Our Nurse of the Week is Jasmin Flores, a nurse from Hartford, CT, who was driving on the highway when she came upon an overturned jeep and three passengers who required lifesaving CPR, including a toddler. Flores was one of the only bystanders who knew how to administer lifesaving support which enabled her to save the toddler’s life.
Flores inspired the local University of Saint Joseph to hold a community training session on CPR. Students and members of the public practiced CPR on dummies and learned proper technique. Flores tells the Hartford Courant:
“I think CPR should be like a rite of passage, something that you learn like you learn how to ride a bike. Because, you don’t need anything but your hands and your good intentions to save somebody’s life. It’s that simple.”
As Flores came upon the overturned Jeep, she saw the backseat had detached and there was a child’s car seat rolling down the hallway. The father, who had also been injured, was struggling to get to the car seat while the driver lay motionless on the pavement. All three had been ejected from the vehicle.
Flores immediately rushed to help and when she felt no pulse on the two-year-old, she proceeded to administer CPR until police and medics arrived. The father survived, but the driver was later pronounced dead. The two-year-old has since been discharged from Connecticut Children’s Medical Hospital in Hartford and is recovering.
To learn more about nurse Jasmin Flores and the lifesaving CPR she administered to a toddler who survived a fatal accident, visit here.
University President Peter Salovey and Dean of the School of Nursing Ann Kurth were present to cut the ribbon and invite students, faculty members, and guests to step foot into the new high-tech space. The new simulation lab was designed based on real-world healthcare settings where students can prepare themselves in simulated scenarios that they might encounter as nurse practitioners or midwives.
The $5 million project allowed for the building of an 8,000-square-foot space, a much larger space than the old simulation lab which was housed in the nursing building’s basement. The new space provides a safe learning environment for students to apply theory to practice, and it opened just in time to be used for the incoming fall class.
Salovey tells YaleDailyNews.com, “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see the opening of a wing I didn’t even know was here, that really allows for the education of students using patient actors and lets you practice disaster scenarios and conventional situations.”
Many of the simulations use standardized patients who are real people acting out situations and ailments. Others use mannequins which mimic anything from bleeding to delivering a baby. These improvements are designed to better align the school with the future of health care and the needs of a larger student population.
To learn more about Yale Nursing’s new simulation lab, visit here.
Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) recently received a grant from the US Department of Labor to support its Nurse Residency Apprenticeship Program, a workplace training program for recently graduated nurses. According to YaleDailyNews.com, Yale New Haven Hospital will receive $3,500 for each nurse in the program through the American Apprenticeship Initiative Grant.
YNHH’s program is one of many apprenticeship programs to receive funding from the Connecticut Department of Labor. The US Department of Labor has allotted a total of $5 million in grant money for programs in the state.
The Nurse Residency Apprenticeship program at YNHH was the first of its kind in Connecticut when it was established in 2005. During the one-year residency, new nursing school graduates receive mentorship, computer-based training and monthly lectures, and strategies for stress management.
Judith Hahn, who oversees the apprenticeship program, tells YaleDailyNews.com, “The responsibility of the hospital is great in making sure that they’re comfortable and that they’re confident and that they have safe experiences for them and their patients, and that’s really costly to do right.”
All new nursing graduates who begin working at YNHH are required to go through the program. More than 180 nurses have enrolled in the program since July 1, with 40 more nurses expected to begin the program in the coming months. The newly graduated nurses have the opportunity to gain experience in a variety of hospital settings.
To learn more about Yale New Haven Hospital’s Nurse Residency Apprenticeship Program, visit here.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Future of Nursing Scholars program recently selected 28 schools across the nation to receive a $15,000 grant to increase the number of nurses with doctorates. The University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Nursing was one of the schools selected, and the grant will go toward providing support, mentoring, and leadership development to nurses who commit to earning their doctorates in three years.
This is the second time the RWJ Foundation has awarded this scholarship funding to UConn. The School of Nursing has two scholars currently enrolled and plans to choose additional students in April to begin their doctoral studies in the fall semester.
The Future of Nursing Scholars official website states: “The Future of Nursing Scholars Program is creating a diverse cadre of PhD prepared nurses who are committed to a long-term leadership career; advancing science and discovery through research; strengthening nursing education; and furthering transformational change in nursing and health care.”
Following recent guidelines from the National Institute of Medicine that the country double the number of nurses with doctorates, the Future of Nursing Scholars program hopes to help contribute to educating more advanced level nurses. Currently, nurses holding PhD degrees make up only one percent of nurses, but the demand for these nurses is much higher, and UConn amongst other prestigious nursing programs around the country intends to continue increasing the number of doctorate level nurses graduating from their programs each year.
According to William J. Pape’s 1918 book “History of Waterbury and Naugatuck Valley, Connecticut,” the City of Waterbury inaugurated the medical inspection of pupils by school nurses in 1904, making them an early adopter of the school nursing revolution. By 1913, the Medical Inspector of Schools had designated a central room to be used as a clinic for the nurses to examine and treat students.
A 1919 City of Waterbury Health Department Report cited that the school was using 5 school nurses to examine each child for contagious and infectious diseases. Infections were given prompt treatments when necessary, and followed up on by the school nurses to accomplish better health and sanitation for students. The 1920s and 30s brought in new standards to differentiate between medical care and school nurses, designating school nurses to tend to first aid, health screenings, and disease prevention. By that time, the Waterbury School Nurses had already pioneered the practice of school nursing, contributing greatly to the health and wellbeing of the city’s school children.[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_17]
Today, school nursing is considered a specialty that requires advanced education and professional emergency care experience. School nurses promote health and safety practices, providing interventions to actual and potential health problems including acute injuries and managing chronic conditions like food allergies and asthma. For 112 years, Waterbury School Nurses have pioneered and specialized the practice of school of nursing, treating over two million pupils in that time. You can learn more about the School Nurses of Waterbury in their full report here.
Newly appointed inaugural Linda Koch Lorimer Professor of Nursing, Ann Kurth, is the dean of the Yale School of Nursing and an expert on global health. Kurth is a clinically trained epidemiologist whose research focuses on how to improve prevention, detection, and care of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Her work to promote reproductive health and strengthen global health systems through information and communication technologies has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNAIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US Health and Resources Administration.
Kurth’s educational background comes from an undergraduate degree at Princeton, an MPH in population and family health from Columbia, a master’s in nursing with a specialization in midwifery from Yale, and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington. Her academic career began as the Paulette Goddard Professor of Global Health Nursing at New York University (NYU). She also founded and served as executive director of NYUCN Global in the NYU College of Nursing, a research and implementation program for improving health and well-being for individuals, families, and communities nationally as well as globally. Kurth now serves as adjunct professor of nursing and public health at NYU, and adjunct professor and dean of the Yale School of Public Health and the Yale School of Nursing, respectively.
The Yale professor also has an impressive academic literary background with over 160 published peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and scholarly monographs. She is also a regular reviewer for public health, medical, and nursing journals. One of Kurth’s highest achievements was editing one of the first books published on women and HIV, “Until the Cure.” Kurth has also consulted for the NIH, the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, and the CDC, as well as served as a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Academy of Science Committee on PEPFAR Evaluation where she led a Health System Strengthening workgroup.
Kurth has been honored on multiple occasions for her leadership and contributions to science. Most notably, she was awarded the International Nurse Research Hall of Fame award from Sigma Theta Tau International, a global nursing honor society. She is vice chair for the Consortium of Universities in Global Health, and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the New York Academy of Medicine. Currently, Kurth is a member of the 2014-2018 US Preventive Services Task Force, a program to set screening guidelines for primary care in the US.
Yale created the Linda Koch Lorimer Professorship to honor a distinguished faculty member in any field, “who is an exemplary citizen of the university, and who embodies the attributes and character demonstrated by Linda Koch Lorimer, including her commitment to a legacy of women at Yale.” Lorimer served Yale for over 30 years as a vice president and secretary, overseeing numerous transformative initiatives, including the creation of the Office of International Affairs, the Office of New Haven and State Affairs, and the Office of Digital Dissemination and Online Education.
