From patient to caregiver: Hospitalization after car accident inspires woman to pursue nursing
After spending a month at UI Health Care recovering from a serious car accident, Caitlin Efstathiou, ADN, RN was determined to become a nurse herself. She says one nurse in particular, Mary Anne Wolfe, RN, BSN, stood out, and the two recently reconnected.
Caitlin Efstathiou’s journey to become a nurse begins in a hospital bed in the Quad Cities.
Then 15 years old, Efstathiou snuck out of her house to hang out with friends. Going fast on a gravel road, her friend took a 90-degree turn too quickly. The vehicle launched straight into the ditch, where it flipped over end-to-end. Efstathiou flew out the back window.
Efstathiou was transported to a Davenport hospital with internal bleeding, all her ribs broken, a lacerated liver, a broken leg, fractures in her hip socket, punctured lungs, a ruptured spleen, a broken back, and an arm with severe abrasions.
She spent four days undergoing surgeries and receiving care before her neurosurgeon determined the severity of the back injury required a referral to UI Health Care. She spent a month recovering in Iowa City.
Though she’s a little embarrassed about the way the story starts, she also believes that things happen for a reason. And in her case, it’s the reason she became a nurse.
“After the accident, I was set on becoming a nurse and my dream was to work for UI Health Care,” Efstathiou says.
She says the whole experience motivated her because she watched how everyone worked so well together.
“It’s like one big team,” she says. “Everyone has a role to play and their own specialty, but they all must communicate to care for the patient. I wanted to be a part of something like it.”
A lasting impact
One nurse especially had an impact on her. Mary Anne Wolfe, RN, BSN, took such good care of Efstathiou, she credits her as the inspiration to attend nursing school later.
“I have a vivid memory of Mary Anne always trying to keep things fun,” Efstathiou says. “She and the CNAs and other nurses had inside jokes they’d let me in on. They kept me smiling!”
Upon her discharge, Efstathiou says they took Wolfe’s contact information and hoped to stay in touch. With several follow up visits to Iowa City, Efstathiou and her parents would stop by the unit in the hopes of seeing Wolfe, but their timing was always off.
Life moved on. After a year of recovery, Efstathiou was able to return to high school in Eldridge and with the help of caring teachers, caught up with her schoolwork. She graduated and went on to get a bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from the University of Dubuque, with plans to get her Master’s, branching away from her desire to become a nurse.
But after working closely with the nurses on a pulmonary rehab unit at a Dubuque hospital, Efstathiou says that once again, nurses inspired her to turn back to nursing as a career path.
She says it’s the best decision she’s ever made.
Memories prompt an effort to reconnect
After getting her nursing degree from Iowa Central Community College, Efstathiou began her career at UI Health Care in 2024, working on the bone marrow transplant unit (3JCP). Earlier this year, Efstathiou’s unit manager showed her a questionnaire she had completed as part of the interview process. One of the questions was, “What is your WHY for becoming a nurse?”
Efstathiou says the memories of Wolfe came flooding back.
“Ever since the accident, I wanted to be a nurse like Mary Anne,” Efstathiou says. “And now here I am!”
Then a thought crept in: “I wonder if she still works here?”
Efstathiou asked her unit manager for help in finding Wolfe. They did some digging and found that Wolfe had worked in a few different departments but had recently transitioned to a home health care role. Now she helps patients about to be discharged learn how to care for themselves at home.
“Is she even going to remember me?”
“Staring at that number, I almost didn’t text her. I kept thinking, ‘Is this weird? Is she even going to remember me?’ She has seen so many patients,” Efstathiou says. “But my manager encouraged me to send the text, pointing out that any nurse would be flattered to hear they inspired a career path in nursing.”
Efstathiou sent the text.
“It was exactly what I needed at that moment,” Wolfe says. “It was a powerful reminder of my own ‘why.’”
With the thousands of patients she’s cared for over the years, Wolfe didn’t immediately recognize Efstathiou’s story. But upon seeing some pictures, she did have a recollection of Efstathiou’s time on the unit.
Maybe more importantly, Wolfe says she felt “validated and humbled” to hear that the care she provided all those years ago would inspire Efstathiou to not only go on to be a nurse – but to decide UI Health Care was where she wanted to work.
A reminder of her ‘why’
Wolfe has worked at UI Health Care for the past 17 years and says she got into nursing to help people – and that remains unchanged. But an unexpected benefit has been the ability to shift roles to match stages of her life.
After a few years working on that pediatric inpatient floor where she cared for Efstathiou, Wolfe decided to change departments to better accommodate her schedule with a baby at home. She worked weekends for a time to better suit her family’s needs. And now that her kids are 16 and 20, she recently moved to UI Community HomeCare, which affords her even more flexibility. She works four days in a row, then has a week off.
Efstathiou and Wolfe haven’t yet had the chance to meet up in person, but both feel gratitude that this experience brought them together again.
“When patients get better and leave the floor, we often never know what happened to them or how they lived their lives,” Wolfe says. “It was a gift to hear from Caitlin; and it touched me to hear that I had inspired her. She reminded me of my ‘why’.”
As for Efstathiou? She is living the dream she imagined all those years ago as a teenager who witnessed the power of the camaraderie and compassion of her nursing team while recovering from her accident.
“I’d never want to go through an accident like that again, but I also wouldn’t take it back,” Efstathiou says. “It led me here – exactly where I want to be.”
