Charles Edward Fisher and his wife, Rosa Lee Fisher, had five children—two sons and three daughters. Theirs was an African-American family in the community of Freemanville, near Atmore, Alabama, in the mid-20th century. Given the times, they were aware of racial barriers to their children’s opportunities. However, that did not prevent the Fishers from having high expectations for their children and encouraging them to be the best they could be. Those expectations included that their children would graduate from high school and then pursue higher education. In their parents, the Fisher children had role models for working hard. Their dad worked as a janitor and later in production in a chemical plant. Their mom raised flowers for a plant-and-flower nursery.
Parental encouragement paid off. Four of the five Fisher children became college graduates and the fifth a trade school graduate.
For the Fisher daughters—Sarah, Cynthia and Eleanor—seeds also were planted for pursuing a nursing career. Their mom, Rosa, had wanted to become a nurse. But, as eldest daughter Sarah put it, “time and opportunity were not on our mother’s side.”
All three Fisher daughters would become nurses and would earn a nursing education grounded at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. As time went on, Rosa Lee Fisher would smile and say, “with all three of my daughters in nursing, if I get sick and need a nurse, I should be covered on all three shifts!”
Sarah Louise Fisher, Ph.D, MSN, RN
Sarah Louise Fisher, PhD, MSN, RN
In September 1965, Sarah Louise Fisher entered the baccalaureate program at what today is known as the UAB School of Nursing. The School then was based in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, midway through Sarah’s studies, moved to its current Birmingham home as part of what would come to be UAB. Sarah was the first African-American student to be accepted to the School and, in 1969, the School’s first African-American graduate.
She later earned her master’s in nursing, an education specialist certificate and a PhD. All were from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, a city where she and her husband, Joe Giles, lived and reared their family. One of their three children, their son, is a nurse.
For Dr. Sarah Fisher Giles, innovation became a way of life. She was among the first nursing faculty at Wayne County Community College in Detroit and was innovative with curricula to educate nursing students. After retiring from a long career there, she became the founding director of a nursing education department for South University in Novi, Michigan. She also was in the Army Reserves and became a full colonel. In 2001, she was in the first group of distinguished nurses inducted into the Alabama Nursing Hall of Fame.
“I am pleased that I was able to achieve my goals,” she said. “My baccalaureate nursing education from the UAB School of Nursing provided me with a strong foundation.”
She now lives in Georgia and spends her time volunteering to care for people in her church and in the community.
Cynthia Fisher Frazier, BSN, MSN, RN, MS Ed.
Cynthia Fisher Frazier, BSN, MSN, RN, MS Ed.
Cynthia Fisher Frazier is the middle of the Fisher daughters. Like her sisters, she has a life strongly grounded in nursing. She holds three degrees from UAB—a bachelor’s in nursing, a master’s in nursing, and a master’s in occupational education.
For more than 30 years, she worked at the Birmingham Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and rose to positions of leadership. She worked as a nurse manager for four areas—dialysis, IV therapy/phlebotomy, medical specialty clinics and chemotherapy. Her nursing leadership has attracted accolades, including an Excellence in Nursing Award from B-Metro Magazine. The impact of her role modeling is apparent in her own family; one of her two daughters is a nurse.
Cynthia Fisher Frazier recalled being exposed to nursing ideals of high-quality care while she was a UAB baccalaureate and master’s nursing student.
“As a student at the UAB School of Nursing, I saw that the School’s standards were high and that the School did not compromise on those standards.”
Nursing ideals she came to know at UAB continue to guide her today.
“In regard to patient care, through the years I have believed in not compromising values and principles, and in maintaining that expected standard of care in whatever area of nursing you are delivering for patients,” she said. “For me, I believe that understanding and adhering to a high standard of care go back to what I learned at the UAB School of Nursing.”
That dedication to care for patients continued into retirement. When the need arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided to go back to work to help administer vaccines to veterans.
Eleanor Fisher, BSN, MSN, RN, CRNA
Eleanor Fisher, BSN, MSN, RN, CRNA.
The youngest Fisher sister, Eleanor Fisher, pursued an education that led her to a rewarding career in nurse anesthesia.
Typical of the Fisher siblings’ quest for higher education, Eleanor built a strong educational base. She earned baccalaureate and master’s degrees from the UAB School of Nursing. From the UAB School of Health Professions, where the program was formerly housed, she received education in nurse anesthesia.
Eleanor Fisher makes her home in the Birmingham area. But, for this retired contract nurse anesthetist, her work took her into hospital operating rooms in towns and cities outside the area.
She speaks of lessons learned in nursing school. “As a student at the UAB School of Nursing, I learned from the strong emphasis on delivering quality care and being an advocate for your patients. I took those lessons with me.”
When she was involved in putting a patient under sedation for a procedure, Eleanor said she viewed herself as an advocate for making sure the patient receives the best quality of anesthesia services. She approaches her patients with nurturing akin to what she herself received from her own parents and in turn gives to her son.
“I treat each patient as an individual,” she said. “For example, if my patient is a baby, I want that baby’s parents to know that I will treat their baby as though it was my own being put to sleep for surgery.”
Like her sister, she also jumped at the opportunity to do her part during the pandemic. She helps in the process of administering COVID vaccines for children and adults.
The coronavirus pandemic has tested the health care community, especially nurses working on the frontlines. After two strenuous years, nurses still carry on, even as new variants and surges bring additional challenges.
As nurses continue supporting the health care system and their patients, Rachel Z. Booth Endowed Professor Patricia A. Patrician, PhD, RN, FAAN, in the University of Alabama at BirminghamSchool of Nursing, is launching a new UAB program dedicated to supporting nurses. The Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded Patrician $2.3 million to implement and study programs, in collaboration with UAB Medicine. The programs look to reduce burnout and promote mental health and well-being within the nursing profession.
The three-year grant is a part of HRSA’s Health Workforce Resiliency Award, a program aiming to establish a culture of wellness and resiliency among the health care workforce during the ongoing pandemic.
Patricia A. Patrician, PhD, RN, FAAN.
“I have lived through the nursing shortages in the 1980s, the hospital cutbacks in the ’90s and many other challenging times in the nursing field,” said Patrician, who spent 26 years in the United States Army Nurse Corps. “I have never encountered a situation like the one currently affecting our bedside nurses. Surge after surge, they are there on the frontline, and even stepping up and filling in gaps, to provide the best care for their patients.”
Giving nurses access to”psychological first aid”
Patrician’s grant will create the Workforce Engagement for Compassionate Advocacy, Resiliency and Empowerment, or WE CARE, program at UAB Hospital. The program will hire five nursing development specialists who will receive additional training in resilience and psychological first aid, a program developed by Johns Hopkins University, to assist with selected hospital units. A mental health nurse practitioner will provide counseling support services exclusively to nurses. Additional funds will be allocated to improvements and expansion efforts of oasis areas, or respite rooms, within the hospital.
“The past few years have been extremely challenging for all members of the nursing team,” said Terri Poe, DNP, RN, NE-BC (BSN 1986, DNP 2013), Chief Nursing Officer at UAB. “The team emerged as heroes when the pandemic first started and now are truly exhausted from ongoing workforce shortages, pandemic surges and countless hours of providing high-acuity care. We are very excited to be a part of the grant that will support the well-being and mental health for our nurses. The focus of this work will specifically meet the needs of the nurse and ultimately will have an impact by improving high-quality and safe patient care.”
Patrician, who has dedicated much of her research to studying and developing quality work environments for nurses, hopes the WE CARE program will actively support UAB nurses and establish the groundwork for resources that can be implemented for nurses around the state to access.
“Nurses are some of the most resilient people in the workforce,” Patrician said. “The health care workforce, especially nurses, has dealt with unimaginable and difficult circumstances. Nurses are the backbone of the health care system and need resources that help them during tumultuous times and support their mental well-being.”
Covid pushed a long-standing problem into the spotlight
While the pandemic exacerbated nursing shortages and burnout in Alabama, they are not new concerns in the nursing field. Patrician and her colleagues surveyed nurses across the state in 2019 and determined that burnout and poor staffing were issues prior to COVID-19.
Nursing faculty and staff at the School have pivoted resources throughout the pandemic to assist its clinical partners. Faculty and students dedicated thousands of hours working shifts to alleviate workforce shortages at UAB Hospital, as well as planned and operated community vaccine clinics in partnership with UAB Medicine. The school also collaborated with UAB Hospital to provide a pipeline of students to its student nurse aide position, which allows students to gain experience as patient care technicians ahead of graduation while earning money during school. The ultimate goal is for the students to become familiar with the UAB Health System and return as nurses once they graduate.
“One of our top priorities at the School is not only training and preparing our next generation of nurses but focusing on programs and research that benefit the nursing field as a whole,” said Dean and Fay B. Ireland Endowed Chair in Nursing Doreen C. Harper, PhD, RN, FAAN. “These efforts are critical now more than ever as the pandemic continues challenging our health care system.”
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospitals tightened restrictions on visitors and who could access certain areas. This meant that no photographers, videographers, or others could visually document what was happening inside COVID-19 intensive care units.
However, one UAB Medicine nurse answered the call and provided Birmingham, Ala. and the entire nation a rare look at the front lines inside UAB Medicine’s COVID ICUs, which included the Medical Intensive Care Unit, the Cardiac Care Unit, the Trauma Recovery Unit (which opened in mid-2020 on the Hospitalist 3 unit), and the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit.
“Some of us were talking in the command center, and what we really wanted to do was showcase all of the great work and challenges our nurses, staff, physicians, and providers were doing every day at the bedside,” says Amanda Chambers, MSN, a senior director of Nursing Services at UAB Medicine. “They asked if I could start taking some real-life shots of our staff working in our COVID areas.”
Chambers says having a nurse taking pictures really made it a seamless process.
“I blended into the background, and I knew what they were doing, so I was able to help highlight what they wanted,” she says. “We wanted the public to see the frontline battle against COVID.”
Chambers recalls her first impressions of the COVID units.
“I think the first real experience for me was that it was extremely complex,” she says. “It was hot and it was uncomfortable with all of the appropriate protective equipment on. But the other thing that I saw was really a sadness for the lack of any family involvement in those areas. When you went in there, it was really just to help your team there with those patients, and those can be some of the scariest and most intimate moments.”
Although she has been a nurse at UAB Medicine for years, having a barrier verbally and visually was a stark reminder of the situation she and her colleagues were in.
“I can only imagine what our patients are seeing,” she says.
Chambers became a window to the world in late 2020 when her photos were featured on ABC’s “World News Tonight With David Muir.” She says her colleagues were excited and thankful that millions were able to get a glimpse into daily life at UAB Medicine.
“My co-workers have been really thankful and proud that our profession was highlighted on a national level,” she says. “The nation has been able to see behind the curtains into our COVID units and what it is really like for patients and ourselves, so they definitely have been very excited and energized when they’ve seen themselves or a colleague or someone they know on the national front being highlighted for the care they deliver.”
American nurses are becoming iconic images of hope as they receive the first SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations approved for emergency use. A gathering of reporters, officials, and healthcare providers applauded when they witnessed the first vaccination in Oklahoma, as Erica Arrocha, RN administered the state’s first Covid-19 vaccination to a colleague, RN Hanna White, at Integris Baptist Medical Center. White told reporters, “Hopefully this is the start of something better.”
ICU nurse and NP Helen Cordova was the first Californian to get a Covid shot.
New York ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay, the first US healthcare worker to receive a shot, told journalists, “I trust the science,” as her vaccination was recorded and livestreamed to millions of viewers.
The first in line for vaccination in Minnesota was Minneapolis frontline VA nurse Thera Witte, who declared, “I’m feeling hopeful that this is the beginning of the end” of the deadly pandemic that has so far taken over 377,000 lives in the US and 1.65 million lives worldwide.
Why I love my job @The_BMC ! Teams of people working to safely and equitably distribute vaccines to their front line colleagues getting cheered on by their friends celebrating the arrival of the vaccines! A great day, a great place. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/XfrIthFIY5
There were even impromptu parties. When the first shipment of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine arrived in Boston, there was dancing in the streets (or the hospital parking lot)—on a chilly Massachusetts day in December-—that immediately went viral.
The first Californian to be vaccinated had initially been dubious. ICU nurse and NP Helen Cordova at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center changed her mind, but she still understands the mistrust. Her training, though, prompted her to research the science behind the new vaccines: “That’s probably the best thing to do, educate ourselves, get the information ourselves,” she told ABC7 in LA. “As I started to dig in a little more, I felt more at ease. I started changing my stance on it. I went from ‘absolutely not’ to ‘sure, here’s my arm, let’s do it!’”
“It’s important not just for me, but for all of those that I love.” In New Jersey, the first to roll up her sleeve was Maritza Beniquez, an emergency department nurse at University Hospital in Newark. As state governor Phil Murphy looked on with journalists and healthcare workers, Beniquez was exuberant after receiving the state’s first SARS-2 shot on her birthday: “I couldn’t wait for this moment to hit New Jersey. I couldn’t wait for it to hit the U.S!”
And as humans cannot resist an opportunity to thrill one another with foreboding rumors of sinister events, false social media posts started to appear almost as soon as states began to vaccinate healthcare workers. So, if patients, friends, or family cite the nonexistent “42-y/o nurse in Alabama found dead 8-10 hours” later from anaphylactic shock, well, what did you expect? Share a real social media event like the Boston MC flash mob, and tell them you’re keeping your mask on even after your second vaccination, as epidemiologists say we will probably have to wait until mid-late 2021 to gauge the efficacy of the vaccines.
Boston Medical Center workers went all out to celebrate the arrival of the vaccine.
It took over 100 years, so Nurse of the Week, DNP/FNP-BC Lindsey Harris is more than ready to lead the 100,000 members of the Alabama State Nurses Association (ASNA) as their first African American president.
The 37-year-old Harris’s induction, the powerful leadership of ANA president Eugene Grant, this summer’s “Black Nurses Matter” march in D.C., and the NBNA’s nationwide vaccination campaign have helped make the Year of the Nurse a banner year for nurses of color. Harris told the Birmingham Times, “I want this to become the norm. It definitely is an accomplishment for me, but it is… so timely that it has happened right now. It is an honor, and I want other leadership positions in other organizations to know this is something that is normal and that we look at everybody the same.”
Dr. Lindsey Harris, DNP, FNP-BC, president of Alabama State Nurses Association (ASNA)
When the Georgia-born Harris began her studies at Samford University’s Moffet and Sanders School of Nursing, the high-achieving student and high school athlete initially felt intimidated. “For nursing, you had to think critically. I have a really great memory and can memorize anything, but for nursing you couldn’t just memorize,” she recalls. She responded by upping her participation in classes and finding ways to combine her studies with her involvement in Sanford sporting events: “Anytime we had class, I would be there asking them questions. I can remember many times when I would do my homework while watching men’s basketball games or studying nursing flashcards while traveling to games.”
Harris received her BSN in 2006, and pursued her Master’s degree in nursing while working as a floating staff nurse at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. She was awarded the Master’s degree in 2011, and after earning her DNP five years later, she started working on an inpatient glycemic management team.
Harris’s involvement with nursing associations, however, began when she still was an undergraduate. “One of my professors invited me to a meeting with the Birmingham Black Nurses Association (BBNA),” she says. “When I got there, I became a student representative, then secretary, and then I went on to hold several offices within the organization.” Joining the BBNA was a formative experience for Harris: “I was mentored and groomed by the [BBNA] to be who I am— along with my family values and upbringing, of course.” In 2016, she became president of the BBNA, and shortly thereafter Harris joined the ASNA, where she swiftly rose in the ranks and was voted in as president-elect in 2018. Harris worked closely with the outgoing president for the next two years, until her induction in September 2020.
For more information, see Erica Wright’s full article and interview with Lindsey Harris in the Birmingham Times.
The nurse residency program
is part of the US Department of Health and
Human Services’ Advanced Nursing Education – Nurse Practitioner Residency
Program Grant, which is designed to prepare new nurse practitioners to deliver
high-quality primary care in community-based settings. The primary care
residency is a year-long program in which nurse practitioner residents will
complete academic coursework and clinical hours in rural and underserved areas.
Nena Sanders, vice provost of the Samford University College of Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Nursing, tells alabamanewscenter.com, “For nearly 100 years, Ida Moffett School of Nursing has prepared well-equipped, compassionate nurses to serve the underserved. This grant affords us the opportunity to enhance the knowledge and skill sets of our graduates and intentionally place caring, competent nurse practitioners where the needs are greatest.”
The grant will facilitate the
launch of the primary care nurse residency which will be housed in the School
of Nursing. The program will focus on developing new family nurse practitioners
with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to improve the quality and
safety of rural health care systems.
Out of 67 counties in Alabama,
55 of them are considered rural and only two of those 55 are considered to have
the minimum number of providers available. During their rotations, residents
will receive training in vital telehealth technology to help reduce
accessibility issues for patients who are forced to travel long distances
to seek necessary care.
To learn more about the four-year,
$3.5 million grant awarded to Samford University’s Ida Moffett School of
Nursing to help the university place nurse practitioner graduates in
rural, underserved areas for primary care residency, visit here.
