Krystal Sobers Found Her Calling and Embodies Humankindness

The patient was an inmate in handcuffs and ankle shackles, accompanied by two corrections officers. Saint Joseph Hospital travel nurse Krystal Sobers treated him for his medical issue, then checked his ankles and wrists. “I wanted to make sure his ankles were good. I wanted to make sure the cuffs weren’t bruising into his skin,” she explained.

For Krystal, compassion is rooted in experience. As someone who has overcome more than her share of adversity—including foster care and homelessness—Krystal said, “I feel like people need someone to care about them, because I feel like in a lot of the things people go through, that people don’t care about them. And then they’ll just continue on that path because nobody cares.”

Krystal has been with Saint Joseph for three years, on its national travel nurse team. In her caregiving career, she has worked as a travel nurse in long-term, cardiac and orthopedic care. She started out as a certified nursing assistant in 2013, and recently received her master’s degree as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. But Krystal’s earlier life gave little indication that it would turn out this way.

Born in Barbados, she moved to New York City when she was 8, living with her troubled mother. A few years later, she was removed from her mother’s care and sent to a foster home. When authorities felt she wasn’t doing well emotionally in foster care, she was placed in psychiatric hospitals for several years, then moved to a group home at 15. “I grew up in the system,” she said. Eventually, at 19, she became unhoused, living in homeless shelters.

Krystal’s life took an upturn after she earned her high school equivalency certificate with the help of a community agency. When her mother, with whom she had not been living, inherited a home in Kentucky, they moved. Her mom later sold the house, giving Krystal some of the proceeds and enabling her to launch her nursing education. “That was my start,” she said. She was attracted to nursing for its caring aspect.

Krystal said she views herself a non-judgmental advocate for her patients. “Because you are the liaison—so if they need social services, getting them that. If they need to communicate something to the doctor that they can’t express themselves, doing that. Even if they don’t necessarily live a good life—even though it’s something they may have caused because of their choices—still being kind. Meeting people where they’re at, seeing them as people, flaws and all.”

Krystal’s ultimate goal is to work as a therapist in telehealth, serving those who may not be able to make it to a clinic. Her personal and professional experiences—both as a patient and a caregiver—have prepared her for this work.

“I feel like anything to do with psych follows you your entire life,” she said. “And I feel like it’s very easy to diagnose people out of a book. But a diagnosis of major depression could also have a physical cause—It could also be your energy is low, your vitamin B12 is low, your vitamin D is low, and that’s what’s causing these things. So I feel like before we just throw a diagnosis at people who are going to follow them for the rest of their life, we should really be compassionate and caring and try to figure out root cause.”

Krystal has a 10-year-old and a 1-year-old, and she and her husband, a safety specialist at Amazon, love to travel with the family. Barbados may be in the cards as a destination, perhaps permanently. She said she hopes to return to Barbados someday–not just to visit, but to give back by providing mental health care. While she realizes her life could have turned out very differently, Krystal said she has always “wanted more out of life,” even as a child, and was challenged to overcome her circumstances by those who thought she couldn’t.

Praising her experiences at Saint Joseph Hospital, Krystal shared about encountering a lack of support in other workplaces, explaining, “Kentucky can be prejudiced and as a Black nurse, it’s very difficult because a lot of the times your populations, they don’t expect you to be a nurse, don’t expect you to be educated and they treat you as such.” But she said her supervisors at Saint Joseph have always “had my back, no matter what  …  I just feel like I have the support I need. I appreciate that and I value that.” 

Krystal received a Daisy Award earlier this year for actions that demonstrate humankindness. She arranged for a “date” for a terminal cancer patient and his wife, picking up cute cakes and mocktails from the cafeteria. She took video and photographs of the bedside picnic as a memento of remembrance for the patient’s family. Later, when the family gathered prior to death, she took videos of their goodbyes and made sure they had music to play during that last night. 

When asked about these acts of humankindness, Krystal downplayed her actions. “If I have five to 10 minutes that I can create that moment for them that they will have for a lifetime—if that’s something I can do that they will be able to remember and have—that’s nothing.”