The Tennessee Technology Center at Elizabethton is proud to announce that Tabetha Brickey is the recipient of Tri Cities’ Skin and Cancer’s Annual Nursing Scholarship. This scholarship is in memoriam of a treasured nurse employed by TriCities Sin and Cancer. Dr. Clemmons would like to challenge other physicians and health care facilities to honor treasured nurses by offering nursing scholarships also. This is a way of “paying it forward” by assisting others to become nurses. As the population ages healthcare is facing a critical shortage of nurses with no end in sight.
Ms. Brickey’s inspiration and beloved mother, Patricia Brickey died in January of 1992 at the young age of thirty-eight. She was a graduate of the Practical Nursing Program at the Tennessee Technology Center in Elizabethton. Tabetha was only eight years old when her mother passed away. Her mother endured almost two years of treatment for cancer, which proved to be a source of motivation to her young daughter. On occasion Patricia was allow to come home and be with her family. That is when she taught Tabetha how to care for her. Even to this day, Tabetha reports these are some of her fondest memories of her mother. Patricia took something so tragic and turned it into a positive teaching experience. The time Tabetha spent at the hospital with her mother gave her a new perspective of what health care is. The staff not only cared for Patricia, but the entire family as well. Those physicians and nurses along with her mother are whom Tabetha credits with her choosing the nursing field. Tabetha wants to make her mother proud in her nursing career. She also hopes to complete her Bachelor’s degree in nursing then a Master’s with a concentration as a family nurse practioner. Tabetha feels strongly that nursing is what she is supposed to do in life and cannot imagine doing anything else. Tabetha is the daughter of Sinkler Brickey and has a sister Tina Daniel, all from Johnson City.