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A Message from the Dean
A recent Business Week special report, “Get Creative,” features the concepts of experience and design as a formula for extraordinary success in organizations. The idea is to understand the human experience and design systems that cater to that experience. The article highlights the new practice of business schools partnering with design schools to offer multidisciplinary teaching of design thinking, methodology and strategy, thereby developing a culture of innovation. Synergy results from combining innovation, user insight and organizational strategy. Think about our students, our clients, our colleagues… and, of course, alumni and other supporters. For students and faculty, this culture of innovation results in the use of new technology to enhance instructional design. This culture also fosters a marked increase in opportunities to conduct relevant research and to collaborate with students on other campuses and from different ethnicities. Our traditional definition of classroom is being challenged by a greater capacity to learn, grow and interact with other scholars around the world from our home base in Georgia. The MCG School of Nursing is creating this environment for its students. For our patients, this design innovation means greater access to better-quality health care services. For example, nurses now often take the lead in providing coordinated, managed care for the frail, the homebound and nursing home residents. With this change in methods of delivery comes a growing need to train future nurses for the different career options that will be available to them. The MCG School of Nursing is already connecting with companies that design national health care plans to inform our faculty and students about the changing face of managed care. Moreover, our emerging Nursing Faculty Practice will increase our ability to partner with communities throughout the state to service our citizens of greatest need. For nurses in acute-care settings, the design manifests itself in cutting-edge techniques for health care delivery such as telehealth and the requirement for more advanced preparation. Hospitals’ drive to achieve Magnet recognition by the American Nurses Credentialing Center is a direct result of these changes. We at the School of Nursing now can partner with health systems to provide a variety of innovative, advanced nursing educational programs that will facilitate this transition, and we have already begun work in the local health care community to address this need. Finally, our alumni and supporters can be proud to be associated with an organization that is forward-thinking in its efforts to prepare nurses for their ever-changing roles in health care delivery and design. Building upon its tradition of excellence, the MCG School of Nursing is strengthening its national reputation as an innovator in nursing education. This design-oriented culture at the MCG School of Nursing is driven by clinical and research nurse scholars who are creative and are beginning to embrace design, as both concept and method. As health care evolves, and we develop new programs and courses to prepare nurses for the future, we will stay abreast of the latest trends. Yes, ready or not, today’s health care requires out-of-the-box thinking while insisting on quality. At the MCG School of Nursing, we are ready! Ever onward and upward,
Dr. Lucy Marion [Top] School of Nursing Receives $1 Million GrantThe Robert W. Woodruff Foundation has awarded $995,000 to the Medical College of Georgia School of Nursing to support its new doctorate of nursing practice program, the 10th of its kind in the nation. The gift from the Atlanta-based Woodruff Foundation, a private organization that supports charitable, scientific and educational activities, is the School of Nursing’s largest from a private foundation. “We thank the Woodruff Foundation for helping MCG progress advanced-nursing education in our region,” said Dr. Lucy Marion, dean of the MCG School of Nursing and a leader in the national DNP movement. “We look forward to preparing a critical mass of doctorally prepared nurse clinicians through increased collaboration with other graduate schools of nursing throughout Georgia.” MCG’s partner in the initiative, Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, has been awarded $500,000 through the same grant. By offering distance-training options, the partnership will allow Emory faculty to enroll in MCG’s doctorate of nursing practice program and MCG faculty to attend Emory’s postgraduate program for clinical educators. “This partnership provides an example of how the public and private sector can work together to address the severe shortage of qualified nursing faculty and clinicians in Georgia,” said Dr. Marla Salmon, dean and professor of the Emory School of Nursing. “We are excited about the opportunity to work with MCG in advancing the capacity of nurses to improve care and meet ever increasing needs for nursing services.” The doctorate of nursing practice focuses on clinical and management expertise necessary to improve outcomes in health care practice, leadership and education. The program encourages nurses to stay in health care practice and contribute to issues faced in the field.
The program also will help alleviate the national nursing shortage by producing more qualified nursing professors, allowing nursing schools to enroll more students, according to Dr. Turner. The first cohort of doctorate of nursing practice students, consisting of 13 MCG School of Nursing faculty, began this year. The class size is expected to increase to 20 to 30 students in the next two years. The DNP curriculum includes 40 graduate semester hours over four semesters, covering trends in effective care, methods of care delivery and concepts in evidence-based care. “For the first time ever, nursing doctoral education includes the financial aspects of health care,” said Dr. Georgia Narsavage, School of Nursing associate dean for academic affairs. “Nurses with this degree will be equal players amongst those making budget and finance decisions.” Requirements for the program include a master’s degree in nursing or associated program of study related to a specialty area, a graduate school admissions test, current professional nurse licensure and specialty certification as appropriate. Emory University will offer a 12-credit hour program, the Clinical Educator Certificate, to graduate nursing practice students. The certificate focuses on evidence-based clinical teaching and evaluation techniques, and can be pursued before, during or after the doctorate of nursing practice course of study. For more information, including program requirements, contact Dr. Turner at sturner@mcg.edu or 706-721-4807. --Kim Miller [Top] Grant Helps Extend Healthy Grandparents Program
The School of Nursing is extending the services of its Healthy Grandparents Program with the help of a grant from the Area Agency on Aging. The grant opens the program to 12 additional counties in Georgia and extends services to other non-parent caregivers in all of the 14 counties it serves. The original program was open to grandparents raising grandchildren in Richmond and Columbia counties. Program services will be extended to residents of Burke, Glascock, Hancock, Jefferson, Jenkins, Lincoln, McDuffie, Screven, Taliaferro, Warren, Washington and Wilkes counties. Residents in those counties will have access to telephone referrals for a variety of issues from health care and housing to food banks and education. “People can call the service to ask questions and make sure that they’re getting the aid that they qualify for,” says Judith Salzer, an assistant professor of nursing at MCG and director of the Healthy Grandparents Program. “We want to make sure that people are knowledgeable about what their rights are and what their children’s rights are.” The expanded program also will offer a monthly support group meeting. Topics for those meetings will include everything from parent/grandparent health issues to the behavioral differences between children today and children in the past. Group meetings will be held in the School of Nursing. The ultimate goal is to make MCG a resource center for all relative care, Ms. Salzer says. Those who use the services will have their needs assessed and be referred to agencies from across the area that can help. “Interestingly enough, grandparents and other relatives often think that they’re the only ones who are doing this,” she says. “This service helps them get to know others and network with other people who are in the same situation.” The MCG Healthy Grandparents Program currently provides services to 160 families with 300 children. For more information on the program and the upcoming changes, call Ms. Salzer at 706-721-4878 or School of Nursing Social Worker Mike Patton at 706-721-6227. --Jennifer Hilliard [Top] Dr. Narsavage Appointed Fellow
The American Academy of Nursing is made up of 1,500 nursing leaders in education, management, practice and research. The academy aims to anticipate national and international trends in health care and address resulting issues of health care knowledge and policy. Dr. Narsavage, who specializes in respiratory nursing practice, came to MCG this year after serving as associate dean for academic programs and director of the Doctorate of Nursing Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She serves on the board of directors for the American Thoracic Society and is a member of the National League for Nursing, the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty. Dr. Narsavage earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Maryland in 1969, a master’s degree in nursing from the College of Misericordia in Dallas and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship. In 2002, she earned an adult nurse practitioner certificate from Case Western Reserve University. [Top] Men Should Know Family History of Prostate Cancer
“Sadly, we don’t know many of the causes of prostate cancer yet,” said Dr. Sally Weinrich, a professor in the School of Nursing who studies the disease. “We do know that if the disease is hereditary, it is usually more aggressive, is diagnosed at an early age and is more likely to kill. A lot of prostate cancer genetic research is currently being conducted. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have genetic testing for hereditary prostate cancer.” Some possible environmental causes also have been identified, including high dietary fat and obesity. “Our research has shown that people with a higher body mass index are at a higher risk of getting prostate cancer,” said Dr. Martha Terris, a urologist and professor of surgery in the MCG School of Medicine. “Among the men studied with cancer, a higher BMI was also linked to a more aggressive form of the disease.” Men can increase their chances of survival by knowing their family history. If multiple family members have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and the onset was at an early age, the risk is higher, Dr. Weinrich said. “Men must ask specific questions about their family history,” she says. “It’s important to distinguish between other causes of urinary symptoms and cancer and to find out at what age men in their family were diagnosed.” Other preventive measures include learning about the benefits and limitations of prostate cancer screenings and making an informed decision, decreasing or stopping smoking, decreasing fat in the diet and increasing fruits and vegetables—particularly foods with cooked tomatoes, which contain lycopene. Lycopene may reduce cell growth of prostate cancer. “The best things that men and the women who love them can do is to be informed,” Dr. Weinrich says. “They should know their family history and follow the research, too. We’ll have answers in 10 years that we don’t have today.” --Jennifer Hilliard [Top] |
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“Before this program was developed,
nursing was the only health profession without a practice doctorate,”
said Dr. Saundra Turner, chair of the MCG Department of Biobehavioral
Nursing. “Graduates of our program will be nursing leaders with a global
perspective, able to collaborate with physicians and other health care
providers to optimize patient care.”
Dr.
Georgia L. Narsavage, associate dean for academic affairs in the School
of Nursing, has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Information can be elusive in the fight
against prostate cancer, the second most common type of cancer in
American men, but Medical College of Georgia researchers are adding to
the knowledge base.