'Being a mom is a lot like being a nurse': Mother and daughter help each other through nursing school

May 9-Angela Korver doesn't much care for the sight of blood. But when it came time to help her daughter fulfill her career ambitions, she set aside her misgivings.

"I absolutely did not want to be a nurse, ever," Korver said ahead of this year's Mother's Day in her MultiCare Deaconess Hospital medical scrubs.

She was a recent cancer survivor and a 45-year-old administrative assistant who wanted to babysit her young grandchildren. But when her daughter was failing out of a prerequisite class needed to apply for nursing school, Korver decided to join her in class.

"I failed out of a semester," said Brittany Payton, Korver's daughter. "I was struggling to take care of my new family, and I was just going to take a break. My mom said , 'No.' "

The mother and daughter now work together as nurses in the Pulse Heart Institute at Deaconess. Though both have worked many places since becoming nurses in the early 2010s, they keep coming back to one another for support.

"We both have our own strong suits. I can step into a room and just know what the patients need," Payton said.

"I can outwork her any day," Korver said, shooting Payton a playful smile from across the room.

Despite the sense of competition, Korver acknowledges her daughter's strengths.

"She is a rock star," she said of her daughter. "She can put an IV into anything. I could never do that the way she does."

Payton's love of nursing came from an early age. She always wanted to care for people, but it became personal when she gave birth to her daughter.

"When I was 17, I had a little girl, and she got really sick with RSV at 2 weeks. Seeing my baby being cared for so carefully by the nurses, I knew I had to do that," Payton said.

Though she nearly quit many times on the way to realizing her dream, it was Payton's mother who kept her from giving up. They completed the prerequisite classes together and applied to nursing school. Korver still did not plan to go. But then she got accepted and her daughter did not.

"I was shocked I got in and she didn't," Korver said. "I was sad. I cried. This was her dream, not mine."

Payton persuaded her mother to go to nursing school anyway, and Korver graduated from the North Idaho College nursing program in 2011. As soon as she graduated, Korver helped her daughter to reapply to nursing school .

"Even though it wasn't my dream, I now am sure it was God's plan. Because financially becoming a nurse allowed me to support her financially for her to go back and become a nurse," Korver said.

With her mother's help, Payton got into nursing school, studied full time and graduated in 2014.

"Without my mom pushing me, I think I would have gotten discouraged and not finished," she said. "When I didn't have the motivation to motivate myself, I always had somebody who could do that for me."

To Korver, there was never any doubt.

"There was never anything else that she could do. She wanted to be a nurse," Korver said. "That was her only dream. So it was gonna happen one way or another."

For several years, the pair worked together for Kootenai Health. But they were on different floors. The hospital did not want family to work together. Whenever they did, it "felt like we were breaking the rules," Payton said.

And when they work ed together, they felt an unspoken bond that helped them coordinate care for patients. Over the years, they have worked separately but always found their way back to working with each other - at hospitals and on Christian medical missions around the world.

Now, they are employed at MultiCare, where the mother-daughter duo can work openly together. They hope to continue helping those around them together for many more years.

"I feel like being a mom is a lot like being a nurse," Payton said. I feel like it comes easy to moms to just do everything. And that's what you have to be able to do as a nurse."

Now Payton's daughter has her own 7-month-old. On Mother's Day, all four generations will be together for the first time for a family tea party.

"Now I'm 40 and a grandmother. And my mom has always been there," Payton said. "Always been my No. 1 supporter, encouraging me and pushing me. I love being able to work with her and being her family."

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