When Suzanne Rollins became a nurse, I-V bottles and syringes came in glass and diseases like syphilis and tuberculosis were severe public health threats.

Suzanne Rollins, Retired Chief Nursing Officer PHOTO COURTESY OF WELLMONT HEALTH SYSTEM

"I've seen a tremendous advance in services to help people and technology," Rollins said in a recent phone interview.

Rollins, the Wellmont Health System's chief nursing officer, officially retired Oct. 3 but has continued to do some work around the hospital since then. She said she will spend her retired life enjoying her family - including some grandchildren - according to a statement from Wellmont.

Rollins started her nursing career in 1966 with a job as a public health nurse in Prince William County. She's held positions in Knoxville, Tenn., again in Prince William County, and at Abingdon's Johnston Memorial Hospital since then. But her best memories come from the Bristol Regional Medical Center, where she's been since 1984.

"After almost 24 years, I'll miss the people I've worked with," Rollins said. "I will miss the opportunity to be able to help so many people do their jobs."

When she arrived in Bristol, Rollins helped open what would become the Wellmont Hospice Center, the first hospice center in Tennessee.

She took over as Bristol Regional's vice president of patient services in 1993, and in 1994 helped move the hospital and its patients from its previous home next to the Bristol Mall to its current location off West State Street. Since 2007, Rollins has supervised all of the nursing staff at Wellmont's nine hospitals as the health system's first chief nursing officer.

Rollins said she's seen significant changes in terms of how people have been treated from the amount of medications used to the number of specialties doctors and their support staff can take up.

But not all of these changes have been good. Specifically, Rollins said, nurses don't get to spend as much time with their patients as they once did.

"Documentation, paperwork and regulatory agencies are much more than what they used to be," she said. "It's just become an incredible burden and it's taken nurses away from the bedside."