by Christina Morgan | Sep 4, 2019 | News, Nurse of the Week, Nurses in the Media, Washington |
Our Nurse of the Week is Karin
Huster, a Seattle-based nurse and field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders.
Huster spends six to 12 weeks at a time away from home, helping the world’s
most vulnerable populations. Most recently she was in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) helping battle Ebola outbreaks.
Even though she regularly encounters dying patients, Huster tells seattletimes.com, “It’s the best job in the world. And I don’t mean this lightly…My goal in life is nothing else but to try to improve people’s lives.”
Ebola has killed over 2,000
individuals and sickened almost 3,000 individuals in the DRC since August 2018.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency
in July 2019 while Huster was on her fourth trip there.
Helping those in need has been
Huster’s dream since she was a child. She grew up on Réunion
Island, a French island in the Indian Ocean, and in 1991 she moved to Seattle
for a job translating English to French for Microsoft. Feeling unfulfilled, she
left her job at Microsoft to enroll in nursing school at the University of
Washington (UW). She spent eight years as a nurse in the intensive care unit at
Harborview Medical Center before going back to UW to earn her master’s degree
in global health. In 2012, Huster went to Lebanon on a trip with UW to work
with Syrian refugees. It was there that she found her passion for traveling to
help the world’s most vulnerable populations.
To
learn more about Karin
Huster, a Seattle-based nurse and field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders
who considers her job battling Ebola outbreaks in Africa the “best job in the
world,” visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Jul 1, 2019 | News, Washington |
Washington State University (WSU) Health Sciences Spokane is teaching students in its medicine, pharmacy, and nursing programs how to care for patients suffering from opioid addiction. A two-hour class developed by faculty at the university will teach teamwork and communication to provide an effective approach to treatment for these sensitive patients.
The Washington Department of Health funded the development of the program. Almost 350 students from WSU and Eastern Washington University took the class in January and February. WSU will eventually be making the curriculum freely available online to any university that wants to offer the curriculum to its health sciences students and a follow-up grant will allow the university to adapt the material for use by rural health clinics.
Barbara Richardson, PhD, RN, an associate clinical professor in WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, tells news.wsu.edu, “We know that a lot of times when patients run into problems with opioids its because there’s poor communication on the health care team. People can fall through the cracks; our goal is to build a system where the cracks don’t exist.”
The curriculum on how to create a team approach to opioid addiction covers roles and responsibilities, appropriate language, and conveying patient information to other members of an interprofessional healthcare team. To learn more about Washington State University’s new curriculum for teaching a team approach to opioid addiction to health sciences students, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Jun 18, 2019 | News, Washington |
Washington State University (WSU) Health Sciences Spokane has invited seventeen Native American and Alaska Native high school students from multiple states to attend the 24th annual Na-ha-shnee Summer Institute. The attendees are rising sophomore, junior, and senior students who plan to pursue careers in nursing and health science.
The Na-ha-shnee Summer Institute is a 12-day event where students learn about a range of health science topics and receive college admissions information. They are fully immersed in scientific challenges and receive hands-on learning experiences taught by health care providers, faculty at WSU Health Sciences Spokane, and health sciences college students.
Topics covered during the Institute include anatomy, timely information on opioid addiction and response, basic nursing skills training and simulation, and a visit to the university’s pharmacy lab. Students will also receive CPR and first aid certification and are eligible to receive up to 65 Career and Technical Education (CTE) credits after completing their twelve days at the Institute.
To learn more about Washington State University’s Na-ha-shnee Summer Institute where seventeen Native American and Alaska Native high school students from multiple states have met to learn about a range of health science and nursing topics, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Sep 21, 2018 | News, Washington |
The University of Washington (UW) has announced a new dual degree program offering a Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) in Population Health and Master of Public Health (MPH) in Global Health. The three- to four-year program aims to expand the skills of public health nurses and nurse scholars to work in partnership with populations and health systems to ultimately improve access to health care and help achieve health for all.
Pamela Kohler, associate professor with the UW Departments of Global Health, Psychosocial and Community Health, and Schools of Public Health and Nursing, tells Washington.edu, “Graduates of the new concurrent degree program will be equipped to lead sustainable change in collaboration with health systems, communities, and populations; and will have the skills to evaluate program and policy impact.”
The DNP program will prepare registered nurses for advanced practice roles, nursing leadership, and the application of evidence-based decision-making models to nursing practice. The MPH in global health will provide social justice and practical skills-based frameworks for achieving health equity through partnerships with a focus on health conditions that transcend borders.
Students must complete two sets of degree requirements to earn both degrees and can apply to both programs at the same time or to the second program at a later date. To learn more about the University of Washington’s new dual degree program offering a Doctor of Nursing Practice and Master of Public Health, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Jul 24, 2018 | News, Washington |
The University of Washington (UW) School of Nursing is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Nurse Camp program for high school students. The week-long camp originally grew out of a need to encourage more first-generation and minority college students to pursue nursing degrees.
Carolyn Chow, co-director of the UW Nurse Camp and director of admissions and student diversity for the School of Nursing, tells Washington.edu, “We had to figure out how to effectively reach applicants earlier with more supportive resources and experiences to learn about nursing as a career option. They love the camp because it’s an opportunity to connect directly with nursing student mentors and professional nurses. And it’s an opportunity for us as a school to have a clear impact on diversifying the next generation of nurses.”
Throughout the week of sessions, students learn a variety of nursing skills including hands-on training in CPR, hand washing, infection control, recording vital signs, and more. Campers also learn from current students in the School of Nursing’s recently opened simulation center, providing a mutually beneficial leadership development program for current UW nursing students.
As part of Nurse Camp, students also attend sessions to learn about financial aid and scholarships to help them prepare for college admissions. To date, about 98 percent of camp alumni have gone to college afterward. The Nurse Camp program is free to campers thanks to private donations.
To learn more about the University of Washington’s Nurse Camp for high school students to learn about nursing as a degree and career option, visit here.
