Rebekah (Goforth) Carter, NUR ’14, grew up receiving care from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. As a nurse now, she’s part of the team that provides vital pediatric services.
By age 15, Carter knew that nursing was the career for her. She was inspired by her mother’s work as a nurse, as well as her experiences as a Children’s patient while dealing with some chronic health conditions during childhood.
“I also have a caring/caregiver-type personality,” said Carter, a born-and-raised Atlantan. “It seemed like (nursing was) the right way to align with my interests and my nature and to follow in the footsteps I had grown up seeing. The folks that took care of me as a kid were very impactful and influential in making that decision as well. I wanted to try to make that kind of an impact on other kids in the future.”
Carter chose Mercer’s College of Nursing because of the clinical hours and experiences it offered and received a Presidential Scholarship to attend.
She said her two years on the Macon campus encouraged her to be more social and fostered many friendships, especially through her involvement in Alpha Delta Pi sorority. While completing her nursing classes on the Atlanta campus for her final last two years, she gained the academic rigor and skills to succeed not only on the nursing licensing exam but as a professional.
Carter spent the first two years of her nursing career working in the step-down unit of the now-closed Atlanta Medical Center, where she had done a clinical rotation. The job was intense and challenging, but it was also an incredible learning experience for her. Then, the opportunity arose for her to join the emergency department team at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she has now worked for a decade.
“It’s been my dream to work for Children’s because I grew up needing their benefits. I love kids. I always wanted to work with them,” said Carter, who now has a child of her own, a 5-year-old daughter. “It’s been incredible. It’s such an amazing institution to work for. The people, the mission, all of it — I stand by every piece of it.”
She started out as a bedside nurse and moved into a clinical educator position, where she handled nurse onboarding and continuing education for a few years. In 2021, she was promoted to her current role as administrative resource nurse for quality and EPIC, which is the electronic health record system.
Carter said she has been able to make an impact on a broader scale in this position. She oversees the quality of care across Children’s three emergency departments, provides EPIC support to employees and providers, handles regulatory issues and accreditation processes, prepares award submissions, writes policies and articles, and helps coordinate and manage research projects.
“There’s always something to fix or make better. I put out a lot of metaphorical fires day to day,” she said. “I love it because I get to shape the care that’s provided. I am kind of a team of one. It’s sort of a catchall in a lot of ways.”
Carter said her friends call her the “Oz of ED” because of the multitude of her responsibilities. She works with people across departments and hospitals and serves as the liaison between teams.
“Then, my own team is so supportive and wonderful,” she said. “Not only do I enjoy the work, but I feel valued. It really makes it easy to do the job well because there is so much support.”
One of Carter’s biggest quality improvement projects involved reducing deaths attributed to sepsis — when the body has a severe reaction to infection. Sepsis can be especially hard to diagnose in pediatric patients, Carter said. By implementing new frameworks and care processes, the hospital reduced sepsis-attributed deaths by half, from 8% to 4%.
In recognition of these outcomes, Carter’s team received a DAISY Award in 2024 from the DAISY Foundation, a nonprofit that recognizes excellence in nursing care. In other recognition, Carter was selected for the inaugural class of The Great 100 Nurses of Georgia this summer.
