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WARREN -- If there's anything Charlotte Matash credits for her career, one component is having a great group of coworkers around.
The idea has merit -- she's celebrating 40 years in nursing, all of which have been at Trumbull Regional Medical Center.
"You spend more time with the people (at work) than you do your family," she said.
That leads to teams knowing how each person communicates.
"If you have a good conglomeration of people that you feel all but as close to as your family, you'll get through it. You'll figure it out together," Matash, a registered nurse, said.
Matash, who turns 62 in June, grew up in Youngstown and graduated from Chaney High School in 1980.
She chose to go into nursing with the encouragement of her mother, a factory worker.
"'You need to go to college,' she said," Matash said.
Her mother suggested teaching or nursing, with Matash choosing the latter.
She enrolled at the Trumbull Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, a diploma program, graduating in 1984.
Its curriculum meant she gained clinical experience from the start.
Matash lived at Trumbull Regional in the dorms, going home on weekends.
She learned hands-on along the way as she progressed in her studies and worked while in school, which she said "helped a lot."
After graduation, Matash worked on the afternoon shift on the surgical post-operation floor for five years. Then she switched to dayturn as assistant head nurse for about a decade, and case management for 15 years after that. Then, Matash headed back to management on the same surgical floor, becoming the director of bed surgical.
In 2022, she became the director of critical care and assistant chief nursing officer. Some of her duties include staffing, scheduling and overseeing equipment.
While times differ from when she was learning the ropes in nursing school, Matash said learning was "physician-oriented."
"You rounded with physicians, you learned with physicians, you were kind of their right hand," she said.
Another difference has been technology, and not just learning machines and techniques for patient care.
"It was so much easier charting on paper. Electronic medical records are exhausting," she said, with a little laugh.
There used to be two secretaries on each floor to go through paperwork associated with charts.
"Now, the amount of paper orders that have gone by the wayside because of electronics has greatly changed," Matash said.
She doesn't mind working with technology, but she did say that looking through paper charts is easier compared to the different screens and systems on a computer system.
Looking back on her career, Matash's favorite thing has been constantly learning "and being able to reiterate that information to patients and families."
She looks forward to making sure patients have as comfortable a time as possible while they're in the hospital.
"Quality and patient experience is a huge focus of mine," she said. "I want to ensure that we are always providing the highest quality of care to all our patients and exceeding quality measures and benchmarks."
For those looking into nursing as a career path, she wants them to know something about nursing: it's challenging, and part of that challenge is one constant -- change.
That's why it's important to have a good team to work with, so you can communicate and understand each other to make it as easy as possible for patients.
"Many of the national awards and recognitions we have achieved, we are the only facility in the area to do so, and this is something we are very proud of and work hard to maintain and achieve," she said. "Patient experience is very important to us, and we continuously work on ways to improve both the patient and family experience at the hospital."
When she's not learning new ways to take care of patients, Matash can be found at home in Vienna, curled up with a good read.
"My favorite thing to do on a Saturday is climb on the couch with my book," she said, adding she likes true crime, thrillers and the occasional beach read.
Matash has been married to James, a demolition contractor, for 33 years. Together they have son Mario, a police officer who is married to a nurse practitioner, and daughter Olivia.
She and her daughter worked together until Olivia recently took a nursing position at another location.