As a traveling nurse, Courtney Gass is living out two of her passions: Caring for others and experiencing new places,
Currently working on the neurology floor at the Cleveland Clinic, Gass, a 2001 graduate of Parchment High School, has taken her skills as a registered nurse to Washington state, Illinois, West Virginia, Florida and Vermont before her current assignment.
She has worked primarily in medical, surgical, oncology and trauma units.
“I just really want to be there for them, be their cheerleader, make them smile,” she says of her patients.
She does that by setting them at ease.
“My biggest thing is just to smile,” she says. “A smile is worth a thousand words; it does make a huge difference to people.”
Gass worked at Heritage Community of Kalamazoo and Ascension Borgess Hospital before setting out on her own as a traveling nurse in 2022.
But she already was an experienced world traveler by then.
After taking some time off from school after her graduation from Parchment, Gass, 42, pursued nursing at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, graduating with her registered nursing degree in 2009.
“After I graduated from nursing school I went to Australia for seven months. That was my gift to myself,” she says.
She followed her trip to Australia with sojourns to Tanzania and Kenya, where she helped set up a nursing clinic; a mission trip with Radiant Church to Nicaragua; a study abroad in Thailand; and a nursing management course in the Netherlands as part of her work toward a bachelor’s degree in nursing, which she earned from Western Michigan University in 2015.
She also has traveled to Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Hong Kong, Mexico, Belize, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
She has her sights set on going to Brazil in February when she completes her stint at the Cleveland Clinic.
Gass says her nurturing spirit developed in her Parchment home where she grew up with three brothers, Jerry, Gabe and Eli, all of whom have special needs.
She knew from the time she was in middle school, she says, that she wanted to become a nurse.
“I get a lot of strength from having had hands-on experience from my family,” she says.
Gass says she started working at Heritage Community, a senior-living complex on Portage Street, when she was 14. Her first job there was washing dishes.
Eventually, while she was there, she became a licensed practical nurse.
In all, she worked at Heritage Community for 18 years.
In 2017, she took a job at Ascension Borgess, staying there for four-and-a-half years before becoming a traveling nurse.
In her current capacity, she works for a company that has contracts with hospitals across the country.
“You just kind of pick where you want to go,” she says.
Each assignment is about 13 weeks.
“Typically, I take a two-week break in between my three months,” says Gass, who has a home in Plainwell.
Gass was active in extracurricular activities while in the Parchment schools.
“I played a lot of sports in high school,” she says.
In addition to being on the volleyball, basketball and track teams, she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen.
After graduation, she played for the West Michigan Mayhem women’s professional football team.
“Mr. (David) Blough really had to be one of my most inspirational teachers,” she recalls of her high school math teacher. “I always said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ He taught me you can do anything if you set your mind to it. He really motivated me.”
“He’s got so much patience. … He really helped me get it,” she says. “And now to this day I like math; I love numbers, I really do.”
Gass says she isn’t sure what her future holds. She may continue her education in nursing, or as a massage therapist, and she hopes to get married and have a family.
But she also wants to do more traveling and has her sights set on Indonesia and the Philippines after her trip to Brazil.
“I’ve just had a passion to travel, see the world,” she says. “There’s so much you can learn.”
She knows there is one person who will always have her back, her mother, Sharon Gass.
“My No. 1 and my biggest supporter is my mom. She says, ‘Life is short, live your dream, go see the world.’”