CNM Barbara McFarlin to Retire After Leaving Mark in Field of Preterm Birth Research

CNM Barbara McFarlin to Retire After Leaving Mark in Field of Preterm Birth Research

University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing professor Barbara McFarlin, Ph.D., MS, BSN, CNM, RDMS, FACNM, FAAN, who has dedicated her research career to preventing preterm birth and maternal death, announced her retirement, effective Aug. 15.

A three-time UIC graduate, McFarlin joined the faculty of UIC Nursing in 2005 after delivering more than 4,000 babies in her 35 years as a nurse-midwife. During her tenure at UIC Nursing, she served as head of the Department of Women, Children and Family Health Science (now Human Development Nursing Science).

“Dr. McFarlin has had an enormous influence on our college, and more broadly, in the field of maternal and infant health,” says UIC Nursing Dean Eileen Collins, PhD, RN, ATSF, FAAN. “Her program of research used novel technologies to address stubborn problems in women’s healthcare.”

Driven by the question of what causes preterm births , McFarlin combined her perspective as a midwife and sonographer with her expertise in research.

Her initial line of research was to develop and test an ultrasound method to detect microstructural changes in the tissue of the cervix to signal risk of spontaneous preterm birth.

Collaborating with professors William O’Brien and Aiguo Han at the Bioacoustics Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, McFarlin developed a method to use quantitative ultrasound (QUS) to examine cervical changes associated with spontaneous preterm birth, first in pregnant rats, then translating the technique to humans.

McFarlin, O’Brien and Han are completing a study of cervical QUS in more than 500 pregnant people and are finalizing a model to predict people at risk of delivering prematurely.

“This technology has great potential to monitor treatment for preterm birth based on biomarkers, rather than waiting for symptoms of preterm birth when it is too late to intervene,” Collins says.

McFarlin is also a dedicated mentor, facilitating the success of junior faculty and students and her mentees. With research grants from major government agencies and private foundations, she has published 63 peer-reviewed articles during her career. She received the college’s Distinguished Mentor of Faculty and the Distinguished Researcher awards in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

McFarlin was also the recipient of the March of Dimes Jonas Salk Research Award, which is presented to top Illinois healthcare leaders who have facilitated improvements in the health of mothers and infants.

Nurse of the Week: Sabrina Jamal-Eddine Speaks Up for Disabled Nurses

Nurse of the Week: Sabrina Jamal-Eddine Speaks Up for Disabled Nurses

A spinal injury that resulted from surgical malpractice changed the course of Sabrina Jamal-Eddine’s life. It first drew her to the nursing field, then drove her desire to make the profession more accessible to disabled students and practitioners.

Jamal-Eddine, RN, is a third-year student in the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing PhD program. She was a sophomore in high school when she underwent posterior spinal fusion surgery to correct a spinal curvature. But the surgery was a failure, and rather than repairing the problem, it created a host of new ones.

“The minute I got out of surgery, it started to hurt to breathe,” Jamal-Eddine recalls. “Every time I inhaled, it felt like someone was cutting me with a knife. That pain didn’t go away.”

Two years later, she had a revision surgery, which successfully corrected the mistakes of the first with the insertion of new, properly-contoured hardware. But two major back surgeries left her with trauma to her spine and a permanent, non-apparent physical disability, entailing lifting limitations, protruding screws, and pain with certain types of movement.

Her experiences with nurses following those two surgeries solidified her desire to be a nurse. She recalls nurses who showed empathy, positivity and caring – as well as those who didn’t. She was determined to be like the former.

“I’ve always been a caretaker and knew that taking care of people and alleviating pain was something that would bring me joy,” she says.

Breaking down barriers for disabled students

But when she entered her undergraduate nursing program as a disabled student, she faced barriers.

Her course syllabus posted a ‘disability statement,’ asking students to come forward if they have a disability. She later learned through research that nearly all nursing programs have “technical standards,” physical requirements to complete the program. Jamal-Eddine knew she would struggle with one of those requirements – lifting a patient in bed – but felt that shouldn’t sideline her entire nursing career.

Nursing is inherently a flexible profession, she says, offering opportunities for nurses with a wide range of abilities and disabilities, including careers in telehealth, administration, informatics and as a nurse practitioner.

“I could do everything that was required in my nursing program besides lifting a patient up in bed,” she says. “That was the only thing I thought I might need help with. I never had any intentions of doing bedside nursing. It was silly that this generic program requirement was posing barriers for future nurses who might never need that skill.”

Despite the deterrent, Jamal-Eddine stayed in the program. She faced resistance from some clinical instructors, who questioned her ability to complete the program, while others showed empathy and support. An instructor on a progressive care unit – which required heavy lifting – was particularly understanding.

Jamal-Eddine recalls the instructor saying: “’Nursing is a team profession. Nurses are always relying on each other. Any time you need to lift a patient up in bed, we have seven other people in this clinical rotation who can help you.’”

Jamal-Eddine is now taking those experiences into her PhD program at UIC to study how she can educate nursing students, instructors and practitioners about ableism – discrimination against disabled people – and disability justice.

For Jamal-Eddine, one of the most powerful ways to do this is through spoken word poetry. She used the format in a 2019 TedX talk about her experiences with Islamophobia and xenophobia.

She sees an important intersection between humanities and nursing and will be exploring this as the first nursing student ever chosen for a prestigious Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop , hosted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Humanities.

“Even though I have the inherent experiences as a marginalized person, the humanities provide me with the language I need to articulate these inequities, and they help me advocate to progress beyond those,” she says. “We talk about nursing as art and science, but art isn’t given the space it deserves in nursing curricula. I believe humanities helps us humanize people and often work toward belongingness.”