R e t u r n   t o   t a b l e   o f   c o n t e n t s

   

F r o m   t h e   D e a n

 

Dean Marla Salmon

 

A Global Passion to Care

This has truly been a remarkable year for the School of Nursing. We have all begun to feel at home in our wonderful new building. And we have expanded our global efforts to improve health care delivery through the new Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing.

Nursing has many faces around the world. I can’t help but think of nurses in war zones who work months and even years with little or no pay. They are the fragile threads that hold damaged communities and health systems together. Many skilled nurses work with immigrant populations in the United States, making sure their families receive care. I also admire the nurses and community health workers around the world who put themselves at risk every day to care for patients with AIDS and other terrible diseases. These caregivers have no access to the protections that we take for granted—gloves, disinfectants, sterilized instruments, controlled work environments—and their ranks are being decimated by the same illnesses that afflict their patients. Then there are the nurses who cross rigid political and social lines to care for the unfortunate—those whom society rejects and who are denied the chance for a better life. These nurses provide hope where there is so little.

No one embodies these qualities more than Lillian Carter, who touched many lives as a community nurse in Georgia and as a Peace Corps volunteer in India. It is my hope that the center named in her honor will enable students, faculty, and nurses everywhere to assure that people in need have access to health care. This fall, we are bringing hundreds of nurse leaders together for our first global partnerships conference, part of which will be held at The Carter Center. As they leave for home, they will carry with them better skills and methods for building partnerships that enhance their ability to provide health care and improve lives.

When Miss Lillian joined the Peace Corps in the late 1960s, she found the health and social conditions in India quite challenging, but the people there captured her heart. “I didn’t dream that in this remote corner of the world, so far away from the people and material things that I had always considered so necessary, I would discover what life is really all about,” Miss Lillian wrote to her family on her 70th birthday. “Sharing yourself with others, and accepting their love for you, is the most precious gift of all.”

Marla Salmon, ScD, RN, FAAN
Dean, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

 

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