CampusRN Job Blog
Charter Visiting Nurse Association member reflects on a life of service
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Back in 1918, the year Red Bank native Esther Long Bragar was born, New Jersey couldn’t yet dream of the many inventions that were still to come, such as cellphones, cars, TVs or even radios. There were no computers or email, no airplanes criss-crossing the sky or telecommunications towers dotting the landscape.
But while so much has changed, one thing never has — the need for quality nursing and health care. And Bragar, one of the charter members of the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, was up to the task.
Bragar, who will celebrate her 94th birthday May 21, began her training right after high school in 1936, when she attended what was then called the Monmouth Memorial School of Nursing. As part of her curriculum, Bragar received training in public health nursing by the Monmouth County Organization for Social Service (MCOSS), and she looks back on her fieldwork with pride and gratitude.
Helping at home
From the Red Bank home she shares with daughter, Judy Long, Bragar recently recalled her experiences as a public health nurse with VNA, the human connection and care she provided, and the landmark organization — now in its 100th year of providing home health and community-based services to 13 counties in the state — that played an important role in her career and in the lives of those less fortunate during America’s own coming of age in the 20th century.
Though her family wanted her to be a teacher, “I always wanted to be a nurse,” Bragar said. And while she described her three years of nursing school as “hard and strict,” they afforded her invaluable field experience. As part of her public health clinical work with MCOSS, Bragar was sent into the community to treat patients all throughout her school years.
“I chose the public health venue because it offered an opportunity to get out into the community and make home visits,” Bragar said of the long days spent performing blood-pressure checks, administering shots, and dispensing penicillin and antibiotics, which were in short supply during the war years. “But on occasion I had to do some sensational acts that would knock your socks off,” she said with a smile.
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How to get ahead in … school nursing
Saturday, May 19, 2012
The Nitty Nora image of the school nurse does not match the reality of today’s professional.
The role of the school nurse has changed significantly from the traditional image of somebody who checks children for nits and hands out paracetamol with a few words of comfort.
Today, a school nurse has key public health responsibilities, is unlikely to be based in a school and could spend up to 70% of the week involved in safeguarding and child protection work.
Now the government wants to raise the profile of this sometimes forgotten army of nurses who only seem to hit the headlines when they are criticised for handing out the morning-after pill to under-age teenagers without their parents’ consent.
At the moment, school nurses come under the control of commissioners at primary care trusts but, in future, nursing services will be commissioned by the new health and wellbeing boards that are being set up by local authorities.
The Department of Health has published new guidance which, for the first time, spells out the nurses’ role, dividing it into four distinct levels. At the bottom level, their job is to focus onhealth and to encourage healthy lifestyles; at the top, their responsibilities – described as “universal partnership plus” – would include working with a child and family with complex needs, such as substance misuse.
Safeguarding is a theme which underpins all levels. The report, entitled Getting it right for children, young people and families, is described as “groundbreaking” by the School and Public Health Nurses Association, which was a member of the working party which drew up its recommendations.
Sharon White, the association’s professional officer, says: “I have been in school nursing for 25 years and I have never been so excited or exhausted. This is a landmark report. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing with calls from people, some of them already in nursing, but also lots of sixth formers who want to know how they can become school nurses.”
This degree of interest is significant because, traditionally, the service appeals to older nurses with child-care commitments looking for a job in school term time. Attracting a younger workforce whose first career choice is school nursing would help raise its status, not only in nursing and the NHS but across the wider public sector.
While the report throws the spotlight on school nursing as a career – which was one of its intentions – it is also hoped that it will spread best practice and realise the potential of this public health workforce.
Fiona Smith, the Royal College of Nursing’s adviser on children and young people’s nursing, says: “There are already some very good examples of school nursing services where, because of the work they have done, they have been able to demonstrate the impact that they have had on the health outcomes of children and young people.
“Commissioners have increased the school nursing resources. But the picture varies across the country: in other places, we have situations where a school nurse is responsible for a cluster of around 12 schools.”
Last year, the college conducted a workforce survey that found that one in six school nurses had had posts cut in the previous 12 months and a third reported recruitment freezes, which meant vacancies were being left unfilled.
The findings are out of step with official Department of Health figures, which claim that the number of full-time equivalent school nurses with a specialist community public health nurse qualification has increased from 1,140 in May 2010 to 1165 in September 2011.
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The Power of Nursing
Saturday, May 19, 2012
In 2010, 5.9 million children were reported as abused or neglected in the United States. If you were a policy maker and you knew of a program that could cut this figure in half, what would you do? What if you could reduce the number of babies or toddlers hospitalized for accidents or poisonings by more than half? Or provide a 5 to 7 point I.Q. boost to children born to the most vulnerable mothers?
Well, there is a way. These and other striking results have been documented in studies of a program called the Nurse-Family Partnership, or NFP, which arranges for registered nurses to make regular home visits to first-time low-income or vulnerable mothers, starting early in their pregnancies and continuing until their child is 2.
We tend to think of social change as more of an art than a science. “What’s unique about Nurse-Family Partnership is that the program was studied in what’s considered the strongest study design, and it showed sizable, sustained effects on important life outcomes which were replicated across different populations,” explained Jon Baron, president of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a nonpartisan group. “This is very unusual. There are probably only about ten programs across all areas of social policy that currently meet that standard.”
What that means, notes Baron, is that if policy makers replicate the program faithfully they can be confident that it will change people’s lives in meaningful ways — improving child and maternal health, promoting positive parenting, children’s school readiness and families’ economic self-sufficiency, and reducing juvenile delinquency and crime.
NFP is not a new idea — it’s almost 40 years old — but after decades of study the program, which has assisted 151,000 families, has the potential for broader impact, thanks to the Affordable Care Act’s Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, which provides $1.5 billion for states to expand such programs.
Done well, it could be among the best money the government spends. Investments in early childhood development produce big payoffs for society. (A 2005 RAND study estimated that NFP provided $5.70 in benefits to society for every dollar spent.) But there’s an important concern: home visiting programs are not all effective. When carefully studied, only a few have been shown to reduce the physical abuse and neglect of children. Among the programs that meet the government’s standard for funding, there are large variations in evidence of impact (pdf). Policy makers and proponents of home visiting would do well to pay attention to the specific elements in the Nurse-Family Partnership’s model that account for its success.
NFP was founded by David Olds, who directs the Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Early in his career, Olds worked in a day care center in Baltimore because he believed that quality preschool attention would help disadvantaged children succeed in life. What he began to see was that, for some kids, it was already too late to make big gains. If children had been abused or neglected or exposed to domestic violence, or if their mothers had abused drugs, alcohol or tobacco while pregnant, their brains could have been damaged in ways that limited the children’s abilities to control impulses, sustain attention or develop language.
Olds developed NFP in the early 1970s. He conducted his first large study in 1977, in Elmira, N.Y., a semi-rural, mostly white, community with one of the highest poverty rates in the state. The program produced strong results. Follow-up studies would reveal that, by age 19, the youths whose mothers received visits from nurses two decades earlier, were 58 percent less likely to have been convicted of a crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, Olds spread the work to Memphis and Denver and subjected the program to more randomized study with populations of urban blacks and Hispanics. The results continued to be impressive. In 1996, NFP began wider replication; the model is now being implemented by health and social service providers in 40 states.
As Olds published his results, the idea gained momentum, but the imitations did not remain faithful to NFP’s approach. “People adopted all kinds of home visiting models and used our evidence to make claims,” he recalled. In the early 1990s, for example, the federal government, inspired in part by NFP, began a $240 million program to train paraprofessionals, rather than nurses, to make home visits to low-income families with young children. NFP also experimented in Denver, using paraprofessionals (trained from the communities they served) in place of nurses for a subset of families.
In both cases, paraprofessionals didn’t get the same results. When it came to improving children’s health and development, maternal health, and mothers’ life success, the nurses were far more effective. In the federal program, paraprofessionals produced no effects on children’s health or development or their parents’ economic self-sufficiency.
What’s special about nurses? For one thing, trust. In public opinion polls, nurses are consistently rated as the most honest and ethical professionals by a large margin. But there were other reasons nurses were effective. Pregnant women are concerned about their bodies and their babies. Is the baby developing well? What can I do for my back pain? What should I be eating? What birthing options are available? Those are questions mothers wanted to ask nurses, which was why they were motivated to keep up the visits, especially mothers who were pregnant for the first time.
Nurses had more influence encouraging mothers to delay subsequent pregnancies, Olds explained. They could identify emerging complications more promptly, and they were more successful at getting mothers to stop or reduce smoking, drug or alcohol use. This is vital. Prenatal exposure to neurotoxicants is associated with intellectual and emotional deficits. It can also make babies more irritable, which increases risks of abuse. (A mother who was abused herself is more likely to misinterpret an inconsolable baby’s crying as “bad behavior.”)
“A lot of the young mothers have had some pretty terrible early life experiences,” says Olds. “It’s not uncommon for them to have been abused by partners or never have had support and care from a mother. Their lives haven’t been filled with much success and hope. If you ask them what they want for themselves, it’s not uncommon for them to say, ‘What do you mean?’”
A big part of NFP’s work is helping them answer this question.
Consider the relationship between Rita Erickson and Valerie Carberry. Rita had had a methadone addiction for 12 years and was living from place to place in Lakewood, Colo. She found out she was pregnant; a parole officer told her about NFP. “I’d burned bridges with my family,” Rita told me. “I was running around with the wrong people. I didn’t have anyone I could ask about being pregnant.” In the early months, Valerie had to chase her around town, Rita recalled. “I was worried she might say, ‘This is too much hassle. Come back when you have your act together.’ But she stuck with me.”
Over the next two years, they embarked on a journey together. “I had a zillion questions,” Rita recalled. “I was really nervous at first. I had lived most of my adult life as a drug addict. I didn’t know how to take care of myself.” On visits, they discussed everything: prenatal care, nutrition, exercise, delivery options. After Rita’s daughter, Danika, was born, they focused on things like how to recognize feeding and disengagement cues, remembering to sleep when the baby sleeps, how to manage child care so Rita could go back to school. For Rita, what made the biggest impression was hearing about how a baby’s brain develops — how vital it was to talk and read a lot to Danika, and to use “love and logic” so she develops empathy. Once Valerie explained that when babies are touching their hands, they’re discovering that they have two. “To me that was really amazing,” Rita said.
This month, Rita is graduating from Red Rocks Community College with an associate degree in business administration. She’s going to transfer to Regis University to do a bachelors degree. Her faculty selected her as outstanding graduate based on leadership and academic achievement — and she was asked to lead the graduation procession and give one of the commencement speeches. Danika is thriving, Rita said. Recently, she came home from preschool and announced: “Mommy, I didn’t have a good day at school today because I made some bad decisions and you wouldn’t be proud of me.” (She had pushed another child on the playground.) As for the NFP, Rita says that it helped her recover from her own bad decisions. When Valerie came along, she needed help badly. “I didn’t care about my life. I didn’t care about anything. I never ever thought I would have ended up where I am today.”
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Graduates fight odds to become nurses
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Two bouts with cancer could not prevent former UB student-athlete Jacob Madonia from receiving his bachelor’s degree in nursing last week.
Jacob Madonia and My Lan N. Le crossed the stage at the School of Nursing commencement on May 12 to get their diplomas in the last leg of a marathon whose finish line must have seemed, at times, impossible to cross.
Both received bachelor’s degrees in nursing, both plan to go back to school to get their Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees, both can’t see themselves in any other profession and both struggled with adversity. But their stories couldn’t be more different.
Madonia came to UB on a sports scholarship—he was a discus thrower and shot putter; when you see him in person, he looks like the athlete his is. To use a cliché, he is the picture of health. It’s hard to believe that he had a small section of his upper right lung removed just three weeks ago.
“I was getting ready to do a summer internship with the Cleveland Browns in 2008 and had had a lump on my left foot for a while when my girlfriend noticed it and was concerned. I thought that before I go to Cleveland I should find out what this is. And, it was beginning to bother me.”
Madonia had the lump partially removed by a podiatrist, who then referred him to an orthopedic surgeon to see if the rest of the growth could be removed. The surgeon referred him to Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI).
It was diagnosed as a synovial sarcoma, a fairly rare malignant growth. Madonia’s third toe and metatarsal bone and the second metatarsal were removed from his left foot. The RPCI doctors were able to save the big toe.
At that point, Madonia had attained a bachelor’s degree in psychology and was working on a master’s degree in exercise science. After undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, and experiencing steroid-induced depression and blistering, painful lesions on his foot after being radiated, he was still able to complete his MS in exercise science.
However, while he was carrying out his internship in cardiac rehab, he was so inspired by the nurses at Mount St. Mary’s Hospital and Health Center in Lewiston that he decided to go back to school for nursing and entered UB’s accelerated bachelor’s degree program in May 2011.
Not only did Madonia complete his master’s and begin nursing school during this period, he also placed second at the track-and-field conference championships in 2009 and also qualified for NCAA regionals that year. He went on to win the Indoor Mid-American Conference Championships in 2010.
When asked what nursing specialty he wants to work in when he graduates, he smiles and says, “pediatrics at Roswell Park.”
“A kid can have leukemia or lymphoma, but they’re a kid first,” Madonia says. “For them, the disease comes second. And it also helps that I have gone through some of what they’re going through. When I’m trying to access or flush their mediports (the place where they inject chemotherapy) and it hurts, I can show them where my mediport was and that I know what they’re going through. It really helps.”
Madonia is trying to reach some of the more notable athletes who have graduated from UB to have them come to the pediatrics ward at RPCI.
If all of this hasn’t been challenging enough, Madonia lost his father last year. He also found that his cancer had metastasized to his right lung. The surgery to remove part of the lung was less than a month ago.
“As an athlete, cancer did not stop him…he coaches on the track-and-field team and has continued to be an excellent student and athlete,” notes Mimi Haskins, UB clinical instructor in nursing. “This spring semester, at a routine checkup, after he discovered that he had lung metastasis, he still couldn’t be stopped. He was treated and completed his N447 nursing course work and will graduate with his class. He is truly an inspiration.”
My Lan N. Le has had several forks in her road to becoming a nurse.
When Le was 10 years old, her father suffered a heart attack and died before her eyes.
At the time, she says, she felt so helpless. When her father started showing signs of respiratory distress, she remembers running to a corner of the kitchen and telling herself that everything was going to be OK.
That wasn’t the case. Le recounts what happened next.
“I remember when the EMTs came and started doing CPR, even defibrillating him a couple of times, that everything they did seemed futile. Being in the waiting room of the hospital, time seemed to stand still. They called us back into an office where my brother and I stood outside the door with our uncle while our mother was inside talking to one of the staff members. I vividly remember my mom turning her head toward us and I asked her if daddy had passed. She nodded her head ‘yes.’”
Le didn’t think of becoming a nurse then. She says with a smile that “that would be a stretch.” But the thought that maybe she could’ve done a better job resuscitating him has stayed with her.
When asked if she is from Western New York, Le says proudly, “born and bred!” She attended P.S. 45 International School. Her primary language was Vietnamese, but she also spoke English. While she was deciding what high school to go to, another fork in the road emerged.
Le wanted to go to Hutchinson Central Technical High School or, Hutch Tech as she calls it. But Le’s mother, a strong figure in her life and a licensed practical nurse, had heard the nurses at work talking about their children going to City Honors.
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Following a job plan leads to success
Saturday, May 19, 2012
The future of our country is in good hands, from what I have recently seen. Here are the stories of three people willing to work hard, develop skills and start career training programs. Their stories show that if you want to enter or re-enter the job market, you will do a lot better if you prepare well, even in a tough economy.
Two are young men just graduating high school this June. The other is a middle-aged woman who has embarked on a new career path. What is great about all three is the time and effort they put into planning how they will make their goals achievable. Each involves continuing their education on a part-time or full-time basis.
Let’s start with Jack (all names have been changed to protect their privacy). He wants to be a game warden. Jack knew a friend who was a game warden and he sometimes traveled with him on his job. Jack liked what the game warden, did to help the environment and stop people from doing illegal acts. He sees this as a noble and worthy job.
Jack wants to be a leader one day and likes the idea of interacting with many people, without having to do the same thing everyday. Jack thinks this is a dream job for him, because he was active in sports in high school, and really likes hunting and fishing. To prepare for becoming a game warden, Jack will attend a local community college to earn credits in the core educational courses needed to attain that job.
Stan is another aspiring young man. He admired his cousin’s job, working at an out-of-town, large manufacturing company. With his cousin’s help, Stan started to learn about the world of computer numerically controlled machinery. Using that information, Stan started to work as a CNC machine operator last year, on a part-time basis, for a local metal machine shop.
Stan liked the job and felt that the employer liked him and his work at their company. The owner of the company is known in the community as an honorable and ethical small business leader. In fact, the owner made Stan a wonderful offer. He said that the company would pay Stan’s evening college costs after he started working full-time at the company’s day shift, as one of their CNC machine operators. Stan feels it will take him five years to complete his college education, but he likes what he will be doing.
“I am a hands-on type of guy that feels like contributing,” said Stan, who expects to take advantage of the offer for a full-time job with the company, along with their support for the cost of his education. Everyone wins in this situation.
Now let’s talk about Kim, who is starting on a new career in nursing. Kim is a bright person who already has advanced college degrees, but has found it tough to get jobs that would allow her to support herself while paying off her college debts. Kim is single now, with a grown child living away from home. She hopes that a nursing career will allow her to pay her debts and manage her expenses.
When Kim finishes her nursing studies, she expects to have a satisfying career. The demand for skilled nurses is growing, and with Kim’s background, many opportunities including various medical administration jobs could open up for her in the health care field.
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Why I Love My Job: Brandie A. Villanova, RN, BSN
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Job: Registered nurse on the orthopedic floor at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge.
What I do: “I mostly receive surgical patients from the recovery unit, who may have just had a total joint replacement.”
How I got into this: “Throughout nursing school, I worked for a local orthopedic office, and loved the physician I worked under. The physician would allow me to observe his exams and explain and interpret any MRI or other diagnostic test presented. I absolutely loved the experience and when I was presented with the opportunity to work on an orthopedic floor, I took it.”
Best part of the job: “My job is very rewarding. I get to see patient’s progress — from learning to stand up and walk again on a surgical leg, to walking around the unit and climbing stairs.
“Some patients have a longer rehabilitation than others, and I have even gotten emotional simply watching a patient do her exercises because I had watched her progress over weeks. When I get to see and hear of the impact that I have had on a patient’s progress and rehabilitation, the feeling is overwhelming.”
Most challenging part: “Time management. Some days it is so hard to find the time to do everything I need to within a 12-hour shift. There are days I seem to run all day long, but somehow the job always gets done.”
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Just in time for Mother’s Day, Illinois mom and daughter score college diplomas
Friday, May 11, 2012
Susan Dobson knows a thing or two about a life interrupted. Twenty six years ago she enrolled in the nursing program at Methodist Hospital in Peoria, Illinois, but then dropped out to raise a family. Once her kids were settled in school, she went to work, but she always harbored the dream of getting that nursing degree. When she was laid off from her job in 2009, she took stock of her life and decided it was time to go back to school.
She enrolled at Carl Sandburg College, a two year community college in Galensberg, Illinois, and reignited her nursing studies. Now this “returning mom” will soon be walking across the stage to receive her nursing degree...but when she gets that diploma, she won’t be alone. She will be graduating with her daughter, Miranda, who will be awarded an associate arts degree at the same commencement ceremony.
Enrolling at the same college at the same time seemed like a “neat” idea to Susan, but this savvy mom realized that some boundaries needed to be established and that her daughter was going to need some space of her own. And while Miranda admits that having her mom on campus took some getting used to, she found herself seeking Susan out during meal breaks, and both women found their mother-daughter study session to be very productive. But just as important for Susan, she got to see her daughter blossom in an academic environment.
“She made the dean’s list her first semester and honors every semester since,” this proud mother reports. “She’s looking at dean’s list this semester.”
Miranda is quick to give credit to CSC’s federally-funded TRIO Student Support Services for giving her the tools to thrive as a student. The TRIO program is specifically geared for ‘first generation college students’—i.e. students who come from families where neither parent holds a college degree—who are seeking to enter a 4-year degree program after graduating from CSC. As a CSC and TRIO graduate, Miranda has been accepted at Illinois Southern University, where she will pursue a degree in elementary education. And to hear Miranda tell it, the TRIO program was the key to keeping her on track to ISU.
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Nurses are the ‘glue’ of health industry
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Griselda Brown started as a social worker in a nursing home in Yuma. She really enjoyed the interaction with patients, but she found that when a patient had something simple like a headache or gash on the arm, she couldn’t help them.
So Brown became a nurse, which allowed her to bridge the gap and directly care for patients. She has been a nurse for nine years and currently is a palliative care staff nurse in the intensive care unit at Yuma Regional Medical Center.
“I love my job,” Brown said.
School nurse Shirley Rodriguez likes giving shots to kids. Not because of the pain she might inflict, but because she’s learned how to do it WITHOUT hurting them. She’s good at distracting kids and getting them to laugh at the right time.
Rodriguez is the health services coordinator for Yuma School District 1 and the school nurse at Alice Byrne Elementary School.
“I love kids. I love getting them the help they need,” Rodriguez said.
For Steve Champion, a former Army medic, hospice nursing is like being an “ER on the fly.” He enjoys the “ongoing rush” he gets from helping people in crisis. As a registered nurse with Hospice Compassus, he has to use all of the skills he’s worked for years to develop.
“This job requires you to use every skill you have and to give of yourself. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing,” Champion said.
Fran Mack, a home health nurse, feels honored at being allowed into patients’ homes, “the most sacred place on Earth for patients, their sanctuary and haven.”
Her role as a nurse practitioner with Caring Touch Home Care allows her to treat patients in their home environment. She feels strongly about empowering patients and their families so they can make informed decisions.
“Nursing is not a profession, it’s a way of life,” Mack said.
The Yuma Sun interviewed nurses in a variety of fields — hospital, home health, hospice and school nursing — in honor of National Nurses Week, which will be celebrated from May 6, also National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing.
“Glue” of health care
Brenda Hall, who oversees the 760 nurses at YRMC as vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer, calls nurses the “glue” of the health-care system.
“Nurses are there 24/7. They are your 24-hour caregivers when you’re in the hospital. They’re there to meet your needs and figure out how to take care of you.”
Hall has been a nurse for more than 30 years and has worked in seven states in just about every field, from heart surgery and operating room to delivery.
“I absolutely fell in love with nursing. For me, there’s no better career. I love taking care of patients. It’s almost like magic, seeing someone so sick and being a part of them getting better.”
She believes anyone can be a nurse and it doesn’t take a specific personality. “It’s so broad, there are so many things you can do, I don’t know if personality is important.”
Some nurses don’t have contact with patients, like nurses who work in the insurance business, while others work “up close and personal,” like those in the neonatal intensive care unit.
However, Hall noted, a nurse has to be willing to “focus on something or someone else other than yourself and be able to extend yourself.”
Hospital
Being able to directly care for people is what drew Griselda Brown into nursing six years ago.
“Honestly, the best part are the families and patients. I spend a lot of time with them, and when I can help them understand something, it feels good.”
As a palliative care nurse, her “job is to support and advocate for our patients. Sometimes we get so busy looking at the medical, we forget the emotional and progression of the disease. Families might not understand what’s happening.”
Aside from managing symptoms, Brown helps families understand all of the issues “so they can make decisions for the future.”
The challenge is discussing topics related to end of life. “Some don’t want to talk about it.”
Home health
Fran Mack, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years and a home health nurse since the early 1990s, values the opportunities to teach and educate patients and families.
“The best part of the job are the patients and helping people to make informed decisions.”
If a patient is dealing with a new diagnosis, she teaches the person and family how the disease will affect them not only on a physical level, but every aspect of their life. This means informing them about diet, medication side effects, what happens if they don’t take the medication, etc.
The challenge for her is adapting to whatever environment she’s “thrown into.”
“I have been in homes with chickens in the living room. Sometimes they’re dysfunctional homes. I have to make sure it’s safe. But I have to put aside my own values and standards to take care of a patient.”
She noted that “frontline nursing really needs to be the voice that leads how health care should run.” Because they spend so much time with patients, they understand how health-care policies “trickle down to the single patient.”
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Nurse journeys through many levels of care
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
More than 20 years ago I was a single mother with two children and a house payment. At the time I was working as waitress, which I loved, but it did not provide my family with financial security or health insurance. So I rode my bike to nearby Villa Maria College and met with an admissions counselor. My first question was about a degree that would assure me a job. Being in food service, I worked with a lot of people who had college degrees but were unable to find jobs in their field of study. I did not have the time, energy, or money to spend years getting a degree only to find myself waitressing again.
After listening to my concerns the admissions counselor answered, “Be a nurse. You will always have a job.” This sounded good to me. Even though I had never thought about being a nurse, this seemed to be the answer to my problem. My focus at the time was to get in, get out and get working at a job with benefits. I enrolled and graduated two years later with an associate degree in nursing.
Then I was off to work at a job with a steady paycheck and health insurance. This was great and I had accomplished my goal. I also discovered that I loved being a nurse and the bonus was that every day I had an opportunity to make a difference.
My first nursing job was in cardiology and then I moved to home care. After a few years I became a hospice nurse, which was where I needed to be. I loved being a hospice nurse and became passionate about a good end-of-life experience for everyone. I believe in the hospice philosophy of living as well as you can for as long as you can. Isn’t this what everyone wants?
After 10 great years, I left hospice to become the palliative care coordinator at The Regional Cancer Center. I had learned so much during my time as a hospice nurse and hoped that I could use my skills and knowledge to help cancer patients maintain their quality of life while facing a life-threatening disease. While working with cancer patients and caregivers can be challenging and emotionally draining, it can also be rewarding. Cancer is a heartbreaking word and a life changing event for patients, their families and caregivers. Much can be done to address pain and suffering throughout the cancer journey if we take the time to listen.
As a palliative care nurse I provide symptom management and extra support to patients and caregivers. Patients who have their needs met have fewer psychosocial issues, such as depression, stress and worry, and are more likely to complete their cancer treatments. This allows patients with a life-threatening disease to live as well as they can for as long as possible.
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Memphis-area nurses honored while field grows, transforms
Monday, May 07, 2012
“Some things that I learned the first semester I had to relearn the last semester,” said Cassandra Kimberly as she prepared to graduate Saturday from nursing school at the University of Memphis.
The world is changing so fast that nursing school is just one stop in a lifetime of keeping up with everything from the latest sleeping potion and painkiller to the best way to monitor the heart rate of an unborn baby.
Fifteen years ago, nursing schools introduced mannequins to help students learn to bathe patients and give injections. Mannequins now are “simulators,” computerized versions of patients that can be programmed for more than 50 medical-surgical scenarios. Among them are a “pregnant” mannequin that delivers a baby and a newborn simulator that moves, cries and changes color as it helps students learn about childbirth.
For Kim Ridley, a nurse recruiter and emergency room nurse at Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto, nursing has undergone a major makeover since she graduated. “When I got out of school 30 years ago, you wore the little caps and support hose. Now we’re in a world of robotic surgery and transplants. Nurses are more specialized. We have burn units and a stem-cell transplant floor.”
The nurses are among more than 3 million across the country being honored during National Nurses Day today and during National Nurses Week, which ends on the birthday of Florence Nightingale on May 12.
The one thing that hasn’t changed since Nightingale established the first professional nursing school in 1860 is a perennial shortage of nurses.
With the growing baby boomer population, employment of nurses was projected to grow 26 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a faster rate of growth than what’s expected for most other occupations.
At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, interim College of Nursing Dean Susan Jacob said the school is having to turn away growing numbers of applicants because of a lack of resources and faculty. “We had a lull in student applicants about eight years ago. Then people tried to get people interested in nursing. Then the schools couldn’t accommodate that many people.”
Compounding the problem, salaries for nurses rose faster than salaries for nursing faculty, says Jacob. That meant some faculty left to return to the practice of nursing. The recession then added to the problem. Older nurses who had reduced hours or left the profession returned to the workforce or increased their hours just as people looking for stable jobs were applying to nursing schools.
The result, says Jacob, is a highly competitive environment. “Schools will tell you they are admitting people with GPAs of 3.8.”
At Southwest Tennessee Community College, nursing department head Mary Vines said the department has outgrown its space and will be moving into a new building next year along with natural science and biotechnology divisions.
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