One night, Dominique Hyatt-Oates was sitting with fellow nurses, brainstorming ways to fundraise for causes they cared about. They settled on selling t-shirts.
Then an idea came to Hyatt-Oates: one derived from rap group the Wu-Tang Clan.
“Wu-Tang Clan has a song called C.R.E.A.M., which stands for Cash Rules Everything Around Me,” Hyatt-Oates says. “All of a sudden, I just get this notion of Community Rules Everything Around Me and it was perfect for the merch. That describes who I am, that describes so many of the people around me and so many of the organizations that I support.”
While the t-shirts are no longer in print, a focus on community is what led Hyatt-Oates to her current job as deputy commissioner of policy innovation and equity for the City of Milwaukee Health Department. The Young Alumna of the Year award winner for the College of Nursing took time to speak with Marquette Today to talk about her career as a public health nurse practitioner.
You attended Washington State as an undergraduate and nursing was not your original major. Describe the career journey that led you to Marquette.
I was on track from the beginning of high school to become a physical therapist. I was in the athletic training major as an undergrad, and then I was also pursuing prerequisites so that I can go to grad school for it. However, during my clinical rotations, I realized that I didn’t want to do physical therapy because I was developing a love for more holistic care.
When I learned about what nurse practitioners do and the autonomy that they have within their license, I was sold. I just knew I picked the right field.
Most of our nursing graduates go into bedside care, but you found your calling in public health. Why did you make that decision?
We all have that time in our career where we say to ourselves, ‘Wait, do I really want to do nursing? Should I be doing nursing?’ What really sold me to nursing is that you can take any professional term and put the word nurse in front of it or behind it, and it exists. You know, nurse educator, nurse manager, nurse researcher, whatever it is. Public health showed me that while moving me from caring to the whole person to caring for the whole society.
You started in the public health department during COVID. What was that like?
I was working with a home visiting program, so we had to get really creative about how we continued to visit people in their homes and meet them where they’re at. We would meet each other on a porch with our masks on, 20 feet away from one another. It was difficult.
You’ve made mentoring young nurses a major focus of your career. Why do you feel that’s important?
We had a pandemic. We have a nursing shortage. We don’t have enough nursing teachers. We have low representation of diverse cultures and ethnicities in nursing, especially here in Wisconsin, and we know that that then impacts our student population as well as our educator population. A lot of my work has been around rallying to increase the representation of nursing workers to represent the community that we serve and the city that we live in.
What words of advice would you give nurses who want to advocate for things outside of a clinical setting? If a nurse wanted to get involved in the same kinds of policy debates you are in, what should they do?
Join boards, join committees, participate in things like Nurses Day at the Capitol. We are the most trusted profession in the United States, so our viewpoints hold a lot of weight, and we think of things more holistically. For public health, how much more holistic can you get, if you’re like this eagle eye in the sky, taking care of the health of the entire community?
What were your biggest takeaways from the DE MSN program?
I recommend tapping into the resources that are available to you as a student. Take advantage of the counseling services provided. I wish I would have gone to more games. I wish I would have used the rec center a little bit more. Go venture out and just take it all in while you can.
