UPMC St. Margaret nurse Julie Ann Farren set early sights on career

Julie Ann Farren jokes that her career aspirations were cemented in second grade when her dad gave her a frozen deer heart to take to school for show and tell.

“He gave me a whole speech on the anatomy,” said Farren, who attended St. Alphonsus Catholic School in Springdale.

“All my classmates were so excited, but the teacher didn’t quite know what to say.”

Farren credits those early interactions with her dad, an avid outdoorsman, for setting her on a path in the medical field.

The 64-year-old, an operating room nurse at UPMC St. Margaret Harmar Outpatient Center, has been caring for patients for more than four decades.

She was among hundreds celebrated last week by the health system during Nurses Week.

Employees were feted with food trucks, ice cream socials, games, a photo booth and a nacho bar, said Karen Beardsley, UPMC St. Margaret public relations manager.

Dave Patton, UPMC St. Margaret president, thanked the team for setting high standards.

“We have a great deal to be proud of, and we have accomplished so much working together as one UPMC St. Margaret team,” Patton said.

Farren, a resident of Cheswick, recalled hunting as a child with her dad. She said it was OK, but she was more intrigued when it came time to prepare the game.

“My sister and I would get our little chairs in the basement and sit down to watch him skin rabbits,” she said.

“My sister would run off screaming, ‘Eww.’ Me? I waited for him to cut the foot off and hand it to me for good luck.

“I watched him skin deer and hang them for days to cure the meat. I loved just looking at the anatomy of these animals. The blood and guts never bothered me. I think I was about 10 years old when I announced I would be an operating room nurse.”

A graduate of Springdale High School, Farren earned her nursing degree at Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia.

What she lacked in surgical experience during classtime, Farren said she made up for during summer stints as an operating room assistant at a nearby hospital in Charleston.

Her first job out of school was at Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

“They took me straight from college, which was fantastic,” she said. “If you could work at AGH, you could work anywhere.”

For the next several decades, Farren gained experience in different facilities throughout the region that included UPMC Shadyside, The Medical Eye Bank of Western PA and a private practice.

When the Harmar hospital opened 14 years ago, Farren found her perfect job, she said.

“I think it’s a full circle moment for me. My grandmother wanted to be a nurse in the 1940s, but they wanted women to be secretaries back then,” she said.

“I’ve had an opportunity to help others all these years, and I got to do what she never was able to.”