 The Secretary of Health and Human Services has asked School of Nursing Dean Marla Salmon to serve on the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health. Salmon’s four-year term begins February 1.
The National Advisory Council for Nursing Research advises the secretary of HHS and the director of the National Institute of Nursing Research on the awarding of research grants by the institutes, centers, and other authorized components of the NIH. The council reviews applications for grants and cooperative agreements for research and training. It also advises on the conduct and support of research, training, health information dissemination, and other basic and clinical nursing programs. Salmon will be one of 15 members on the council—two-thirds are selected from among the leading representatives of health and scientific disciplines and of these, seven are professional nurses who are recognized experts in the area of clinical practice, education or research. The remaining one-third is from the general public and include leaders in public policy, law, health policy, economics, and management.
 Each issue of this newsletter will feature news and events reported by one of your associate deans. This issue’s column is by Marsha Lewis, associate dean for education.
As you probably heard, the School of Nursing was one of only 15 nursing schools tapped by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to incorporate quality and safety competencies into our BSN curriculum. The grant is part of the foundation’s Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project that began in late 2005 and is aimed at reshaping nursing education to include quality and safety competencies recommended by the Institute of Medicine.
To date, the QSEN project has defined quality and safety competencies for nursing and proposed targets for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be developed in pre-licensure programs for each competency: patient-centered care, teamwork, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. How to teach those six competencies is now the big focus. In early October, Gerri Lamb, Bethany Robertson, and I attended a meeting in Chicago with other QSEN school faculty where innovative teaching strategies were discussed.
As the QSEN grant project leader, I can tell you this grant will help us to graduate students who will begin their professional practice with the confidence that they have the competencies and skill set that will allow them to provide effective patient-centered care. It also will aid in development of students’ leadership potential and utilize their creativity in addressing the challenges they may face as nurses. In essence, it will connect the clinical experiences and the classroom education for students.
I, along with Gerri Lamb and Kelly Brewer, are part of a task force that is looking at way to better collaborate with Emory Healthcare. Early in the summer Dean Marla Salmon and Emory Healthcare Chief Nursing Officer Susan Grant charged SON faculty and EHC nurses to look at opportunities to partner around nursing workforce challenges and innovative ways to educate nurses. We looked at the school and EHC’s strategic goals and resources and the opportunities and barriers to greater collaboration. Needless to say, we found more opportunities than obstacles.
We traveled to the University of Portland in Oregon to learn more about an innovative clinical program called a Dedicated Education Unit. There staff nurses who complete a clinical instruction course are assigned one to two students over six to seven weeks instead of the customary way of a student working with a different nurse each shift. The nurses we spoke with loved this program. They get to develop a working relationship with the students they are assigned and can better track the students’ development and skills set. This is definitely a program that we’re keeping an eye on.
I headed over to the United Kingdom in October to talk with Napier University in Edinburgh and Kings College in London about starting a nursing student exchange program. Back in the 1980s, Barbara Reed, 57N, 79MN, developed a program for hospital nurses with the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. Reed and Audra Noel Hunter from Emory Hospital joined me on the trip, and we developed strong relationships with faculty and staff. Stay tuned for further developments on the nursing student and staff nurse exchanges.
We’re starting a new group titled the Community Partners Forum. Twice a year, we’ll be meeting with representatives from our clinical learning sites. They are out there every day in the community and can give us valuable feedback on what’s happening from their perspectives in health care. My goal as associate dean of education is to make academics and the clinical practice of nursing more seamless.
Faculty are now using personal digital assistants (PDA) in their clinical and classroom teaching. We’ve provided PDAs to the faculty and have strongly encouraged students to buy them. Nurses now are using PDAs to access the latest information on drug availability, interactions, and dosage amounts so naturally students and faculty should be too. Faculty have really taken to using the PDAs—one told me that she took her PDA home and while watching House, she taught herself how to use it by looking up medications or conditions mentioned on the TV show.
This fall the faculty are defining our core values—scholarship, leadership, and social responsibility. At our fall faculty retreat the Education Task Force asked faculty members to complete the following sentence about each value: This I believe…followed by a day of excellent discussions. The task force reviewed the products from the retreat and developed concise statements for each core value. They are available for faculty comment on the Blackboard Core Value site. Once we decide on the statements we will share them on our website and integrate our values into the undergraduate and graduate curricula.
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Lynette Wright (left) is congratulated by Maureen Kelley, who, on behalf of the faculty and staff, presented her with a signed picture of the school. |
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Clinical Associate Professor Lynette Wright, a pediatric clinical specialist nurse and certified genetic counselor, has retired from the School of Nursing. Wright is a leading expert in the field of genetic education; she was the first nurse genetic counselor in Georgia, in 1976, and established the first outreach clinic for the state. She also developed undergraduate and graduate genetics courses for the school.
In a ceremony to honor Wright, Dean Marla Salmon said, “You are committed in the deepest ways. In my mind, you are the ultimate nurse.” Assistant Professor Joyce King called her “a walking, talking encyclopedia of genetics. We remain one of the few schools of nursing to have a genetics course for undergraduates.”
Wright was given a framed picture of the school. Faculty left their heart-felt messages on the picture’s matte. Madge Donnellan, who is known as a “paper saver,” presented Wright with a 1997-1998 undergraduate course catalog, marking the first school year genetics was offered. The office of Emory President Jim Wagner presented a commemorative chair that displays the Emory Crest. Contributions in Wright’s name to honor her years with the school have been added to the Emeritus Faculty Endowed Scholarship Fund.
As a part of Emory’s strategic plan to improve sustainability across campus, the SON is planning a small medicinal garden of herbs and traditional healing plants for the entrance to the school. Clinical Associate Professor and School Life Committee member Maeve Howett used her honorarium from the Emory’s Piedmont Project, an effort by faculty to increase the University’s environmentally friendly policies, to start the medicinal garden. “Signs at the garden will explain the historical and current uses of the herbs and will strengthen students’ connection with the history of midwives and healers, who relied on plant materials,” says Howett.
The committee hired a garden designer, Julie Evans of Fockele Gardens, who has more than 20 years designing gardens using native plants and has studied medicinal herbs. The plants will be extremely drought-resistant choices, including St. John’s wort, feverfew, lavender, rosemary, and evening primrose.
When fully grown, the garden would resemble this drawing.
A delegation from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, visited the School of Nursing in October to renew its relationship with Emory. During the school year, Yonsei sends students here to observe and learn, and the School of Nursing sends students there. The connection between the two schools was little more than in name only before Dean Marla Salmon arrived in 1999, says BSN program coordinator Dr. Deborah Ryan. “She’s got such a global perspective and saw the potential in revving up this exchange,” she says. Now students in both places sit in on classes and observe nurses in hospitals.
This year’s homecoming honored the SON class of 1957 and retired professor Elizabeth Mabry. Barbara Reed, 57N, 79MN, shared some of her memories with students, faculty, and staff, which illuminate how women’s roles and nursing have changed. A couple points of reference: the cost of a semester at the SON was $120, and a textbook cost $12.50. Students were required to wear a uniform with a cap, which Reed says she dipped in straight starch and held against the refrigerator to make the many folds a proper cap required. Women were not allowed to wear pants on campus, and nursing students had to stand when a physician entered the room. One of the requirements of the nutrition class was to work in the hospital kitchen, putting food on trays. “It was awful,” Reed recalls.
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| Homecoming provided an opportunity for students and alumni to get to know one another. |
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But the status of the SON led to greater career opportunities, Reed says. “Emory, Duke, and Vanderbilt were the only schools in the southeast that you could get a degree in nursing. Because graduates had degrees, they were often pulled into supervisory roles quickly.”
Elizabeth Mabry was honored for her many years of service to the SON. Mabry says she still calls nursing an “art based in science.” Future SON students, though not having the privilege of being taught by her, will know about her valuable contributions to the school through the Elizabeth Mabry Scholarship. The class of 1952 and others donated almost $75,000 for a scholarship to honor Mabry. Mabry has specified that the scholarship be given each year to a student seeking a bachelor’s degree in nursing.
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| Barbara Reed, 57N, 79MN, (right) talked about her schooling at Emory, as Elizabeth Mabry listened. |
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Others who were recognized include:
Twilla Haynes, 80MN, received the Distinguished Nursing Achievement Award. Since 1985, Haynes has overseen approximately 1,000 health clinics in northern Haiti, where she also opened an orphanage for medically fragile children. She also has spearheaded the building of wells and latrines in four communities. She is currently collaborating with the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing to further develop Emory’s migrant farm worker program. She has taught at Medical College of GA, Georgia Baptist College of Nursing, and Georgia State University and has served as a consultant to the Georgia Association of Nursing Students and the National Student Nurses Association.
The Award of Honor went to Sarah Hall Gueldner, 65 MN, who has had a distinguished career in nursing education and research. Most recently she served as dean of the Decker School of Nursing in Binghamton, New York, and dean of the School of Nursing at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Gueldner’s area of research interest has been gerontological nursing. She has been a senior research scientist at the University of Georgia Gerontology Center and has been recognized as a distinguished practitioner and member of the National Academies of Practice. Gueldner is a fellow in the Association of Gerontology in Higher Education and a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She is a founding member of the Society of Rogerian Scholars.
Peter Van Norde, 07N, received the Honorary Alumni Award. In 1997, he created a charitable remainder trust to fund a scholarship in honor of his daughter, Linda, at the School of Nursing. After serving in the Navy and practicing law for 45 years, Van Norde now is retired and cares for his elaborate home garden showcasing more than 250 roses, two ponds, and several sitting areas.
Faculty:
Kate Barrett, Visiting Scholar, Research
Safiya George Dalmida, Visiting Scholar, FCN
Jennifer Foster, Visiting Scholar, FCN
Melinda Higgins, Assistant Research Professor and Senior Statistician, Research
Carolyn Reilly, Instructor, AEH
Staff:
Shirley Connelly, Administrative Assistant
Amy Dorrill, Chief Development Officer
Katie Kennedy, Business Operations Specialist
Karen Kun, Administrative Director Service Learning
Jihan Perry, Senior Secretary
Shayla West, Program Coordinator
Rachael Whitworth, Senior Research Project Coordinator
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT:
Deborah Ryan
 Debbie Ryan is the go-to person for most all matters related to undergraduate education. “I oversee how the program is working,” she says. “I essentially facilitate faculty’s efforts to provide a quality education. Like many other faculty members, I have an open-door policy, and they come to me if they want to try a new teaching method, are having student or clinical site issues. I also help students who are not passing.” She’s served as the BSN coordinator since 2002, but she began working at the School of Nursing in 1982.
“I got married on a Saturday in June 1982, and we drove to Atlanta the very next day, so my husband could attend the anesthesiology program here at Emory,” Ryan says. “When we got here, I essentially walked into the school and began my journey in the School of Nursing.”
She was mentored by Helen O’Shea, professor emeritus, who at the time served as BSN coordinator. O’Shea recommended Ryan consider applying for the position when O’Shea retired. “Dean Salmon said that I really needed to get my doctorate, and it was very generous of her to allow me to work as the coordinator part-time while I was a doctorate student,” she recounts. She received her doctorate in Spring 2007 from Emory and returned as full-time faculty this fall.
Her research centers on helping new nurses prevent medication errors. She recently traveled to seven nursing schools around Georgia to test students in three associate degree and five baccalaureate programs, in addition to the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She gave them an anonymous paper-and-pencil test with case studies, and they had to catch the errors. Had the dosage changed? Was the dosage calculated correctly? Was the patient’s name double-checked against the prescription?
“I never thought I would be excited about research, but then I found something I could make a difference in,” Ryan says. “Medication errors are a huge problem in the health care system. I think in most medication errors that people let their guard down. People don’t stop and process all the information before them—they just glance at it—but a nurse is the last person to detect or miss an error.”
Ryan became interested in nursing as child when one of her seven brothers was in Boston Children’s Hospital. Since then, she received her bachelor’s at Boston College and master’s from Marquette University. She and her husband, who’s an anesthesiologist at Piedmont Hospital, have two teenaged sons. Neither says he wants to go into health care because they say their parents work too hard!
STAFF SPOTLIGHT: Cathy Jones
 Cathy Jones, Senior Administrative Assistant, Department of Adult and Elder Health Nursing
Cathy Jones began her career with the School of Nursing more than five years ago, first in the dean’s office and then to her current position, senior administrative assistant in the Department of Adult and Elder Health Nursing. She manages the department’s budget and supports its chair, Jo Ann Dalton, and other faculty. She also coordinates the Jowers Lecture and the Virginia Lee Franklin Conference.
“My greatest joy is to help others,” she says. “I’ve always worked for organizations that are service-driven—the caring nature of the administrators, faculty, and students who are making a positive difference in the lives of others, not only locally, but globally.”
Before returning to Emory, Jones worked for the State of Georgia in its teachers’ accreditation office and in the governor’s budget office. She says that although her career is an integral part of her, so is her life outside of work, most of which is devoted to her religion. She has led Bible studies for more than two decades.
“My foundation as a person was shaped by my parents,” Jones says. “My father was a school principal and teacher, and my mother was a nurse assistant. My mother has a great sense of humor. She keeps me and all who know her laughing, which is good for the soul. My dad, the serious one in the family, is filled with practical wisdom.”
Jones remains very close to her family, most of whom have relocated to Georgia from Louisiana, allowing her plenty of face time with her niece and nephew. She enjoys cooking her mother’s recipes for crawfish étoufée and praline, which benefit her SON colleagues when she brings in extra to share.
As they say in Louisiana: Ki sa se bon. That is good!
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Randy Evans
 It was Randy Evans’ own medical crisis that led him into nursing.
“I had a quadruple bypass in September 2000,” he says. “I was 51 at the time. It was a difficult surgery and a long recovery.”
His cardiologist recommended a group called Mended Hearts, a support group of recovering heart patients that make themselves available to other heart patients in the hospital.
“I was spending a lot of hours with heart patients and got to know a lot of the nurses and about nursing, and I gradually felt a calling to the profession that had given so much to me and my family,” Evans says.
He and his wife had been working together for 20 years, building an editorial services company. (They met at a magazine publishing company, sharing a cubicle.) Telling his wife and 13-year-old daughter about his career change ended up being easier than he thought it would be. “I wondered when you were going to tell me,” his wife said, having sensed a change in him.
He took a dozen prerequisite science courses in preparation to apply to Emory and is set to graduate from the School of Nursing in May. He is interested in pursuing cardiac nursing.
“This is simultaneously the most difficult thing I’ve ever done and the most interesting thing I’ve ever done,” Evans says. “I think having been a patient gives me a different perspective when I’m caring for a patient, and I always carry that perspective with me into that patient’s room. Many of the younger students find the hardest part of clinical work is walking into a patient’s room. I do that very easily. I know how it feels to be in one of those beds.”
He credits the support of his wife and daughter for making it possible for him to attend nursing school. His wife now runs their company while he concentrates on school. And his daughter understands when the demand of his studies makes it necessary to miss the occasional soccer game. “I’m very fortunate,” Evans says, “I haven’t had to concentrate on having to earn a living.” When he graduates, his wife hopes to pursue her own midlife dream: teaching high school English.
“Nobody is promised tomorrow,” Evans says. “I want to use these years the best way I know how, that is, nursing—the one thing I needed to do. If this is a midlife crisis, it’s not so bad.”
David Jowers Lecture 2007 – December 5, 4:00 PM, Room 101
Partnering with Nursing Education Programs to Improve Patient Safety by Linda Cronewett, dean and professor, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and associate chief nursing officer for academic affairs, University of North Carolina Hospitals
Center for Research on the Study of Symptoms, Symptom Interactions, and Health Outcomes: Roundtable Series
November 28, 12:00 PM, Room 400
Skeletal Muscle Atrophy as a Basis for Disability in Chronic Disease by Sue Donaldson
December 7, 10:00 AM, Room 117D
Power and Effect Size—Practical Approaches by Melinda Higgins
All-Faculty Meeting –February 11, April 14, and May 5, Room 400 1:00 PM
Virginia Lee Franklin Conference – February 8
Understanding Depression and its Treatment
7:30 AM - 2:50 PM
Twelve Hotel at Atlantic Station (17th St.)
For more info, please call 404-712-9633
All-School Meeting – April 28
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