After getting her associate degree in nursing, St. Paul University Hospital was the first and only place Pam Dunham applied. She had done a clinical rotation there as she trained. “They really treated me well,” she explains.

Now, 35 years later, with a bachelor’s degree from UT Arlington and a master’s in nursing from Western Governors University under her belt, Ms. Dunham is still working for the institution that acquired St. Paul – although now at UT Southwestern’s Williams P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, which replaced St. Paul in late 2014.

In fact, her career has come full circle. She started working on the cardiovascular surgical thoracic unit in 1987, and that’s where she works today – although, after years of experience on other floors as well, she is now a Nurse Manager, supervising 60 nurses and four Assistant Managers.

“It’s just been a journey. This floor that I’m on right now was the floor I started on 35 years ago. That floor taught me how to be a nurse,” she says.

Ms. Dunham, who has an adult daughter and a 10-pound rescue dog named Riley, said an aunt inspired her to go into nursing. “I just remember looking up to her when I was younger. She was taking care of people and making a difference in people’s lives,” she says.

After all these years, the attraction for doing that still holds. “I look back and say, ‘I did something. I helped take care of people,’” Ms. Dunham says.

She also likes the opportunity her job provides to learn new things. The floor where she works now cares for heart and lung transplant patients – involving treatments that were not even offered there when she began helping cardiovascular surgery and heart failure patients as a fledgling nurse.

Another aspect she likes is the people she works with. That’s important in nursing, she emphasizes.

“It’s hard work. Nursing is not easy. And there’s a lot of time away from your family and on weekends. Everyone is going through the same thing,” she says, referring to co-workers, “so the nurses become close.”