Barbara Estabrook is finally ready to trade in her stethoscope and scrubs for retirement – and a well-deserved chance to be more involved in her young grandchildren’s lives.
She worked her last shift Thursday in Shore Medical Center’s ER, where she has served the community’s emergency medical needs as a nurse for the last nine years, closing out a 52-year career in nursing.
Estabrook grew up in North Jersey and attended the Bellevue School of Nursing in Manhattan, graduating in 1969. She was a nurse in New York before working in Florida, Long Island, and then at Pocono Medical Center in Pennsylvania, where she spent the bulk of her long career while raising her family.
She and her family spent a great deal of time at the Jersey Shore over the years, so when she was ready for a change in 2007, she headed to Galloway Township in Atlantic County. She got a job working at another local hospital, but later wanted to cut back on her hours.
She “retired” but she missed working, so she got a job at Shore Medical Center in Somers Point working pool shifts, where she has been covering two to three ER shifts a week ever since.
Estabrook worked in home care, a surgery center, the ICU and the ER – pretty much every area of nursing except the in-hospital OR and maternity.
Of all the nursing paths she has experienced, the ER is her favorite. She said she is especially fond of her ER experience at Shore.
“What I like about the ER is that we’re seeing something different all the time. We’re constantly learning,” she said in a news release announcing her retirement.
Estabrook had praise for her co-workers at Shore Medical Center.
“It was really nice coming to Shore. It’s a great place to work, the people are great to work with, and the doctors are all approachable,” she said.
Sherri Richmond, Director of Emergency Medicine at Shore, says Estabrook is admired by her co-workers and is “absolutely phenomenal.”
While her co-workers are happy for her to have this chance to retire and enjoy her family, it is a huge loss for the team.
“You don’t meet people like Barbara in your career very often,” Richmond said. “Barbara is a role model for all of us. She has precepted countless new nurses. She is patient, she is clinically brilliant. She’s probably one of the best nurses and clinicians I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.”
“She is our go-to and makes herself available to all of our nurses when they have questions, even if she isn’t at work,” Richmond added. “They’ll reach out to her just to see what she thinks about how they are handling an issue. We know she deserves this retirement, but boy are we sad to see her go.”
