Where Are They Now?
D’Nai Pringle grew up an only child. “You have to do things to entertain yourself,” she said. “I played with Barbies and baby dolls, and I just took care of them.”
Her early nurturing instincts have served Pringle well — as a labor and delivery nurse and a mother of two, she’s built her whole life around caring for people in her family and community.
Pringle graduated from Dublin High School in 1999 and went to Tarleton, where she studied nursing. She graduated with her Bachelors in 2005 and began working at Texas Health Fort Worth in the neonatal ICU.
In 2008, she moved back to Stephenville to work at Texas Health Stephenville in their women’s obstetrical unit. “It’s an all-encompassing unit,” she said. “They do women’s health, labor and delivery, postpartum care and newborn care.”
Her prior work in the neonatal ICU was helpful for the department, and she even began teaching neonatal resuscitation to the other hospital staff. She also worked part-time in Tarleton’s Center for Clinical Simulation & Competency, where she performed lab tests.
In 2021, the Stephenville labor and delivery unit shut down, and Pringle began working as a travel nurse within the Texas Health system. “It was hard,” she said. “We’d travel 90 miles in a 12-hour shift. It was long, long days.”
She would travel based on which hospitals needed help that day, and she enjoyed interacting with different staff. “The units were so welcoming and everybody is very accepting and happy to have you there,” she said. “It’s cool because you can meet new people and have a change of scenery.”
In 2022, after working as a travel nurse for a year, Pringle cross-trained with another department in the hospital, and now works in the preoperative and post anesthesia care unit. An average day for her starts early, and she sees patients admitted for all kinds of surgeries, from cataract to gall bladder procedures.
She spends a lot of time prepping her patients for their surgery. “I call and make sure everybody has their orders in their labs, make sure that they’re here on time and go over all their medical history,” she said. “It’s a good environment, very positive.”
She also continues to help out as needed in the women’s obstetrical unit, which has since reopened.
Often, her patients are people Pringle already knows. “I really love having that personal connection,” she said. “It’s really special. You don’t really get it in the city because there’s just so many people that you don’t usually see people you know; that’s a whole different type of nursing.”
Pringle enjoys the close knit community at Texas Health. “We’re all a big family,” she said. “It makes you happy to go to work. And I love taking care of my friends and my neighbors and my family… I’ll probably retire here.”
When Pringle is not working at the hospital, she’s usually spending time with her family. She and her husband Jonathan Pringle live in Stephenville. Pringle has two teenage children, Jadon and Avery Johnson. Jadon, 19, plays baseball at Wayland Baptist University in Plainview. Avery, 17, goes to high school in Stephenville and studies cosmetology at Ranger College on the side.
The family enjoys spending time outside. “We like to travel around in our camper and go to the lake,” she said.
Pringle’s father and stepmother, Johnny and Amber McClatchy, live in Dublin. Her mother, Rayanne McClatchy, lives in Glen Rose.
“My parents supported me a ton as I was pursuing [my career],” she said. “I was the first one to go to college in my family, and my parents were very supportive and pushed me to do hard things.”
Pringle draws strength and inspiration from her family and her faith. She grew up attending Cottonwood Baptist Church. “That church was definitely the foundation for me coming to know Jesus,” she said. “They led me to Christ and pointed me in all the right directions. That whole church is just amazing.”
Pringle says that her faith helps her get through tough times at work. “As a nurse you lose patients a lot, and it can be really challenging,” she said. “If you don’t have a good foundation of spirituality, then it’s really hard to go on and keep going. For me, my faith in God keeps me going.”
Pringle’s advice to Dublin graduates is to have faith in themselves and find a career that really makes them happy. “Pursue whatever fulfills your soul and really brings out all of the positive traits that you have,” she said. “It’s really all about what sets your soul on fire; what comes naturally and just feels right.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.