(This week The Columbian-Progress spotlights Marion County Internal Medicine Clinic Nurse Practitioner Candice Shows.)
Q: When and where were you born?
A: I was born April 4, 1976, at Forrest General Hospital.
Q: Where did you attend school?
A: I attended West Marion all 12 years. I went to Pearl River Community College and graduated with associate’s degree in nursing in 1999, then I went to the University of South Alabama for my bachelor’s in nursing in 2016 and graduated from South Alabama with my master’s to be a nurse practitioner in 2018.
Q: Where do you work? Tell us about your job/company.
A: I’m a family nurse practitioner at the Marion County Internal Medicine Clinic, which is working with adults mostly. We see patients 16 years old and up. Some days I might see eight patients, and some days I might see 15 or 16 patients. I monitor them and take care of their blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid and any acute thing they might have going on.
Q: What led you to your profession?
A: I just love helping people. Dealing with them every day, taking care of them — nursing is all I ever wanted to do.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: Taking care of patients. I enjoy seeing them every day, making sure everything is going good with them and keeping them healthy.
Q: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
A: Just being new it’s a different role than what I’m used to. I was a nurse for 20 years, and I worked in an emergency setting so my mindset was more geared toward emergent thinking. Now I’m just kind of having to ease into the day-to-day care and not so much emergent. It’s just a process learning that. I started here in February of 2019 part time, and in September I started full time.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned in your career?
A: Always listen to people because they know themselves better than anybody else.
Q: When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A: I would say initially I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist, but that just didn’t pan out. I didn’t take that avenue because I didn’t want to have to move to Jackson. Back then you had to go to school every day, and I would’ve had to move. But I’ve always wanted to be in the medical field.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I worked at the snack bar at Walmart in my late teens.
Q: Who are the people who have been most influential in your life?
A: I would say God first. Also my mom, Gail Kessler, and my husband. They’ve been very supportive and helped me while I was going to school and picked up the slack. My mom, she’s just my mom.
Q: What is your spouse’s name?
A: Kevin Shows. He is retired from the military and works with Mississippi Power.
Q: Do you have children?
A: I have two children. I have a 23-year old daughter, Courtney Powell, who is married to Josh Powell. I have my first grandbaby on the way. And I have a 6-year-old boy, Jase Shows.
Q: If you could have anything for your last meal on earth, what would it be?
A: A steak cooked medium with a baked potato cooked by my husband.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A: I’d like to go a lot of places. I’d love to go to Italy, Hawaii and Alaska. That’s my top three.
Q: What hobbies do you like to do in your spare time?
A: I don’t get a lot of spare time, but I like spending time with my kids. My little boy likes to fish so we go fishing a lot. We’re actually in the process of building a house so that’s got me busy right now.
Q: What do you enjoy about Columbia and Marion County?
A: It’s just home. It’s a small-town community where everybody knows everybody. Even my patients, when I see them they’re trying to figure out who I am or where they know me from. I tell them who my mom is or my uncle is, then they know who I am.
Q: Where do you go to church?
A: I go to Kokomo Baptist Church.
Q: If you could have lunch with anyone from your life or history, who would it be and why?
A: I would love to sit down and talk with Jesus. I’d just want to know about his days on earth and learn about what is was like. And I’d want to know what heaven is like.
Q: What is your biggest guilty pleasure?
A: It would have to be eating.
Q: What moment in your life has had the biggest impact on who you are today?
A: When I was saved when I was 11 or 12 years old. It just changed my whole personality and changed me as a person.
Q: What is one thing you want to do that you’ve never tried?
A: I’d love to go skiing. I’d probably break my back or leg or something, but it seems like it would be fun.
Q: Using one word for each, what are your top three defining characteristics?
A: Caring, compassionate and understanding.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: I would like to be remembered as someone who put God first, loved her children, did anything she could possibly do for them, a good wife and a good nurse practitioner.
—Joshua Campbell
