Pat Simonson will retire from nursing

A familiar face at the Springfield Allina Health Clinic will be retiring at the end of July.  Pat Simonson has been nursing for the past fifty years—and all but nine months of that span has been in Springfield and Lamberton.

Pat graduated from Willmar Community College with a nursing degree in February 1973.  Two weeks later, she took the Minnesota State LPN Boards and started her first job with Methodist Hospital in Rochester on March 1, 1973.  “I was hired to work on the step down intensive care/kidney transplant unit.  I went into the job with just the “floor duty” I received in college.  I went to Rochester with three of my college classmates—we were all hired without an interview, just the recommendations from the college,” she said in a recent interview.  It was a real awakening into what nursing was all about, putting to use the education she had received.  “There were people from all over the world there to get the “Mayo Best” and I was one of the people who was selected to provide it to them,” she added.

Pat and Bob Simonson were married in December 1973.  She had contacted Dorothy Schmidt, administrator of the Springfield Community Hospital, about getting a job after moving back to the area.  On December 10, she started her LPN career at the hospital.  “I worked rotating shifts with some of Springfield’s finest nurses whom I learned so much from,” Pat said.

See complete story in this week's issue of the Springfield Advance-Press.