PT students awarded clinical scholarships
Since its inaugural class of 2000, either Belmont University School of Physical Therapy’s third year students and/or second year students have been the recipients of PT Clinical Scholarship awards. These awards have been provided by an anonymous donor with the intent to assist in defraying the additional costs incurred during the final 8-week full time clinical experiences. With the $5000.00 offered again this year, the total amount to date that has been awarded to PT students is $114,000.00.
At the request of the donor, a committee selected third year students based on their campus and community involvement, high academic achievements and need. Each applicant provided a one-page resume’ and one-page essay indicating why they chose the physical therapy program at Belmont University and explained their need for financial assistance.
This year's scholarship recipients are Sarahann Callaway, Brittany Colston, John Hackett, Sarah Herschberger, Lauren LaCourse, Natalie Neufelder, Michelle Perna, Teela Sexton, and Allie Sosebee.
Pharmacy Fraternity Presents Check to St. Jude Children’s Hospital
Phi Delta Chi is a pharmacy fraternity that focuses on scholastic achievement, leadership and service. The organization is committed to raising funds and awareness for worthy causes, both locally and nationally. One of the most notable causes the fraternity is involved with is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital located in Memphis, Tennessee. Belmont’s chapter, Gamma Xi, has raised funds for St. Jude through various projects. One such project was a letter writing campaign called the Prescription for Hope. Through this campaign student members were able to raise $1,520 within the past year, totaling $4, 204 within the past two years. The group presented the hospital with a check during a visit last week.
Dunlap presents at Global Health Forum
Dr. Ruby Dunlap, Associate Professor of Nursing, was a co-presenter at the 2012 Tennessee Global Health Forum sponsored by the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). Dr. Dunlap was joined by Carol Etherington and Patsy Meier, both registered nurses, to provide an overview of how healthcare is delivered in various community settings by diverse caregivers with limited resources. The 2012 forum was focused on measuring impact and maximizing success in global programs. It featured accomplished global health leaders who shared experiences and expertise on innovative approaches and practical tools to sustain such programs. VIGH supports numerous community health initiatives locally and throughout the world, including current efforts in Mozambique and Nigeria.
Dr. Dunlap has taught community health nursing at Belmont since 1996. Her involvement and interest in international healthcare has been lifelong. She spent 10 years of her childhood in Somalia. For 15 years she has guided nursing students in the assessment and health education of refugee families resettled to the Nashville area from all over the world. In the 2009-2010 academic year, she was a Fulbright visiting lecturer for the graduate nursing program at Uganda Christian University, Mukono, Uganda. She returned to teach a four week module in the same program in September, 2011. In addition to advising nine nursing masters theses for Ugandan graduate nurses, she guided a group of the same nursing students in a revision of the Uganda Nurse and Midwives Practice Act in October, 2011.
Pharmacy Faculty Abstract Accepted for AACP Conference
Pharmacy Assistant Professors Edgar Diaz-Cruz and Angela Hagen and College of Pharmacy Dean Phil Johnston have had their poster titled “Student Organizational Impact on Minority Pharmacy Students and Diversity Awareness Through Community Service” accepted for the 2012 AACP Annual Meeting in Kissimmee, Fla.
The authors discuss how to prepare future generations of pharmacists, representational of the diversity of the community, through the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA). This outreach directly impacts current Belmont University College of Pharmacy students as it develops their awareness of the various needs in minority communities. Inter-professional faculty advisers in the areas of the pharmaceutical, social and administrative sciences are strategically developing the organization to meet these diverse needs.
Mission to Guatemala – Day 6
Mission to Guatemala 2012
by Allison Toole
Today we woke up in beautiful Antigua! Its safe to say we all got an amazing night of sleep after a hard day of work yesterday in Tecpan! I was part of the team that spent the day at the JT Children’s Foundation and it was such a rewarding experience! We saw 5 patients in the morning and 4 patients in the afternoon. It was amazing to see the teamwork between us and the clinicians there in Tecpan. The parents of the patients we saw were so open and wanting to understand how they could help their children out even more at home. We started out by assessing their children and ended each session with educating the parents on exercises and strengthening techniques they needed to do at home. We stressed to the parents that most of their children will not get better unless they continue doing their exercises at home. Overall, the teams had a very rewarding experience at the JT Foundation and felt very blessed for the opportunity to work with such beautiful children.
After our team finished at the JT Foundation, we got on the bus and headed over to the where the other team had spent the day building steps and installing a rope. I was completely in awe when we pulled up and saw the numerous amounts of kids that lived in this part of the village! They were SO loving and immediately hugged and greeted us as we got out of the van. After talking with the other team for a while, I was told that the kids were very eager to help out with their project and were an integral part in helping build the steps. It warmed my heart to know and see how hardworking these children are… that isn’t something I am used to seeing every day. It was a very humbling experience to see how grateful these children were for all the work we did.
I can’t believe how fast this week has gone by! I feel like I have learned and grown so much in such a short amount of time. My heart is completely on fire for this beautiful country and I cannot wait for future opportunities to come back and hopefully continue these projects we have started here this past week. Today is zip lining and shopping in the market and we are all very excited to explore the market and get some good shopping in (including the delicious coffee!!)
Mission to Guatemala 2012 – Day 5
Mission to Guatemala 2012
Feliz Dia de Madre! Today is Mother’s Day in Guatemala. We all got this message at 4 am with a 5 minute blast of fire crackers in the courtyard!
The team headed to Tecpan – a rural farming village about 2 hours west of the city. We teamed up with JT Childrens Foundation – an organization that provided physical and occupational therapy for kids. 1/2 of the team stayed at the foundation assisting with therapy and the nurses gave CPR training.
The other half went out into a community in the mountains. We were at Melvin’s home. Melvin is a 14 yr old kid with CP. His home is on top of a steep incline – maybe 200 meters from the main road. Melvin walks down the stairs to the main road to get to therapy. The stairs have been washed smooth over time. His handrail….barb wire! Yikes.
We spent the day cutting out new stairs and installed a rope for a hand rail. Pretty good day of manual labor. We did of course find time to play with all the kids. Spanish is the 2nd language in this area. the main language is a Mayan dialect of Q’eqchi. Super nice folks.
After work we headed into Antigua were we will be for the next 2 nights. Friday is our day off – zip lining and shopping.
Shores is presenter at Safe Patient Handling Conference
Dr. Lynne Shores, Professor of Nursing at Belmont University, was recently one of four presenters at the Safe Patient Handling Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Designed for nurses, nurse educators, and other clinical leaders who are responsible for implementing and sustaining safe clinical work environments, the conference included evidence-based practices in patient handling and movement. Dr. Shores has become nationally recognized for teaching nursing students how to move patients safely by following set protocols, including the use of appropriate equipment. She has played a key role in introducing safe patient handling in the School of Nursing at Belmont. She has worked with peers at the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to implement core curriculum for teaching students about on-the-job safety. Dr. Shores has served on the National Advisory Committee for the ANA Handle With Care recognition program.
Mission to Guatemala – Day 4 – More
Mission to Guatemala 2012
by Rachel Haddock
Today was as busy and fun filled as the previous few days. I was a part of a team who spend the majority of the day at the school meeting classrooms full of children ages kindergarten through the 6th grade. With entry into each classroom we were greeted with songs. We watched as they made gifts for their mothers and had time to play as well. We spent the rest of our time painting a classroom that was built a few years ago and really needed a fresh coat of paint.
The highlight of the day, for me was when we went into the village where we got to see how great the poverty is and what seemed to me was the 'real Guatemala' and what daily life is like for people here. We met a wonderful family whose daughter is suffering from chronic renal failure. She was hooked up to a make-shift dialysis device and we heard from her mother that the young girl wanted most was to ride a bike again before she died. This statement was not only incredibly touching and heartbreaking but motivating for our team. As we left them, we made the decision to buy her a bicycle before we left. In the middle of dinner she and her mother and father came to the Nazarene Center to get her gift. We were all overwhelmed by her father's gratitude and her mother's tears. The little girl was so excited and was able to practice immediately, her joy was undeniable. It was so humbling and rewarding to know that we made a difference in her life and hopefully made her time before and after surgery a time she can enjoy and have fun like other kids.
I am looking forward to the adventures and challenges that we face tomorrow but I am so encouraged after tonight, seeing the impact we made simply by giving a little girl a bike- something we take for granted everyday back home.
Mission to Guatemala – Day 4
Mission to Guatemala 2012
Our first visit was to Lucy. The nursing team and I were honored with an invitation inside her home, and witnessed a kind of gratitude for that home (which had been built by The Shalom Foundation) that far outdid what any of could have expected from someone living in such extreme poverty. Our hearts broke in unison when Lucy disclosed that the beautiful baby girl in her womb was past due, and that she completely lacked access to any kind of hospital, clinic, or even midwife to facilitate delivery… Las Conchas simply didn’t have anything to offer her or her baby to be… And Lucy simply didn’t have access to transportation. Her plan, when the time came, was to take to the bumpy dirt road outside her home and walk until she passed someone who could help. Not long after, we ran into Julio, another man Shalom had provided for in the past. With one of his precious daughters wrapped around his legs, Julio lamented that he no longer had a job and that he was struggling to provide food and fulfill basic needs for his family. Heart-wrenching visits like these passed one by one throughout the day until finally, standing outside a small tin home on a hillside of the Las Conchas community while the nursing team examined another helpless baby girl, I stared down the steep dirt road toward the masses of other small tin houses, and thought to myself that there was simply too much.
Luckily, I had someone there to remind me that miracles happen one by one. And the reminder was well-timed. Today was a day of miracles. I even think I may have contributed to one very special miracle at the clinic that we visited in Las Canoas. The nurses were overjoyed at the bags and bags of medical donations that we brought with us. They dug right into everything, and with great care they organized it all between the two small rooms that functioned as their office and exam room. Their gratitude for the donations was unmistakable. still it wasn’t long before I became aware of a rather large deterrent to their actual ability to use many of the supplies that we were leaving them with: They couldn’t read any of it. In fact, they couldn’t read any of the bottles or instruction sheets for any of the drugs that they had so neatly organized in their cabinets from previous rounds of donations. It was therefore with great honor that I was able to translate the function and dosage information for their entire cabinet. The nurses enthusiastically noted and labeled everything, with their minds undoubtedly full of the many local people that they would now be able to treat with the medicines they had received.
The need here is overwhelming. But with the right mixture of generosity and sharing of skills… perhaps these small miracles can be even more so.
Mission to Guatemala – Day 3
Mission to Guatemala 2012
Tuesday May 8th was our third day in Guatemala, and the second day we were out in the community doing work. The team of nurses started the day at the Hospital for the children with infectious diseases and in need of rehabilitation. First we met the nurse director who gave us a tour of the entire hospital, she was amazing and taught us about how they run all of the separate units in the hospital. We were introduced to the pediatricians and the staff nurses and they showed us around each of their respective units and we met some of their patients. The last unit we went to was the intensive care unit. There we were met by the supervising nurse of the ICU where she welcomed us in and we had to wash our hands and get on gowns. We met all of the patients in the ICU and learned their stories. After that we all split up into three groups, one group in the ICU, one in the emergency room and one group taking vital signs in the general admission unit. All of the groups helped take care of patients and worked side by side with the nurses in the hospital. After lunch we left the hospital and went to the university to teach the physical therapy students there CPR and the Heimlich maneuver. Last we went back to the Moore surgery center, to hold a fabulous baby shower for Maria Jose. We had an amazing day and were completely blessed to spend it together helping the children in Guatemala.
OT and PT got to visit the hospital again this morning and worked with the Guatemalan therapists to treat several children. The therapists seemed happy to see us again this morning and involved us in each treatment session. My favorite memory from the hospital was working with a little boy named Oscar who is diagnosed with microcephaly and is blind. Oscar doesn’t have proper strength within his trunk in order to sit up straight, so his spine kind of looks like a “c”. Tamara worked on positioning Oscar to help straighten his spine, but needed a little “something extra” to help involve Oscar in the therapy session. She asked us to start singing and as we did he immediately responded to everything Tamara was doing! It was such a great experience to be involved in something so simple but so monumental for this little boy. Oscar most definitely melted a piece of my heart today. After the hospital we traveled to the surgery center to see patients. OTs and PTs split into two groups and worked with patients that had previously visited the surgery center. This was a great learning experience and everyone was able to learn more about our disciplines and about how to work together to give the best treatment possible. We then joined the nursing students for the baby shower and had a fantastic time playing baby shower games and showing love to Maria Jose and her family. Today was absolutely fantastic and I can’t wait to see what else Guatemala has to teach us!