Why would Chanda Okyere pursue what she calls a “full-time job without a full-time salary?” Because “I just want to do better for my family.” Photo by Angela Foster.
Chanda Okyere is always reading and always on the move.
She doesn’t have time for fiction or Internet fluff. She consumes dense, highly technical medical texts, often on the run, while juggling family life and studying at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to become a family nurse practitioner.
“I have a book bag and my laptop with me wherever I go and study everywhere I can,” she said.
She even cracks the books at her son’s baseball games.
“I try not to have too much idle time,” she said. “If I know I’m going to be stationary for at least an hour, I can study.”
In summer 2020, Okyere moved to Chattanooga from Atlanta with her fiancé, John Amofah, a teacher and coach at East Ridge High School, and their two children, 12-year-old John Jr. and four-year-old Genesis.
It was tough in many ways, not least of all because Okyere started a new job as a registered nurse at CHI Memorial Hospital at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, Amofah was getting a master’s degree from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee.
She worked frequently rotating positions in different sections of the hospital and, although she didn’t work in the ICU, she constantly treated COVID patients.
“It was really stressful. I learned a lot, but it was hard,” she said.
She remembers having to shoo her daughter away just about every time she got home from a 13-hour shift at the hospital.
“Don’t touch me!” she’d say before changing clothes and washing up in an attempt to disinfect herself.
“I didn’t want to expose anyone at home when I’d been exposed to COVID patients all night,” she said. “For me, it was just another thing I had to push through.”
She quit the hospital in January 2021 to start classes at UTC and is now working on clinical rotations at a nonprofit healthcare clinic in Tunnel Hill, Georgia.
“It’s a full-time job without a full-time salary,” she said.
No salary, in fact.
But Okyere was awarded a grant in May 2021 through the Clinical-Academic Network for Developing Leaders program, or CANDL, at UTC, which is helping while she’s not earning an income and provides her with $4,000 per semester.
The lingering pandemic still presents problems at the clinic when cases rise. When that happens, interns like Okyere and volunteers typically won’t be allowed to come into the clinic.
“It’s been hard in that sense, too,” she said.
As a nurse practitioner student, Chanda Okyere evaluated patients during a simulation collaboration with UTC theatre students.
Once she completes the one-year program, she can work as a nurse practitioner, which has more autonomy than a registered nurse, including the ability to prescribe medication and to admit patients to hospitals.
The job also pays considerably more.
“I’m just motivated. I just want to do better for my family. We want to get to a comfortable stage,” Okyere said.
She’s earned a master’s degree in nursing from the Medical College of Georgia in 2014 and worked as a high school biology and chemistry teacher before that.
Teaching wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t ideal.
Nursing, she said, is a lot more flexible, and jobs abound because nurses are in such high demand.
“There’s so many things you can do or so many places you can move in nursing. If a position isn’t working for you, there are so many others. It’s easy to maneuver into a new position if something doesn’t fit your lifestyle,” said Okyere, who has worked in everything from cardiology to neurology.
She isn’t exactly sure where she wants to practice after graduating from UTC, but she already is a member of the Chattanooga Area Nurses in Advanced Practice.
She says she plans to pursue a doctorate in nursing in coming years and “would definitely be interested in teaching at UTC.”
In the meantime, she goes to class and studies and works at the clinic and takes care of her family and her home.
And she dreams.
“I just think about the days when I’ll be able to take a vacation with my family,” she said, “and not to have to read a book every time my eyes are open.”
This is an updated version of a story that first appeared in the spring 2022 issue of The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Magazine.
