Debbie Creed, Cox Monett
Debbie Creed was 16 when she first started working at Cox Monett. She grew up just two blocks away and remembers riding her bike past the hospital almost daily.
She worked some other part-time jobs during high school, but she quickly decided the hospital was where she needed to be. She returned in 1973 and has been at Cox Monett ever since.
“The minute there was a nurse’s aide class offered, I took it. I knew immediately it’s what I wanted to do. I enjoyed everything about being with patients and taking care of patients.”
She knew she was in the right place the day when she, still a teenager herself, helped care for an 11-year-old boy who had been in a tractor accident.
“They didn’t expect him to make it. He was in the hospital for three or four months,” she says. “It was such a scary thing, but he survived and walked out of here. I saw him off and on the rest of his life – he got to grow up, get married and have kids.”
As she began her adult life, she moved to a new house, but the hospital was still at the center of her world. In fact, her home now is still just blocks away from Cox Monett.
“This is a true small town. I care for patients and they are people I know or I know someone in their family,” she says. “It makes you feel good. I enjoy what I do; getting paid is a bonus.”
Creed says that after 41 years as a nursing assistant at Monett, she’s still proud to serve her community and be a part of the CoxHealth family.
“I’ve known so many people who have worked here and I’ll be friends with them long after I retire.
“People ask, ‘How can you stay at the same place?’ If you love what you do, the people you work with and the place where you work, it’s easy!”
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