National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the United States, today applauded the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for taking a critical step in protecting health care workers in Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah who had been left behind when their states failed to adopt the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on Covid-19 in Health Care issued in June. The OSHA ETS on Covid-19 mandates optimal PPE and other critical protections for health care workers.
Twenty-two states across the country that have state-based OSHA programs are legally required to have those state plans be at least as effective as federal OSHA. When Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah failed to implement the Covid-19 ETS in their state plans, however, they abrogated their legal requirements. Federal OSHA announced today that it is reconsidering and potentially revoking the final approval for these three noncompliant states.
“It’s unconscionable that some states think they can just ignore their responsibility to protect health care workers. Registered nurses had been demanding the OSHA ETS since day one of this pandemic, and we finally won our fight in June of 2021. At that point, Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah had the duty—legally and morally—to come into compliance and protect workers. They did not, and we could not be more proud that OSHA is standing up to hold them accountable today,” said NNU President Deborah Burger, RN. “We are beyond grateful to OSHA for the work they are already doing to enforce this standard, and to the Biden administration for standing up for nurses on the front lines of this pandemic.”
After leading the campaign to win the OSHA ETS, NNU has been campaigning to ensure health care employers across the country comply. When NNU nurses in Arizona filed complaints about their hospitals’ non-compliance, Arizona’s state OSHA plan stated they will not enforce the requirements of the federal OSHA ETS. So NNU nurses testified at the most recent meeting of the Industrial Commission of Arizona (ICA). The ICA voted against emergency rulemaking needed to protect nurses and other health care workers, and NNU filed a Complaint About State Plan Administration (CAPSA) with federal OSHA.
“Nurses and other health care workers in Arizona, Utah, and South Carolina must be assured the same protections as they would receive in other states that have already adopted and begun enforcing the ETS,” said Burger. “We urge federal OSHA to act expeditiously to put in place the necessary elements for federal OSHA to resume enforcement in Arizona, Utah, South Carolina, and any other states which fail to enforce the ETS to ensure protections for health care workers. We will never emerge from this pandemic if we don’t make sure nurses and health care workers are safe at work.”
National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union of registered nurses in the United States with more than 175,000 members nationwide.
As Nurse of the Week Charlotte Thrall, DNP, FNP-C, CNE, FAANP sat anxiously waiting in the emergency room at Mayo Clinic for news of her husband’s condition after a pickleball accident left him unconscious and unresponsive, her mind spun with uncertainty. Then, among the health care workers that began to fill the room, her eyes settled on a familiar face.
It was her former nursing student, Lexy Richards. Lexy was now a neurosurgery NP for the Mayo team treating Dr. Thrall’s husband.
Their unexpected reunion was bittersweet but welcome, and the following morning, Richards was at Billy Thrall’s bedside, reviewing imaging and lab work, answering whatever questions they had and doing everything in her power to make sure Billy and Charlotte, whom Richards had known since she was a student at Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, were taken care of.
“My depth of gratitude to her will always be tremendous for all the ways she has shaped my life. It has been a gift for me to be able, in some small way, to help her and her husband through this experience.”
—Neurosurgery NP Lexy Richards
“It was so humbling to be in a position where someone who taught you everything you know and who you respect to the highest degree is now in a position of vulnerability,” Richards said.
Fortunately, Billy did not require surgery. But having Richards to reach out to during his recovery was invaluable to Charlotte.
Thrall’s former student, NP Lexy Richards is now studying to become a neurosurgeon.
“Those first eight weeks of recovery were particularly difficult, and she was … I don’t even have the words,” Charlotte said.
Now, nearly 20 weeks out from the accident, Billy is making good progress. And Charlotte and Richards are still frequently in touch — though not always concerning Billy.
A clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Edson College, Charlotte first met Richards as her professor. Equally impressed by each other, they quickly developed a mentor-mentee relationship, with Richards serving on the leadership team for HopeFest, an annual community health care event Charlotte and her husband launched in 2012, and Charlotte writing a letter of recommendation for Richards’ application to medical school to become a neurosurgeon, mere months before Billy’s accident.
Richards received word that her application had been accepted while Billy was still recovering in the hospital. She’ll begin attending the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine in Fort Worth, Texas, this summer.
“Charlotte and her husband are exceptional people, and she has been hugely supportive of my career,” Richards said. “Even on a personal level, she was so supportive when my husband deployed to the military. My depth of gratitude to her will always be tremendous for all the ways she has shaped my life. It has been a gift for me to be able, in some small way, to help her and her husband through this experience.”
Charlotte and Billy met in Paris in 1984 on a service trip when she was 19 and he was 21. They’ve been married for almost 33 years now, and during that time, they have become well known for their various community outreach efforts in the Phoenix area, where Charlotte works as a nurse and Billy works as a nonprofit consultant.
“… I thought that I could actually see them utilizing some of the things that I had taught them, like motivational interviewing or compassionate care, and in my mind, I thought, ‘I need to tell them later what a good job they’re doing.’ “
It was around 2009 when Charlotte realized she wanted to be able to practice clinically in an independent manner, in order to better serve her community. So she enrolled in Edson College’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program and graduated in 2012. She began teaching for the college as an adjunct faculty member in 2013, then became coordinator of the Family Nurse Practitioner program in 2017.
While teaching in the program, Charlotte also served as a mentor to another student, Jonathan Helman. Like Richards, Helman served on the HopeFest leadership team and was moved by Charlotte’s example of care and compassion, both for her students and for the community.
Charlotte Thrall, DNP, FNP-C, CNE, FAANP, clinical assistant professor at ASU’s Edson School of Nursing
“She’s one of those people you realize pretty quickly is a special individual,” he said.
Helman now teaches at Edson College himself, sometimes alongside Charlotte. He also works in a field very similar to Richards’ — neurology. And when it came time for Billy to transition from recovering at the hospital to recovering at home, Helman was more than willing to provide consult.
“When I heard what happened, I immediately wanted to give back, I suppose almost as a way to repay her for the incredible influence she’s had on my life,” he said. “I’m not just blowing smoke, I quite often think about the type of provider she is and try to emulate that in my everyday practice. She is one of most empathetic people I know. … She has touched so many lives, either directly as a practitioner and through her outreach efforts, or indirectly as a professor who is teaching students who will eventually go out and serve the community, too.”
Former classmates who have remained good friends, Helman and Richards frequently consult with one another about patients because of their closely related specialties. This time around, it was for the benefit of someone for whom they care deeply.
Despite the reason for this, their most recent collaboration, Charlotte feels grateful to have been able to observe them in action.
“They were a gift to us,” she said. “I would never have anticipated having to rely so much on former students to guide us through such a difficult medical situation, but I knew the kind of students they were, I knew how prepared they were and how well they had done, and I knew I could really trust them.
“There were moments I thought that I could actually see them utilizing some of the things that I had taught them, like motivational interviewing or compassionate care, and in my mind, I thought, ‘I need to tell them later what a good job they’re doing.’ I was just so grateful for them, and it really encouraged me and reminded me that what we do when we train people to be clinicians is really, really important. And there’s a reason why we want to do a good job. There’s a reason why the program is challenging. There’s a reason why we are so careful about who we select to be in the program. Because it matters every day to patients like my husband and the hundreds of others out there.”.
Herman reports that she grew up feeling like
the underdog. Her parents worked hard to correct Herman’s crossed eyes, which
she was frequently bullied for as a child.
Herman tells abc15.com, “I always thought if I could make it through school and get my nurse’s degree, I’m going to make sure kids have a life and don’t have to worry about deformities.”
After finishing nursing school, Herman began
her career in Illinois before moving to Arizona and landing a job as an air rescue
nurse. Unfortunately, her dream job was cut short when she was laid off 6
months later. That’s when she realized that she really wanted to work with
Operation Smile, and allowed her layoff to bring her back to her childhood goal.
Since then, Herman has traveled the world
and completed 50 trips with Operation Smile, a non-profit that provides safe
medical treatment to kids with cleft palates in underprivileged countries. Each
trip lasts around ten days, and during each trip Herman and her fellow
volunteers fix hundreds of cleft palates, providing life-changing results for
their patients.
Herman is currently back to work as an air
rescue nurse, but she still volunteers regularly. To learn more about Sally Herman,
a nurse from Mesa, AZ who has helped hundreds of children through her work with
non-profit, Operation Smile, visit here.
A new partnership between
the Arizona State University (ASU)
Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and Phoenix Children’s Hospital will
create new opportunities for ASU nursing students to fill the nursing workforce
pipeline with nurses specialized in pediatric care. The partnership has created
a first-of-its-kind pediatric Dedicated Education Unit (DEU)
for undergraduate, pre-licensure nursing students.
One of those students, Jessica Wald, tells asunow.asu.edu, “For those of us in the DEU program, we felt a greater sense of accountability and responsibility for our patients. For example, we were all assigned our own computer logins, so we did patient charting under our own names.”
The DEU is structured to give students
pediatric-focused clinical hours at the patient bedside at Phoenix Children’s
Hospital. It’s a competitive program that requires students to apply for the
program and take it as an elective course during their junior year. The
specialized training helps develop nurses who are confident in their ability to
care for pediatric populations.
Arizona is expected to see a shortage
of 28,000 nurses by 2025 with the biggest gaps in specialized areas like
neonatal intensive care. ASU’s partnership with Phoenix Children’s Hospital is
part of an ongoing effort to prepare specialized workforce-ready nurses at the
undergraduate level.
To learn more about the new
partnership between Arizona State University and
Phoenix Children’s Hospital to launch pediatric-specific nursing programs,
visit here.
Leaders from both institutions recently formed a joint operating committee to enhance education, research efforts, and train the next generation of pediatric clinical talent. ASU’s Edson College of Nursing created a Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) for pre-licensure nursing students and collaborated on the development of the Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) and Certificate Program Curriculum for graduate-level nursing students.
Julie Bowman, Chief Nursing Officer at Phoenix Children’s, tells PRNewswire.com, “Our primary goal is to develop high quality, nationally renowned pediatric nursing programs that offer students increased time at the pediatric patient bedside. A DEU like the one at Phoenix Children’s is one of the first of its kind in pediatrics, and this program helps develop ‘workforce ready’ nurses who are confident in their ability to work with young patients.”
The new DEU program includes a pediatric elective with course credits for pre-licensure nursing students interested in pediatric care, and gives students a total of 72 focused hours of time at the patient bedside at Phoenix Children’s. The program sets students up for success by pairing them with a dedicated Phoenix Children’s nurse preceptor for students to shadow for six full nursing shifts. Hospital staff also gain early insights into prospective nurses who may wish to join the Phoenix Children’s team.
To complete the program, students complete a major intervention project where they identify an issue in patient care, conduct ongoing research, and implement a solution within a department. Their insights and research outcomes become a crucial part of the Phoenix Children’s care model. This gives ASU nursing students an opportunity to learn nurse management and improve pediatric care on a broad scale in one of the fastest growing cities in the US.
To learn more about the new partnership between the Arizona State University College of Nursing and Phoenix Children’s Hospital to help prepare future pediatric nurses, visit here.
Arizona State University (ASU) has recently received a $50 million donation to support research into dementia. The donation came from Charlene and J. Orin Edson, and the ASU College of Nursing will appropriately be renamed the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation.
The gift is one of the largest in the university’s history. $25 million of the donation will go to ASU’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation and $25 million will go to the Biodesign Institute. The funding going to the College of Nursing will fund research and education on dementia causes and care. A new center will also be built and named the Grace Center for Innovation in Nursing Education, named for Charlene’s mother who was a nurse.
The Edson’s have previously donated to ASU and their gifts currently total more than $65 million. The Edson family released a statement saying, “We believe in ASU’s interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to finding solutions. We look forward to new discoveries and solutions to better the quality of life for people affected by brain disease and the heartache of those that love them.”
The Edson’s gift will allow ASU to bring people from varied disciplines together to advance research and treatment and attempt to find a cure for dementia. The funding will go toward two focuses: one on causes and diagnosis of dementia and the other on ways to help dementia patients, their caregivers, and their families. The university already has a vested interest in dementia research but the donation will help the College of Nursing attract new talent and host an annual international symposium.
To learn more about the $50 million donation to the Arizona State University College of Nursing to fund dementia research, visit here.
