By Steve St. Angelo

One good choice begets another as a son makes his own smart decision to follow his DNP mom to the School of Nursing

Susan Giscombe is proud that her three sons are not followers. Her one rule: “Make good choices.” She ends each phone call this way—right after “I love you.”

“Having to raise and counsel three wonderful young men has been very rewarding,” she says. (Translation: Her sons are smart enough to listen, and to watch her example.)

It was the no-followers idea that made son Brandon Brown initially hesitant to join her at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she had just completed the Doctor of Nursing Practice Executive track and is part of the adjunct faculty. He’s a member of the MSN (Entry into Nursing) program, having stepped away from a budding career in TV and media production.

“I figured if I was going to do nursing, I was going to do it right.”

It was witnessing “the freedom that being a nurse practitioner brought” his mother that awoke his interest in nursing. In her career, he saw “the leadership and autonomy I would need in order to achieve the goals I have set.” There are six nurses on his father’s side of the family, including a cousin who just finished nursing school. And there was also his fascination with mental health issues and perhaps mixing nursing with TV and media “to educate and uplift.” A psychiatric NP approach would fit that bill. All signs pointed to Johns Hopkins, so he jumped at the school’s offer. “I figured if I was going to do nursing, I was going to do it right,” Brown says.

Good choice.

“He’s like a carbon copy of me,” Giscombe beams. He says it was hard not to be: “I was always around her career. I could see it, every day, she put other people before herself.”

Giscombe admits that she’s a bit envious of the head start he’ll get through the MSN (Entry into Nursing) program. “Millennials have so many resources at their fingertips, and these young people who already have their degree in something else, all these life experiences, they bring so much perspective to nursing.”

In her earlier days in the profession, “It was older nurses teaching you: ‘This is just how we do it.’ … It was not research-based. And self-care wasn’t the thing to do. You were just 100 percent into the patients. Millennials ask questions. They don’t just do it. And they’re more into self-care.”

For Brown, nursing might one day actually provide a path back into media. He dreams, in fact, of his own television/media channel, “a mix between the motivational and awareness-provoking media found on the Oprah Winfrey Network and the adventure, travel, and exploration-themed media on the Discovery Channel.”

Giscombe has no doubt that, if he keeps making good decisions, her son could indeed be a leader in both fields: “There are no limits on what you can do. If you can think of it, you can do it.”

To this day, his mother can’t say enough about the gesture, adding more about her son’s participation with youth leadership programs and dedication to Homeless Children’s Playtime Network. “That’s just who Brandon is.”