LEWISTON — Within months of his graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in horticulture, Warren McGlauflin’s mom kindly slid another college application his way.

Plants and landscaping probably were not going to pay the bills. He should look into nursing.

Even with his early, intense aversion to needles, it turned out to be great advice.

McGlauflin met his future wife, Sara, also a nurse, in the local emergency rooms. He became the first member of a new Central Maine Medical Center team that carved out a specialty in vascular access — starting medical procedures like IVs with an emphasis on fewer needle pokes and lower rates of infection.

This year, McGlauflin’s one of three nurses nationwide honored by the Association for Vascular Access with its Impact Award for making a difference in the field locally.

“The landscaping part, I love the plants, but I love my patients,” said McGlauflin, 49. “Now it’s just about my patients.”

McGlauflin grew up in Poland and started his greenhouse business, growing annuals and perennials, in high school. He was a little surprised by his mom’s post-college recommendation.

Nursing had not been on his radar. At the risk of not sounding politically correct, he said, “it wasn’t something that I intended to do because back 30-something years ago, guys didn’t become nurses. I got into it and really liked it, got my license and I actually really enjoy it.”

The work fit his personality.

“I’ve always liked dealing with people,” he said. “I’ve always been service-oriented, I’ve always been waiters and waitstaff.”

After earning his associate’s degree, McGlauflin spent the first two years of his career as an emergency room nurse at Androscoggin Valley Hospital in New Hampshire. There, he saw people with chest pain, people in snowmobile accidents.

A supervisor there “was very much into one-stick: the patients need one stick, we need to get in now, you need to do the best job you can,” McGlauflin said. “At that point, I hated sticking patients because I hated needles, I really hated needles.

“But then it became more of a mission, my patients needed better care,” he said. “I’d see patients in the ER, when you didn’t have good veins and ultrasound really wasn’t an option back then for us, you’d stick the patient until you got the needle in. Some patients got stuck 10, 15, 20 times.”

He started work at CMMC in 1996. In 2010, McGlauflin became the first Vascular Access Board-Certified nurse in Maine and, in 2015, the first member of the hospital’s new Vascular Access Specialty Team. McGlauflin’s now the VAST coordinator and the team’s grown to 10 people.

“Each device is used for a specific reason, so it starts out IV, midline (a slightly longer IV), PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter), then port,” said McGlauflin. “We collaborate with the doctors just to make sure we’re getting the right line for the patient — right line, for the right patient at the right time.”

In working with patients, he threads the needle with his right hand and holds an ultrasound probe with his left, watching a screen to guide where he should be going.

Depending on the procedure, there can be plenty of prep, sterilizing and getting-to-know-you time first.

“My patients have some of the best stories,” McGlauflin said. “I had a lady that she was actually an artist over in Europe.

“It was just amazing to hear her stories about what she did over there, and she lived through the wars. I had a WWII veteran that came in. The stories they tell you, it’s just amazing what you can find out from them.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

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