A Message from the Dean

As the nursing dean, I often travel across Georgia and the nation. One of the pleasures of representing our school is meeting School of Nursing alumni. This is a gratifying reminder to me about the star quality of our graduates.

One such shining star, Dr. Marion Broome, in February received the highest honor of the Southern Nursing Research Society, the Distinguished Researcher Award. Dr. Broome, dean of nursing at Indiana University, announced from the podium how her MCG experiences were fundamental to her rigorous research career.

Many of our alumni have leading nursing roles in health systems and public health venues, in all parts of the state, as well as the Armed Forces. We also count our blessings for the galaxy of leaders retired from practice but active in support of our school as the flagship nursing program in Georgia.

I invite you all to Homecoming in April, a beautiful time of year in Augusta. This year, we will pay special tribute to the graduates of the classes of 1951-71. These years mark the exemplary tenure of School of Nursing Founding Dean E. Louise Grant. Beginning her tenure as head of the nursing program at the University of Georgia, she laid the foundation for the distinguished careers of many of our graduates.

In her memory, we have embarked on a campaign to complete the E. Louise Grant Chair in the School of Nursing. Currently at 70 percent of the $500,000 needed to fully endow this chair, our goal is near completion. Essential to building our future excellence, support from our alumni and friends allows us to recruit a renowned professor with the spirit of vision and integrity that were Dr. Grant’s hallmarks.

Please be part of illuminating the star quality of the MCG School of Nursing and accept my invitation to the Homecoming brunch and dinner/dance April 23. Come as a Dean E. Louise Grant alumnus or to represent other great eras in our history. I look forward to meeting many of you, our graduates, and to showcasing past and future School of Nursing achievements that make us all proud.

Ever forward,

Dr. Lucy Marion
Dean, School of Nursing

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Dean Named to Task Force

Dr. Lucy N. Marion, dean of the Medical College of Georgia School of Nursing, has been named to the 15-member U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. She will serve through 2008.

The task force is an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that reviews and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services.

Dr. Marion joined MCG in 2004 after serving as professor and department head of public health, mental health and administrative nursing and associate dean for academic nursing practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in nursing science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

She has served on state and national advisory groups concerning mental health care, environmental risks to children and the practice doctorate for nurses. Her National Institutes of Health-funded research focuses on sexual risk reduction interventions for high-risk minority populations. In Chicago, she developed a nurse-managed system in partnership with Thresholds Psychosocial Rehabilitation Agency to deliver integrated primary and mental health care for people with severe and persistent mental illness.

At MCG, Dr. Marion is recruiting new faculty, working to expand the student body from 459 to around 600, enhancing and expanding the advanced-practice nursing majors to the level of a practice doctorate and moving toward an increased emphasis on post-baccalaureate education. The school is creating a new doctorate of nursing practice for graduates of both the traditional and new master’s programs.

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Program Assesses Needs of Children Raised by Grandparents

As the challenges of grandparent-led families are becoming clearer, a Medical College of Georgia School of Nursing program is expanding to address the mental-health needs of the children involved.

For six years, a Department of Human Resources Promoting Safe and Stable Families grant has enabled School of Nursing faculty and students to assist grandparents raising grandchildren in the Augusta area. Faculty and students in the school’s Department of Health Environments and Systems, along with social worker Mike Patton, visit about 20 families a month, assess their needs, monitor their health and help match them with area resources for ongoing assistance.

The project recently expanded to address the mental-health needs of the children involved.

“It became apparent as we began working with these families that most of the children don’t function at the expected level,” said Judith S. Salzer, assistant professor of the Department of Health Environments and Systems and coordinator of the Healthy Grandparents Program. “Many have been abused or neglected. All have suffered losses. They’ve seen and done more than any child should. We felt their mental health needed extra attention.”

Children raised by grandparents are at high risk for problems including attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, Ms. Salzer said. Many of them have drug-addicted parents, so they often have cognitive deficiencies resulting from prenatal drug abuse or neglect early in life, she noted.

Further exacerbating their situation, many live in poverty. For instance, one grandmother in the program is raising three grandsons. When they needed new clothes recently, she could afford only one pair of jeans, which the children alternate wearing.

Children faced with these hurdles often have behavior problems and fall behind in school, Ms. Salzer said.

“These problems became very noticeable as we interacted with these children and observed them in social situations,” said Dr. Barbara S. Kiernan, assistant professor of advanced practice nursing.

Their grandparents are all too aware as well. “These grandparents figure out early on that the children don’t behave like most children do. They know they need help,” said Ms. Salzer.

To address the problem, the nurses are teaching nurse practitioner students to screen children for mental health problems, using several tools including questionnaires for children and their grandparents. Answers to questions will help signal problems such as anxiety, obsessive/compulsive disorder and other mental health disorders. Those at risk will be referred for professional help.

As the children are screened, the faculty and students will continue working with their grandparents on issues such as parenting techniques, home safety, nutrition and other factors effecting the families’ environment, health and quality of life.

“The grandparents we work with really appreciate the fact that somebody cares,” said Ms. Salzer. “We’ve learned to carefully introduce new concepts and to respect their expertise.”

Many of the grandparents, she said, have poor health and other complicating factors, yet rise to the challenge of meeting their families’ needs. “Most of them have extremely strong family ties,” Ms. Salzer said. “They don’t want their grandchildren being raised by strangers.”

--Christine Hurley Deriso

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Research Bolsters Case for Simulation

“Show, don’t tell” is a time-tested axiom in education, and a member of the Medical College of Georgia faculty hopes to take it to a new level.

Dr. Lori Schumacher, assistant professor and interim chair of the MCG Department of Physiological and Technological Nursing, joined the faculty in 2000 and was immediately impressed by the school’s human patient simulator.

The School of Nursing obtained the simulator several years ago, primarily to help students practice administering anesthesia. The computer-controlled simulator looks like an average-sized man and has lifelike anatomy. The mannequin simulates physiological processes such as blood pressure, heartbeat and respiration. Students can practice intubating, administering medications and otherwise manipulating the mannequin to observe and react to its lifelike responses. The mannequin also can be programmed to simulate different medical conditions, further enhancing its usefulness in teaching clinical skills in a safe, controlled environment.

“When I joined the faculty, I started working with the simulator, saw the value of it and incorporated it into my courses,” said Dr. Schumacher.

As the nursing school increased its use of the simulator, including sharing it with other MCG schools, Dr. Schumacher wanted to pinpoint and quantify its effectiveness.  “It’s obviously an effective teaching tool; students respond very nicely to simulation and request more, more, more. But when I tried to explore exactly how it enhances the learning process, I couldn’t find anything in the literature on the subject.”

While teaching at MCG, Dr. Schumacher earned her doctorate in nursing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and used the simulator as a subject for her dissertation.

She divided junior MCG nursing students into three groups, then presented three learning activities to each group. The learning activities covered material the students had never been exposed to before, including diseases such as myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism. One group learned about the diseases the conventional way, listening to     Dr. Schumacher lecture in a classroom. The second group learned about the diseases using the simulator, with Dr. Schumacher inducing the disease processes and having the students observe the simulator’s responses. The third used classroom instruction supplemented with the simulator.

“I chose diseases that are fairly dynamic on the simulator,” Dr. Schumacher said.

After presenting the material to each group, Dr. Schumacher tested them in two areas: informational questions about the material and analytical questions that measured how well the students had critically grasped the concepts.

The students exposed to simulation only and classroom lectures supplemented with simulator instruction scored highest in both areas. “The simulation really enforced what they learned in the classroom because they were able to apply their new knowledge right away,” Dr. Schumacher said.

Earlier this month, she discussed her findings at the fifth annual International Meeting on Medical Simulation in Miami, sponsored by the Society for Medical Simulation. As the sole nurse on the panel, she championed both classroom instruction and hands-on experience with simulators to teach nursing students. “Our time for training is so short, and simulation provides a safe, effective way to learn material,” she said, adding that she hopes her research will prompt nursing schools to find new ways to incorporate simulation into the curriculum.

--Christine Hurley Deriso

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Speaker Emphasizes Cultural Sensitivity

Dr. May Wykle remembers that for every ache and pain she experienced as a child, her grandmother had a home remedy up her sleeve.

For instance, “I stepped on a nail once and she wrapped my foot in a fatty slab of bacon,” said Dr. Wykle, dean and Florence Cellar Professor of the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Wykle laughs that the unlikely treatment did the trick, but adds that her grandmother’s good instincts and common sense were tempered by sad remnants of racial discrimination. For instance, she believed the rumors circulating in her African-American community that nurses carried vials of poison for hard-to-manage patients and that “night doctors” snatched people from the streets for medical experiments.

“A lot of older African-Americans don’t trust the health care system,” said Dr. Wykle, the keynote speaker March 18 at a research conference in Augusta sponsored by the Beta Omicron chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International in cooperation with the Medical College of Georgia Division of Continuing Education.

Dr. Wykle shared the anecdotes about her grandmother to emphasize the importance of communication, respect and cultural sensitivity when treating patients.

“You can’t improve a patient’s quality of life until you improve communication,” said Dr. Wykle.

She recalled that when she began her nursing career, nurses weren’t allowed to explain basic information to patients such as why they were prescribed a certain medication. “We were trained to tell them to ask the physician,” Dr. Wykle said, prompting nods of recognition from many of the dozens of nurses in the audience. “But nurses are now on the front lines of ensuring good patient communication.”

This is particularly important, she said, in light of a rapidly changing society. “We need to empower family caregivers,” she said. “Older people want to be home, and we need to find ways to keep them home without placing excessive burdens on family members.”

More than 150 nurses and nursing students from throughout the Southeast attended the conference, titled Uniting Practice, Education and Research.

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Team Will Enhance Research Program 

A husband-and-wife team have joined the Medical College of Georgia School of Nursing faculty to bolster the school’s research program.

Dr. Sally P. Weinrich and Dr. Martin C. Weinrich joined MCG in January as professors in the Department of Nursing Science.

“The Weinrichs’ extensive body of research in fields including epidemiology, prostate cancer and gerontology will greatly enrich our research initiatives,” said MCG School of Nursing Dean Lucy N. Marion. “As we move forward with a greater emphasis on post-baccalaureate education, their expertise and highly productive partnership will strengthen our missions not only in research, but in education and service as well.”

Dr. Sally P. Weinrich, who earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of South Carolina, served as a professor at the University of Louisville School of Nursing before joining MCG. She has submitted a grant proposal to the National Cancer Institute to study prostate cancer screening in African-American men. Her focus on health disparities has included African-Americans, low-income persons and medically underserved populations.

Dr. Martin C. Weinrich, who earned a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Michigan, was a professor of bioinformatics and biostatistics at the University of Louisville in Kentucky before joining MCG. He has participated in more than $8 million of National Institutes of Health-funded clinical, nursing and epidemiological research.

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