SUNA Spotlight: Cheryl Battani

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One of Great Lakes SUNA’s newest members is Cheryl Battani, RN, a Urology Nurse Clinician at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

Cheryl has been at Beaumont for 20 years, but started her urology phase in August of 1997. She also worked at Mt. Carmel on a renal unit her first two years of nursing.

Great Lakes SUNA has been actively recruiting floor nurses and Cheryl says that was one of the reasons she chose to join SUNA.

“I have known (fellow Great Lakes member) Shelly (Lajiness, NP) for the last few years and have been to a few of the conferences so I decided to join this year,” said Cheryl. “Because I have just joined this year, I am encouraging nurses here to join SUNA also.”

Though she had options as to what to do with this position when she first started this role, Cheryl feels she made the right choice by going into urology.

“When I started this job, the manager told me to decide what to do with it,” she said. “The unit was just taking on urology, so I decided to make it my main focus. I absolutely love urology and find it to be a very interesting field.”

Also interesting is the roads, literally, that Cheryl took to arrive where she is today.

She went to Oakland Community College for her ADN degree and then continued at Oakland University for her BSN. Cheryl also has a BA in Elementary Education from OU.

“I live in Madison Heights where I, for the most part, grew up and went to high school there,” Cheryl said. “I have lived in Italy and Turkey for 2 ½ years while I was in elementary school, and New Orleans for two years when I was in junior high. I had a great childhood with all these experiences.”

Cheryl has been married for almost 35 years to her high school sweetheart, Michael. The couple has two children, Paul, 31, who does computer support for Tech Team Global and Melissa, 27, who graduated from Eastern Michigan University last year and is still currently looking for a job in her field.