By 
Thompson
A former Aberdeen nurse whose efforts were instrumental in improving neonatal care in the region now has a scholarship in her name to help future nurses further their education.
The Jan (Joffer) Thompson Memorial Scholarship was announced during a memorial tribute in her honor on Sept. 19.
Thompson died March 4, 2020.
According to her former colleagues, Linda Erlenbusch and Esther Preszler, Thompson revolutionized maternity and neonatal care in Aberdeen.
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It was Thompson’s encouragement and gumption that saved lives and led to a better level of care for local mothers and newborns in the area, they said.
Erlenbusch worked in obstetrics for 42 years. She began at Avera St. Luke’s Hospital in 1971. About six weeks after she was hired, Thompson came on board to fill the director of nursing role at the hospital.
Thompson ‘a visionary’ in neonatal care
“She really was a visionary kind of person,” Erlenbusch said. “I had never met anyone quite like her. She was just so dedicated to the profession of nursing and to promote the profession from the inside out.”
Erlenbusch said that back then, in her experience, the director or nursing role was more of a “dictatorship.”
“Like, you will do it this way. But Jan was not that person. She always wanted to capitalize on what’s best for the world and the patients we served,” Erlenbusch said.
Preszler was hired by Thompson as a nurse aide in 1972.
Erlenbusch and Preszler said they were encouraged to pursue continued education, particularly concerning how to help care for high-risk babies and mothers.
Through that education, Erlenbusch and Preszler brought back to Aberdeen a wealth of knowledge and new medical practices that helped transform the care provided to babies.
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“I’m telling you, it transformed the care we provided to babies. It seems weird, but back then, we used to starve babies — or we’d always called it ‘starve.’ But we wouldn’t feed them for 24 hours after birth,” Preszler said.
“Meanwhile, their blood sugars would drop and they maybe, if they were the infant of diabetic mother or something like that, they could have gone into convulsions because they didn’t have any sugar coming on board. Simple things like that,” she said.
Erlenbusch echoed Preszler’s comments, noting that because of Thompson’s push for nurses to further their education, Erlenbusch and others learned how to give oxygen to newborns.
“We’d only give 40% because we believed that after 40% oxygen that the baby would have eye problems. Well, the truth of the matter was it was the amount of oxygen in the baby’s blood that caused the eye damage if it was too high,” Preszler said. “And the length of the time they were exposed.”
And, she said, nurses learned how to check blood sugar levels of infants. If the level was low, nurses would feed the baby or start an IV.
That wasn’t done before Thompson’s leadership.
New nursing practices not appreciated by all doctors
The new, research-based medical practices the nurses learned weren’t always well-received by the doctors at the hospital.
To help with that, Thompson began recruiting doctors who she knew would offer a higher level of neonatal care, Erlenbusch said.
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Thompson was always doing what she could to support nurses on the local level and beyond.
She was president of the South Dakota Nurses Association in 1979 and involved in advocating for the profession in the political field, the women said.
The scholarship in Thompson’s honor will provide financial support to a student who is at least a junior and studying nursing at a South Dakota college or university.
Contributions to the scholarship fund are being accepted and can be mailed to the Jan (Joffer) Thompson Memorial Scholarship; PO Box 296; Pierre, SD 57501. Online contributions can be made on the South Dakota Community Foundation’s website.