Marijke Vroomen Durning RN, health and medical writer, and avid quilter.

The Health Design Podcast

Marijke Vroomen Durning always wanted to be a writer but her teachers and parents didn’t support that choice; they told her to choose something more practical. She became a nurse As an RN, Marijke literally worked with patients from life to death. Her first job was working with new mothers and their infants on a postpartum ward. One of her last clinical jobs was in a hospice. But Marijke’s dream of writing never left and slowly but surely, she started working on developing that career. She stopped working clinically in 2009, taking her part-time writing to a successful full-time career. Although Marijke writes for professional-level outlets, she prefers to write for the general public. She explains that her writing is like the bedside patient teaching that nurses want to do but don’t have the time. Marijke also wrote a book called Just the Right Dose: Your Smart Guide to Prescription Medications and How to Take Them Safely because as a nurse, she saw so many people who didn’t take their medications properly. In 2009, Marijke joined a fledgling organization, Sepsis Alliance, as a part-time contractor. Back then, sepsis awareness was abysmal and there was little online about it. Over the past 12 years, the small but dedicated Sepsis Alliance team worked hard to educate the American public about this often deadly condition. And there is progress. More people now know about sepsis and Sepsis Alliance has become the go-to organization for sepsis-related information and support. But there is still more work to be done. There are two parts of the site for which Marijke, now the senior clinical content advisor, feels particular pride: The Sepsis and… library and the Faces of Sepsis™ section. Marijke gets upset when she hears of teens and young adults who are discouraged from following their dreams by adults who are supposed to encourage growth. She knows how that feels. But she also wonders sometimes if she would have been a successful writer had she not been a nurse first. This experience enabled her to develop her niche in the writing world. So while she still feels that her teachers were wrong, she did find her path eventually. Marijke lives in Montreal, Canada, where if she’s not at her desk educating people about health and wellness, you will likely find her in her sewing room, where she is designing and creating beautiful quilts. You can find her professional website at medhealthwriter.com and her quilting site at MyCreativeQuilts.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marijkevroomendurning/ Twitter: MarijkeD