More than 45 years have passed since Marilynn Bordelon applied for her first nursing job at the same medical center where she was born – UT Southwestern’s former St. Paul University Hospital. She was hired on the spot, and to this day UTSW is the only place she has ever worked.

At the time she interviewed for the position, Ms. Bordelon had just earned her associate degree in nursing from Angelo State University. Since then, she added a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in nursing via evening classes at Texas Woman’s University.

Over the past four decades, she has seen significant change. “There’ve been lots of new innovations with medicine and surgery,” Ms. Bordelon says.

The mid-1980s brought major shifts in procedures, she says, as the AIDS epidemic required nurses to learn how to care differently for extremely ill patients. Staff members had to adopt more intensive procedures to protect themselves from the virus in what some might consider a foreshadowing of COVID-19.

She also recalls that as a new millennium loomed, preparations had to be made in case technology broke down when the year 1999 rolled over to 2000, as was widely predicted because of a two-digit code for the year in most computer programs. Ms. Bordelon trained other nurses so they could manually set up IVs the old way for patients just in case – as never happened – the automatic ones failed to operate due to concerns over “Y2K bug” computer crashes.

Another highlight she notes occurred in 2014, when William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital replaced St. Paul. From that point forward, Ms. Bordelon witnessed the exponential growth of the Medical Center along with advancements in technology and patient care.

Through the years, she has worked on the renal medical floor (the same department where she started) as well as with the IV team, on the medical surgery floor, and in day surgery. She also spent time as a nurse educator, training other caregivers, and is currently a Patient Safety Coordinator who investigates why patient falls happen in the hospital.

Early in life, Ms. Bordelon says, she felt a calling to nursing. At age 12, her father died and she helped care for her two younger brothers. That’s when she came to love caregiving. Also, her mother – who had herself wanted to be a nurse but became a medical secretary instead – supported her career choice. Ms. Bordelon’s mother even accompanied her on the first job interview at St. Paul.

Through it all, Ms. Bordelon – who, in her spare time, enjoys reading and traveling to WinStar World Casino in Oklahoma with a retired UTSW colleague – remained loyal to working at UT Southwestern. “I stayed all these years because of the people I worked with. I met some really great people,” she says.