ALTON – For someone who wanted to become an accountant, Patsy Ruchala became a pretty good nurse.
Get The Latest News!
Don't miss our top stories and need-to-know news everyday in your inbox.
Dr. Ruchala retired this summer as Dean and Professor of the Orvis School of Nursing in Reno, Nev., where she had been on the faculty since 2004. Her honors there included the 2017 Northern Nevada Community Partner Healthcare Hero Award and the 2017 Distinguished Nurse Leader Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nevada Nurses Foundation.
Dr. Ruchala has also worked in the Chicago and Atlanta areas, but Patsy Scholl’s nursing career began when she was part of the final class to graduate from the Alton Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in 1973. She went on to complete her Bachelor of Science degree from Governors State University in 1983 and her Master of Science Degree from Governors in 1984, majoring in Restorative Nursing. But that wasn’t enough – she received her Doctor of Nursing Science from Rush University in Chicago in 1991.
“I have wonderful memories of the School of Nursing at Alton Memorial,” said Dr. Ruchala, who was the featured speaker at the School of Nursing’s reunion held July 14 at the Best Western Premier in Alton. “It was the first time away from home for most of the students, and there was a lot of camaraderie living in the dorms there. I lived in Mary Hall (one of two dorms along with Martha Hall), and I became particularly good friends with Joyce Akers, who worked at the hospital for a long time.”
Dr. Ruchala grew up around Granite City, but also spent time as a child in the Chicago area and then graduated from Carbondale High School in 1970. Her family didn’t have the money for a college education in accounting, but nursing became an option.
“The three-year diploma programs were much less expensive,” she said. “I applied to Alton Memorial and was accepted, and I really liked my time there.”
Her first job after graduation was in the Intensive/Coronary Care Unit at Palos Community Hospital in Palos Heights, Ill. That was rewarding not only for the nursing experience but also for the technician who came to fix the monitors in her department one day, who later became her husband (they have one son).
From there a succession of jobs continued to lead Dr. Ruchala up the educational ladder, including stints at the St. Louis University School of Nursing and Georgia State University before she ended up in Reno.
“I had a mentor who told me to interview somewhere that I thought I would never go,” she said. “When I got off the plane in Reno, I saw all the mountains, and I’m not a mountain person. But the nursing program at Orvis was in trouble, I saw the work that needed to be done and ended up staying there for 14 years, where I had thought the usual lifespan of a nursing dean is five to seven years.”
Dr. Ruchala worked to revamp the nursing school to where Orvis was recognized as the top program in the state.
“Then I got a call in January to speak at the reunion, and it so happened that I was retiring and moving back to the St. Louis area,” Dr. Ruchala said. “So it’s all worked out.
“I would always tell a new class of students that nursing is hard and it’s meant to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone could do it. You need a sense of integrity. Cutting corners gets you in trouble, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions. It was like Harry Truman once said: If you always want to be loved for what you do, get a dog. Sometimes doing what’s right might not be popular, but it’s the right thing.”
