She had to be an OB nurse. But she didn't have to be so good at it. She didn't have to devote 40 years and counting to the field. She didn't have to pioneer an OB grief support team that became a model in Nebraska and beyond. She didn't have to become a lecturer and leader at the national level. That all happened because of the basic philosophy that guides every day of her work.
"If I were in that patient's shoes, how would I want to be treated?" Franklin asks in an interview in the Bryan LGH Medical Center East front lobby.
Her skill and devotion to nursing has earned her respect and many honors and awards. Enough that a younger co-worker asks - when she sees a Doane staff member following Franklin with a camera - "Brenda, what have you won now?"
Franklin began her career at Lincoln General Hospital in 1967, where she worked until moving to Bryan LGH East three years ago as a result of the hospital merger.
There were no "family birth plans" in the 60s, she said with a laugh. Mothers were under general anesthesia for their delivery. The father's role was marginal; their place, the waiting room.
By the 70s, it was all about Lamaze and fathers came into the delivery rooms for the first time. Today, most women choose epidurals during labor, she said, and family is welcome. Franklin has worked deliveries with young siblings on hand. She also was among the crowd in a delivery room packed with 13 family members. The one thing that hasn't changed, though, is the power of the delivery itself.
"It's always an awe-inspiring event. It makes this job such a joy."
Fittingly, it was a labor in 1983 that put Doane back into Franklin's life. Franklin had just made an initial inquiry with Doane's Lincoln campus when Lincoln Campus Services Coordinator Angie Klasek arrived in the delivery unit where Franklin was working. During labor, Klasek told her: "I've already processed your application."
Doane was the only choice, Franklin said. She was born in her grandmother's house in Crete near the Doane campus. Franklin's great-uncle and Doane graduate and devotee, Ed Pallett, had always encouraged her to go to Doane, but at the time, his wish wasn't compatible with her desire to be a nurse.
In 1986 Franklin was part of the first class to graduate in the Lincoln Campus Allied Health program. When Franklin's husband, Les, earned his public administration degree in 1989, they were the first husband/wife couple to graduate from the Lincoln campus.
When both joined the alumni association it kicked off a special chapter in their lives, she said. They met alumni from across the nation and poured their energy into projects supporting the Lincoln and Crete campuses. Les, who Franklin calls "a born promoter," helped with alumni events only days before his death to cancer in 2005.
It was Franklin's time to grieve, something she had been helping some of her patients do for years. She realized the importance of grief in 1983, when a family delivered twins -- one healthy, one stillborn.
"It was a difficult position for the family and staff because joy and grief don't sit well together," she recalled.
She felt something had to be done to help the family deal with a loss no one was really acknowledging, something that could help families who would deal with stillborn births or miscarriages in the future.
Taking cues from the book "When Hello Means Goodbye," she worked with fellow nurses to develop the OB grief support team -- the first in Nebraska -- which helps the patients walk through their grief. Staff members provide in-house support and introduce the patient to community resources and support outlets after they leave the hospital.
According to Shirley Travis, Bryan LGH vice president of clinical services, and a former nursing director to Franklin, the program illustrates Franklin's devotion to her work.
"To me, she is just the epitome of a nurse. Her focus is the patient. She's also very good at mentoring others to make sure they can deliver the same high quality care," Travis said. But more than that, "she touches people in the heart."
She does it with volunteer work, like organizing Lincoln's "Walk to Remember" during national pregnancy loss month. She goes the extra mile at work, collaborating with local mortuaries to provide burial sites for non-viable fetuses. When a family with a stillborn death needed time for acceptance, it was Franklin who set up a separate room for them.
She's the rare employee who becomes an expert in their job and constantly learns new ways to keep the title. Many patients remember the nurse with the blondest of hair and biggest of hearts long after they leave the hospital. She's on their birth announcement lists and their Christmas card mailings.
Patients who delivered a stillborn with Franklin try to make sure she's in the delivery room for subsequent births.
"Those are awesome days," Franklin said.
Another great day in her career came at the 2006 March of Dimes Excellence in Nursing awards ceremony in Omaha. She received the Distinguished Nurse award - "the academy award of nursing." She'll always remember the huge ballroom filled with 150 other nominees from all branches of medicine, and how the other nurses came from their tables to congratulate her on her walk to accept the award.
"That was fabulous. It made all the extra things done along the way worth it."
Franklin's honors and offices also include her time as vice chair and president of the Nebraska Association of Womens Health Obstetric and Neonatal nurses, Lincoln's Outstanding Young Individual award in 1979, Nebraska's Outstanding Young Woman award in 1980 and the Exceptional Service Award from Doane in 2005.
After 40 years, Franklin can't leave nursing just yet, she said. She'll miss the patients; miss the camaraderie between physicians, nurses and staff. She'll miss the Lincoln General Hospital where she gave birth to her own two sons.
"It has been such a wonderful career and I still love it." She wants to work in BryanLGH's new tower, scheduled to open in the fall of 2008, a new home to childbirth and pediatric services.
And there's at least one more roadblock that makes it hard to retire. "I can't leave the babies - I don't have grandchildren yet."