galen to direct all its resources to providing high-quality, innovative programs to those who choose nursing as a career. Galen offers several paths including our: PN/VN diploma program, Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) program, and 3-year Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing (BSN) program.
For those already in the nursing profession, Galen also offers an LPN/LVN to ADN Bridge program as well as an online master’s and doctorate degree programs.
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