A former police officer in York is turning a tragedy into transformation.
Kyle Cummings says medical professionals helped save his life after he was seriously hurt in a shooting on duty back in 2018. Years later, he’s now making a career change to join those who helped save him.
Cummings told Channel 9′s Tina Terry that the shooting in 2018 was traumatic for him and his entire family.
“It used to be I’d tell my children, ‘Don’t worry about daddy, daddy will be fine, nothing will happen to me,’ but after I got shot, I couldn’t say that anymore because I’d be lying, and my kids knew that,” Cummings said.
It was a hard realization he came to after he and two others were shot and hurt in an ambush while responding to a domestic violence call. A fourth police officer, York County Detective Mike Doty, was shot and killed in that attack.
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A bullet hit Cummings’ femoral artery, and he says medical professionals kept him from bleeding out.
‘Had they not been there doing what they did, I don’t think I would have made it out alive,” he said.
Cummings returned to work with the York Police Department, but eventually realized something was wrong.
“I just felt something was missing, I wasn’t happy,” Cummings said.
Some soul searching led him to nursing school, and he later joined the extern program at Piedmont Medical Center.
“Once you become a senior, you become a nurse extern,” Cummings said. “You’re assigned to a nurse, you follow them around all day and learn from them. I wouldn’t be where I am, competency-wise, had it not been for the nurse extern program.”
Mary Stevenson is the director of medical surgical services at Piedmont, and she says the program gives students more insight into the nursing field than a normal clinical setting.
“You’re working weekends, holidays, nights you’re able to see what it’s like when you graduate from nursing school,” Stevenson told Terry.
Cummings says it’s given him a passion for the emergency room, where he can help people just like he did as an officer.
“If I can let them see and know that I care for them, I’ve done my job, and that’s what touches me,” Cummings said.
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Stevenson told Terry that since 2021, the hospital has retained well over 50 participants in the extern program as hired nurses. Cummings will also start his first nursing job at the hospital in July.
Those interested in the externship program can email: lora.hicks@tenethealth.com.
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