CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Pat Thompson will officially retire as executive director of Marshall County Public Health on Feb. 2.

Since 2007, Pat Thompson has been the executive director of Marshall County Public Health — providing education, vaccination clinics and other preventative measures. She will retire from her position on Feb. 2, after having spent time training her successor Sydney Grewell, who came on board Jan. 4.

Thompson, a life-long Marshalltonian, initially aspired to be a schoolteacher and not a registered nurse and public health director.

“When I graduated from high school, all I cared about was my hair and my boyfriend, Tim Thompson, who turned out to later be my husband,” she said with a laugh.

She took a job working in a school office. A chance encounter at a ballgame made her reconsider her career goals after a nurse friend encouraged her to go back to school as a non-traditional student.

Thompson enrolled at the Marshalltown School of Nursing at the hospital, a three-year diploma program with classes held nine months out of the year. Classroom work and clinicals were all completed on-site. Her son Matt was about four years old at the time.

“I graduated in 1984 — the program closed in 1986 — and my first job was at the Iowa Veterans Home,” she noted. “They were very good to me. When I graduated, there were too many nurses and not enough jobs, believe it or not.”

She spent a year and a half at IVH until her grandmother’s second husband had a heart attack. Thompson applied for a job at the hospital in ICU and was hired, working nights to also care for him.

“I worked in (the) ICU for close to 20 years,” she said. “I also had a certification in critical care nursing, which I’m very proud of, but I don’t do that work anymore.”

She provided one to one care for persons on ventilators who had round-the-clock needs. For less critical cases, she would care for a handful of patients at a time.

“It was really intensive care, and I loved that,” she said.

After she left the ICU, she pursued other job roles such as nurse education, clinical coordinating on skills and utilization review.

In 2007, Thompson decided to apply for the executive director position at the Marshall County Public Health department.

“It was just the time to expand my nursing career and seek other opportunities in nursing,” she noted.

When Thompson became the director, the county subcontracted with the hospital to provide public health services in Marshall County.

“Public health was under home care in the hospital. It then became its own department,” she said. “Then the county made the decision not to continue the subcontract with the hospital, and I became a county employee. I didn’t know how much of an increase in workload that would be. Public health is just one person and two call-in nurses.”

Almost every county in Iowa has a board of health.

“We have a contract that helps fund public health activities that the board of health approves,” she said.

Thompson continued to work as an RN, but was no longer employed by the hospital. These duties included vaccination administration and TB testing.

“I would assess people with TB and give them their medication,” she noted. “When people have TB tests that are positive, but not infectious, public health makes sure they have access to free antibiotics.”

Marshall County Public Health works to ensure infectious diseases are contained.

“We do education and some lab work. I care about the people I’m talking to and seeing and the people who could get sick from them,” she said.

She said a common misconception is the belief public health is the agency to call to report foodborne illness.

“We don’t handle that. It goes to the Department of Inspections and Appeals,” she added.

Thompson’s work primarily kept her in Marshall County. Each year she attended the Public Health Conference of Iowa in Des Moines.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the most high profile public health scare in her career. She said the 2018 tornado and 2020 derecho also negatively impacted people’s health.

“I was there in 2009 when H1N1 (swine flu) was running through the state,” Thompson said.

In retirement, she looks forward to renovating her home and spending time with her new husband William Peden. She plans to do some work as a call-in for hospice — a position she previously held in 2020 — and she’d also like to serve as a school call-in nurse.

“It’s not a mistake (that) I’m a nurse. I never planned on it. I could only have done this job because of all the good people in our community and at the Iowa Department of Public Health,” Thompson said. “They led me and helped me grow. I’m very, very grateful for that.”