Alumni Feature: Jennifer Kilpatrick, MSN ‘18
“I sometimes joke that I have an addiction to school,” says Jennifer Kilpatrick, Master of Nursing in Science ’18. “My MSN from Chatham was my fourth degree. I have a bachelor’s from Dickinson in biochemistry and molecular biology, and then I have a master’s in physiology from Georgetown, in physiology and biophysics with a concentration in complementary and alternative medicine. And then I got my BSN from Pitt in 2013 and my MSN from Chatham.”
Following her MS from Georgetown, Kilpatrick worked in a private doctor’s practice for a couple years as their front office manager and receptionist, and it was there that she decided that nursing was what she wanted to do. She earned her BSN and worked at UPMC Presby-Montefiore as a floor nurse on one of the general medicine floors.
“I’ve always been pretty good with computers, and I’ve always had an interest in the informatics side of thing,” she says. “So I earned a reputation as the unofficial IT. And I had been talking about going back for my master’s and had been waffling between going for an MSN informatics and going to pursue a DNP. But I just kept coming up with all these projects on my unit that I wanted to do that were kind of informatics based, so from there, I thought, ‘I’m just going to go ahead and apply.’”
Kirkpatrick says that she really enjoyed the program. “It was nice to have the same cohort of people that you met through each class, and all the professors were wonderful, so easy to reach in and out of class hours,” she says. “And they were all really involved in our classes and made it as easy as possible for us to do it online, since obviously that can be a challenge, not being in the classroom environment.”
“I would definitely say that it [the MSN program at Chatham] is something that is challenging but definitely rewarding, and I do think that all the professors in the MSN program are really good at working with you and understanding that yes, we all have jobs and lives and are willing to support us but at the same time it’s not something to be entered into lightly. You have to want it to be able to do it.”
Today, Kirkpatrick is a Clinical Transplant Coordinator II at UPMC Presbyterian, working with about 250 pre- and post-liver-transplant patients. “The things I learned in the program and what I’ve got from the professors definitely help me in what I’m doing every single day, especially because I spend probably 80% of my day in a medical record or directly speaking with patients. So even if you come out of this degree and you’re not in a setting that’s directly related to informatics, it still is definitely something that is beneficial, and the MSN program in general just taught me so much more about nursing than I ever thought I’d know.”
Nursing at Chatham offers real life expirences through interactive learning all while having the support of faculty and staff behind you. Explore the many options that Chatham gives to both Graduate and undergraduate students looking at Nursing Programs.