She’s been an Atrium nurse for 50 years. She has no plans to retire, even through COVID

Sherrie Mills knew she wanted to be a nurse when she was 7 years old.

In 1968, she was accepted to the nursing program at Central Piedmont Community College and began working at Charlotte Memorial Hospital — now known as Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center — in 1971.

For 50 years, she has witnessed changes in the healthcare system from being a young college graduate to serving as the longest-tenured nurse at Atrium. And she has no intention of retiring.

Mills, 71, is a wellness nurse for Medicare patients in Union County, helping with preventative screenings for elderly patients. She spends four days a week at Atrium’s Union Family Practice in Monroe, and one day at its Indian Trail Family Medicine.

“This is one of the best opportunities I feel I’ve had in my career to reach out to people that are of my same generation, so I feel like I connect on a personal basis,” she said.

In every step of her career, Mills has witnessed historical medical events — from participating in one of the first kidney transplant surgeries in the United States to being part of the opening of Atrium’s Cardiovascular Recovery Unit, and most recently, experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic as a healthcare worker.

And last Monday, on July 27, Mills’ teammates and family held a surprise celebration for her.

Riding in a Hummer limo to where she thought would be a regular staff meeting, Mills ended up in Atrium’s main campus. She walked through the same door that she did 50 years ago, as a young nurse starting her job.

“It was,” she said, “a total and overwhelming surprise.”

Her early career

During her decade in the hospital’s main recovery room in the 1970s, Mills cared for some of the first kidney transplant patients in the region.

“Learning the protocol for transplants was huge in the early ‘70s,” she said, recalling being part of the first live donor kidney transplant at Charlotte Memorial Hospital.

Mills also was part of the opening of the hospital’s Cardiovascular Recovery Unit and began writing protocols for starting what is now known as One Day Surgery, a surgical facility offering same-day services, which opened in 1976.

She became full-time at One Day Surgery in 1979 and worked at “pretty much every place there was to work in,” sometimes including the operating room.

“I enjoyed greatly doing that, and during that period, I was fortunate enough to have my son,” Mills said. But let her tell you what happened.

She recalled going into labor in March 1980 when she started her shift at One Day Surgery at 6 in the morning. She went upstairs, and had her son, Brantley Pace, three hours later.

“And I said, I could go back to work, I suppose.” So she did. Really.

Years of service

There were also times when Mills had to confront disaster.

In September 1974, an Eastern Airline plane crashed into a narrow-body jet at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, killing most of the passengers on board. Mill’s team received four victims of the crash, and one of them was one of her colleagues, a pathologist and lab director at the hospital.

That was the first time where Mills and her team needed to take care of major accident victims.

For many times throughout her years as a nurse, Mills had to go through the protocol of standing, waiting and getting ready to facilitate the care for doctors when trauma care was needed.

In 2006, Mills helped develop the clinic processes at the hospital system’s weight management program that has remained though today. In 2019, she transitioned to her current role as a wellness nurse to take care of Medicare patients, a new field that has evolved in the past few years.

“My whole life has been (centered) around working as a nurse,” she said.

Treating patients with love

Many major events happened during Mills’ time as a nurse. But to Mills, the most impressive moments unfolded in the day-to-day interactions with patients, where her attentive care helped save the life of many people.

When Mills was getting a patient prepared for arthroscopic knee surgery a few years ago, she noticed a spot on his back and told him that he might want to look into it after his procedure. Several months later, the patient knocked on her door and told her that she “could maybe have saved his life.”

“ ’That spot on my back was melanoma’, he said. ‘If you hadn’t told me about that, I might have never done anything about that’,” Mills recalled.

She also aided a family member who had been seeking help with liver problems for years.

“He had been treated at numerous other hospitals and had not ever received the proper care,” Mills said. “But in talking with his wife, I decided, ‘well, we really need to get you over to the hematologist with Atrium’.”

Fortunately, the patient received a liver transplant from Atrium. Mills said these are two of the many examples where she felt a positive connection about getting involved in helping her patients.

A family tradition

Mills’ daughter, Caroline Propst, was also born during an eventful day during Mills’ shift at the hospital. But to Mills’ surprise, she followed her mother’s career path and the two have now become colleagues.

Propst began volunteering at Carolina Medical Center as a kid.

After having been to all of the different areas at the hospital, she decided she wanted to do what her mother did.

During COVID-19, she applied for a position as a wellness nurse — the role that her mother had been talking about every day — and “couldn’t be happier” to take the position.

Mills’ husband once joked about whether Mills every imagined orienting their daughter to her own job. Mills did just that when Propst came on board last year.

Propst had always been passionate about helping seniors.

She interviewed the elderly at a senior center during high school, and continued to do so during nursing school. “She has had that love and respect for seniors very early on,” Mills said, “so I am not surprised that she is the happiest doing the role she is now.”

Not only are they working on the same team, the mother-daughter pair have the same stylish dressing and positive attitude toward the job. They both wear pearls and other jewelries to work even when they need to put on their navy blue scrubs. “I guess it’s our mentality, Mills said.”

Adapting during COVID

Mills has marveled at all of the advances and technological changes in healthcare in the past half century. But the coronavirus pandemic provided even more challenges.

During COVID-19, Atrium transitioned into a virtual hospital where it saw many patients through online meeting. When Mills and Propst were working 12-hour shifts from home, Mills learned about corresponding with patients online from her daughter.

Connecting with patients virtually was a new avenue that Mills and her colleagues had not experienced before, she said, calling it a “positive and ongoing” aspect of healthcare.

If anything, the past year taught her about how much one could constantly learn in the healthcare field.

That same theme of gaining knowledge came from anyone Mills met — from the housekeeping staff to doctors. “I might be a nurse, but I have depended on many other people to get me through a day,” she said.

All about family

Back in 2002, Mills’ husband was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. During the last few years of his life, Mills said that he was treated with great care.

After he died in 2008, her teammates supported her emotionally throughout the difficult time. “My work family from the beginning has been my family,” Mills said.

That includes the head nurse she worked with at the main recovery room, who gave her a cross-stitch stocking when Mills’ son was born, which she still hang on her Christmas tree. The doctors who hired her for a bariatric practice — whom she called “my boys” — were present at Propst’s wedding.

“They were there, always,” Mills said.

“I have benefited from the healthcare system as being a nurse, as being the patient and having the opportunity to serve, here with Atrium,” she said.

And in the years ahead, Mills has no intention of leaving that job.

This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 6:30 AM.