Carter’s role is focused on making the School of Nursing a welcoming and inclusive place for employees and students by meeting with members from other departments to form strategies that encourage an affirming atmosphere. She has used a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to fund the School of Nursing’s Academy for Academic and Social Enrichment and Health Equity Academy over the last decade.
Duke nursing students from underrepresented minority groups take part in the academy to study social determinants of health. The Health Equity Academy ultimately aims to understand how to best serve patients from a variety of backgrounds.
Carter tells Today.Duke.edu, “We want to be known as a place where all people can come together and feel comfortable, at home and supported. I want us to be proactive in our approach to diversity and inclusion.”
Carter holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from North Carolina Central University and a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She also works as a secondary clinical staff nurse in the Duke University Hospital Intensive Care Nursery where she cares for infants who were born early, born with a condition or disease at birth that requires immediate attention, or born with a pre-existing condition like genetic anomalies.
To learn more about Duke Nursing Associate Dean Brigit Carter and her role heading Duke’s program for underrepresented minorities, visit here.
The Duke UniversitySchool of Nursing welcomed its newest class to the Emerging Leaders Program during a kickoff celebration this week. This is the second group of nursing professionals chosen to participant in the year-long professional development program.
The Emerging Leaders Program is a collaboration between the School of Nursing and Duke Learning & Organization Development, a unit within Duke Human Resources. Participants were nominated by Duke Nursing staff members and the Executive Leadership Team. The participants will gather for six sessions, which will feature coursework and opportunities to hear from Duke leaders, including the university president and leaders from the School of Nursing.
In their sessions, participants will explore situational leadership, project management, budgeting, conflict resolution, and communication and presentation skills. There will also be group projects in between sessions that tackle issues relevant to the School of Nursing.
Libby Joyce, director of the Office of Institutional Research for Duke Nursing and a graduate of the program’s first class, was selected to speak at the kickoff celebration where she told the newest class of participants:
“I have a sneaking feeling that over this next year, you’re going to be challenging yourself. And you’re going to be challenging others in this process. You’re going to be discovering new talents and discovering things in yourself that might surprise you. You’re going to make new friends, mentors and allies in this process. I think it’s going to be surprising what you learn.”
To learn more about Duke Nursing’s Emerging Leaders Program and newest class of participants, visit here.
Last week, Duke Health broke ground on a new building that will house the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine’s Doctor of Physical Therapy Division and Department of Orthopedic Surgery. The new building is expected to be open to students and faculty in Fall 2019.
The five-story, 103,000 square foot building will be home to the School of Nursing’s PhD program, Center for Nursing Research, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and Office of Student Services, amongst other resources for the School of Medicine.
A. Eugene Washington, MD, Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University and President and CEO of the Duke University Health System, tells medschool.Duke.edu, “Groundbreaking means innovative and pioneering, and the activities our faculty, staff, and students will undertake in this new facility certainly fit that description. Providing state-of-the-art shared space for our School of Nursing and School of Medicine promotes collaborative scholarships and strengthens our dynamic academic community.”
Keeping the Doctor of Physical Therapy Division and Department of Orthopedic Surgery offices with the School of Nursing in a new location will foster new connections and partnerships, providing an opportunity to enhance and expand interprofessional education and care. Sharing this new space will ultimately teach students the value of patient-centered care across multiple medical disciplines.
“On behalf of the Duke University School of Nursing faculty and staff, we are so excited about this opportunity to do, as Duke does, to collaborate so well but to also take interprofessional education to the next level,” says Marion E. Broome, PhD, RN, Dean, Duke University School of Nursing.
To learn more about the ground breaking ceremony for Duke’s new shared School of Nursing and School of Medicine building, visit here.
A new building to house the Duke UniversitySchool of Nursing and School of Medicine has been approved by the Duke Board of Trustees. Construction on the 102,000-square-foot facility is set to begin this month and be completed in 2019.
Marion E. Broome, dean of the School of Nursing, tells Today.Duke.edu, “Once this project is complete, the School of Nursing and School of Medicine will continue to expand their interprofessional efforts by providing unparalleled educational excellence, leading research and clinical expertise to our students and the community.”
Once completed, the new five-story building will replace the current Duke research building. The School of Nursing will occupy 50 percent of the new building, which will also be home to the school’s PhD program, Center for Nursing Research, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Student Services, Duke Health Center for Interprofessional Education, simulation suite, and more.
The new building will also be home to Duke’s nationally recognized Doctor of Physical Therapy program. Dr. Mary E. Klotman, dean of the School of Medicine, looks forward to co-locating Duke’s health programs in one building and creating a new focus on interprofessional education to help teach students the value of patient-centered care across multiple medical disciplines.
To learn more about Duke’s new nursing and healthcare building, visit here.
In the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the healthcare community is exploring and testing new technologies that can serve as alternatives to human contact to diminish the risk for providers to care for patients with infectious diseases. At Duke University, nursing and engineering students teamed up to collaborate on the building and refining of Trina, their first-generation Tele-Robotic Intelligent Nursing Assistant.
Duke’s robot project is funded by an $85,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The project began a year-and-a-half ago, not as an effort to replace nurses, but to create a safer environment for health care providers. When health care providers are faced with treating patients with infectious diseases, like Ebola, they must dress in multiple layers of protective clothing, wipe down their materials with bleach, and use multiple rooms. With the development of nurse-robots like Trina, healthcare providers and researchers hope to improve the process of treating patients with infectious diseases by allowing nurses and doctors to navigate a remote-controlled robot into another room, directing it to move the linens, take vital signs, and pass food and medications.
A few weeks ago, Duke students and staff tested Trina on a fake patient, Michele Kuszajewski, having Trina take the patient’s vital signs via a remote-control stethoscope. Michele recalls feeling scared when the robot-nurse was coming at her. The massive red mechanical robot resembles a science fiction character out of Transformers or The Jetsons with a gray wig and surgical cap on its head to give it some human-like elements. On the robot’s face is a tablet showing the human operator, similar to a Skype call. Robots are currently being used in hospitals to help doctors perform tasks with precision and flexibility during surgery, but the machines don’t move about a room or perform bedside tasks like preparing drinks and adjusting oxygen masks.
To improve the study, engineering students needed to understand the tasks that Trina needs to perform. Nursing students donned protective clothing in the nursing school’s simulation lab and simulated working with a patient with Ebola as engineering students watched and took notes through a glass window. After the nursing students were finished, an engineering student drove Trina into the lab to test her ability with tasks like delivering a red cup, a bowl, pills, and a stethoscope to Michele in a simulation setting.
Students conducting the study found Trina’s movements to be abrupt and clumsy. In the future, they hope to make Trina, or the next generation robot-nurse, more agile so that it can collect and test fluids and look more friendly and human-like. They also hope to create a better interface between the human and robot to make their work together more comfortable, especially for the patient.
