Meet Grace Blas-Matus / Priority Home Health Care
Grace Blas-Matus, originally from Kenya, and also Chief Executive Officer, Director, and Supervisor of Direct Care Services holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing with experience in the areas of Acute care, Wound Care, Foot Care and Home Health. She prides herself on putting her patients first, and giving nursing care that goes above and beyond. She speaks English, Kiswahili and Dholuo.
I had the awesome privilege to sit down with Grace Blas-Matus who is currently a registered nurse with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.
Meet Grace Blas-Matus
Grace and her family grew up in Kenya, East Africa originally coming to the Unites States of America when she was 35 years old, she remembers seeing snow for the first time. In Kenya they are used to 80 degrees or higher so to settle in at 70-72, our typical Indoor temperatures like to our house has not been easy. Grace told me that she is cold all the time here in Washington State. When she came to the United States, she was not only taken back by snow that she had never been exposed to in Africa, but also the way we live. The fast pace in cars going back and forth to work and no one on the streets like she grew up accustomed to. Our style of life is far from what she experienced in her home country. She was around and in contact with people and family all the time in Kenya. She misses that style of connection and is still adjusting to the space between people here in the states.
The student, graduate, and businesswoman: The Passion that drives her
I asked Grace about why she became a nurse. “In East Africa your parents take care of you when you are young, and when you get older you take care of them”. So, the transition into nursing and then her own business of caring for senior adults who need home health care was a natural one. Before Grace stepped into school for nursing, she was already starting her prerequisites for the field of dental hygiene and her brother who was already in nursing encouraged her to pursue nursing. He felt there would be more opportunities for the contact she loved and more opportunities for her to choose what she loved the most. So, she did pursue schooling for nursing. Thanks to her brother, so she says.
Grace’s Journey started at our local hospital where she worked as a housekeeper at Kadlec Medical Center, who at the time was promoting people to go to nursing school and helping with tuition to help build the hospital staff. With the help of Kadlec Medical Center Grace received help with the schooling at Columbia Basin College and then was able to go on to Washington State University. That’s where she graduated with her Bachelor of Nursing degree. Afterwards she was able to get into a nursing position at Kadlec in the float pool department. She was able got to experience all types of nursing by being a float nurse in most of the floors. Grace looks back and realizes now that all that training on all those different nursing floors was perfect training for who and what she is doing now.