Right Where She Belongs: Meet Infusion Nurse Funmi Kayode

She didn’t expect this, but the best part of the day for Infusion Nurse Funmi Kayode, RN, is the time she spends with her patients in the Herman & Walter Samuelson Infusion Center. 

Funmi first came to work at GBMC to meet temporary staffing needs. GBMC was one of a few local hospitals where she worked in a variety of departments. Along the way, she experienced a variety of patient care areas and management styles. She is now certain GBMC’s Sandra & Malcolm Berman Cancer Institute is her professional home. 

“Oncology was a part of nursing that I used to dread,” she recalls. “When I was asked to cover in Fast Track (where patients come for an injection or short-term infusion), I worked with patients who were upbeat.” 

Having braced herself for sadness, instead she found she loved the sense of humor and openness of these patients. As it turns out, even the challenging moments she shares with patients are rewarding. 

“There are times that my patients and I cry together,” she says. “We become closer than I expected. We become family.” 

Funmi’s calm, happy disposition is nurtured by more than patient care. She appreciates the work ethic she finds at GBMC. 

“We’re not perfect,” she acknowledges, “but here we are well structured and organized. We make things work to take care of the patient.” 

Having worked elsewhere, she is glad to be in hospital where “nurses take responsibility. Patient safety is the most important thing.” When something does go wrong here, she has found, “we ask ‘what do you think you could have done differently?’ This encourages me to do better every day.” 

Her deepest encouragement comes from her personal relationship with Jehovah. “My faith defines me more than anything else,” she says. “Every day I look for encouraging scriptures that can help me and my patients. Of course, my story will not be complete without acknowledging the organization that God used to make me who l am today, Jehovah’s witnesses." 

When a patient is having a difficult day and welcomes her offer to pray with them, Funmi often shares quotations from scripture that she has found inspiring. They will hold hands and talk quietly. She finds she benefits at least as much as her patient does, if not more so. 

When she is not in the Infusion Center, Funmi is with her family. Her three sons are in college now; Wednesday night is family worship night. Together, she and her boys choose the topic – peer pressure, dating, or smoking, for example – and they explore the bible together. They attend bible study with the congregation on Thursday night and Sunday morning and engage in preaching on weekends. She enjoyed traveling with the boys when they were younger but now they travel with their friends while she explores tropical beaches with her niece. And every few years, Funmi visits family in Nigeria where five of her siblings still live. She returns refreshed, ready to care for and connect with her patients. 

And, as many have said, they are grateful for that.