Health Sciences at Belmont University

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind---

Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) poetry is for me a gradual dazzle. This one came to mind as I’ve taken retrospective tours of the Ugandan nursing graduate students and my experiences with philosophy and theory over four weeks in January. Do and should nursing theories give priority to a received philosophy of science or a perceived philosophy of science? Which one fits best with a Christian worldview? What exactly is a worldview and what could be especially Christian about it? What are the logical parameters of differing worldviews? Is logic a valid criterion by which we should evaluate any worldview or theory and on what grounds do we recognize the validity of logic itself?

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Posted by Ruby Dunlap at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Ruby Dunlap's Uganda Fulbright Blog

This past Friday night, I dreamed I was a pizza box. My consciousness resided in part of the box lid; I felt the air move as my cardboard face fell downwards. Mefloquine can do that. I had forgotten to take it in the morning and rather than skip another dose as I inadvertently had the week before, I took it just before bedtime with consequences among those the inserts predict: vividly bizarre dreams.

Many of the expatriates here take no malaria prophylaxis at all and few Ugandans do. But malaria is endemic and dangerous; I helped a wobbly student walk to the front gate, get on a boda, and on to home a few weeks ago with a 3+ malaria raging in her system. Being stricken with recurrent bouts of malaria is what all Ugandans deal with as a matter of routine. It only takes one bite from one infected mosquito. Many sleep under mosquito nets; many do not. Dad refuses his mosquito net since it hampers him getting in and out of bed. I do not fuss since a fall and a broken bone are at least as risky for him as malaria and he is taking his malaria prophylaxis weekly.

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Posted by Ruby Dunlap at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Unemployed males looking for a new career path could turn to occupational therapy. It's one of the many health-related jobs growing during the economic down turn. It's also a field traditionally dominated by women. Females make up 90 percent of workers and men 10 percent, and recruiting males into the field has been a challenge. Listen to this report from National Public Radio.

Posted by Bill Nichols at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ten new students to Belmont's School of Nursing this Spring semester have been selected to receive a $10,000 New Careers in Nursing scholarship, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The New Careers in Nursing is a program designed to help alleviate the nursing shortage and increase diversity within the profession's workforce. The scholarship program is designed for college graduates with non-nursing degrees to pursue a second bachelor's degree like the accelerated nursing program at Belmont. The $100,000 grant helped Belmont's School of Nursing increase student enrollment with a new spring cohort while expanding program admission from fall semester only to both fall and spring semesters.

Award preference is given to students from groups underrepresented in nursing or from disadvantaged backgrounds. Of the accelerated students beginning their program of study in January 2010, 23 percent are male, and 33 percent come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. In comparison, national nursing workforce data indicate that men comprise only 5.8 percent of the American nursing workforce and racial/ethnic minorities comprise only 10.7 percent. Grant funding will be used by schools to help leverage support for new faculty resources and provide mentoring and leadership development resources to ensure successful program completion by scholarship recipients.

Posted by Bill Nichols at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Belmont University School of Pharmacy recently held their White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2013. The 74 first year students received their white coats, the symbol of clinical service and care, as an important rite of passage from first-year pharmacy students to patient care providers. Faculty, family and friends gathered to show their support and hear an address by Dr. Jannet M. Carmichael, past president of the American Society of Health-system Pharmacists (ASHP) and Pharmacy Executive for the VA Sierra Pacific Network. The White Coat Ceremony is sponsored by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. To view more photographs of the event, click here.

Posted by Bill Nichols at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Julie Hudgens, assistant professor of pharmacy practice, received information that the heart failure clinic program where she played a primary development role at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Ga. received the Second Place Practice Innovation Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine recently.

Posted by Bill Nichols at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From WEAR ABC3 in Pensacola, Florida. . . .

A second wave of sailors bound for Haiti deployed from Pensacola Naval Hospital Wednesday. The group will be providing care to quake victims on a state-of-the-art hospital ship called the U.S.N.S. Comfort. Lieutenant Junior Grade Lauren Hudson shouldn't be on this trip. She has already deployed once this year, but for this special mission, she asked to be a part of it. Hudson is a 2007 graduate of Belmont University's School of Nursing.

"I felt kind of an emotional connection to Haiti because I had been there before, and I really just wanted to do something to help." In fact, a sense of purpose fills many of the 25 people loading a bus for Jacksonville. From there, they'll meet up with 10 other Pensacola sailors on board the U.S.N.S. Comfort, a floating hospital tasked with caring for the earthquake survivors.

"It's pretty amazing what it can do and how many people it can hold." The 1,000-bed ship will carry more than 500 staff members, 35 of which will be from Pensacola. A team that commanders say includes many volunteers. "Our corpsmen are superior, bar-none, so we have a great team. And I look forward to the mission." They'll each have their own way of dealing with the devastation around them. "I don't think you can ever be totally prepared for this. You just kind of got to stop yourself from over-thinking and stop, take a deep breath."

The bus is loaded with 25 people heading over to Haiti, but that's only a fourth of what's deployed around the world from Naval Hospital Pensacola. A round of applause for the latest departing staff, and the hopes for a successful mission. The sailors were not given a definite timetable for a return home. We're told it could take anywhere from one to six months.

Posted by Bill Nichols at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Noted Civil Rights attorney and minister Fred Gray will appear on Belmont’s campus on Wed., Jan. 20 for a special forum and lecture. Gray—the former attorney for Rosa Parks, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims—will discuss “Lessons Learned from a Civil Rights Pioneer about Health, Social Justice and Christian Service.” This morning-long event is free and open to the public, courtesy of financial assistance provided by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trusts, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee. Both the forum and the lecture will take place in Belmont’s Massey Performing Arts Center.

Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher said, “It’s a distinct honor to welcome Fred Gray to Belmont’s campus, especially during the week when our nation celebrates the accomplishments of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. At Belmont we encourage our students to use their gifts and talents to impact the world. There are few better examples of individuals who have accomplished that mission than Fred Gray.”

The event will begin with an 8:30 a.m. panel discussion featuring Gray along with the following special guests:
• Dr. Henry Foster, Jr., professor emeritus and former dean of the Meharry College School of Medicine and nominee for U.S. Surgeon General under President Bill Clinton
• Dwight Lewis, columnist and member of the editorial board for The Tennessean
• John Seigenthaler, founding editorial director of USA Today, founder of the First Amendment Center and award-winning journalist who briefly left his career in the 1960s to work in the civil rights field.

Following a 20-minute intermission at the conclusion of the panel forum, Gray will return for a keynote lecture at 10 a.m. His presentation will conclude with a question-and-answer session.

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Posted by Bill Nichols at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Article from Nashville Medical News

Politics in Play

Tommy Thompson, four-term Governor of Wisconsin and former Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently painted a scenario of political intrigue filled with back room bargaining and deal-making worthy of the latest political best seller. However, he wasn’t speaking of a fictional thriller but of the real life maneuvers that will be necessary to get a healthcare reform bill out of Congress.

Speaking at Belmont University a week before Thanksgiving, he predicted that Congress would pass a new, comprehensive healthcare bill, but not without some Congressional arm twisting, “and a lot of shootouts and deal cutting” before reaching a “cantankerous” compromise.

“The president wants the healthcare bill out. Nancy Pelosi wants it out. Harry Reid wants it out,” he explained, of the push to move quickly. Thompson added that, for Democrats, the specter of “what happened in 1994 with the Clintons’ attempt at healthcare reform hangs over their heads.”

The briefing, part of Belmont University’s continuing speaker series, Diagnosing Our Future, was held at the university’s Gordon E. Inman Center.

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Posted by Bill Nichols at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kelley Allen, Nurse for the Neonatal Transport Team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, has been recognized by Cambridge Who's Who for demonstrating dedication, leadership and excellence in nursing. Allen received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Belmont University in 2002

As the charge nurse for the neonatal transport team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, Ms. Allen is responsible for supervising the team, overseeing nurses during orientation, credentialing and quality control, and managing bedside care in the neonatal intensive care unit and for babies in need of medical care at outside facilities. She enjoys specializing in caring for babies. In 2004 and 2005, she was the president and vice president of the Middle Tennessee Association of Neonatal Nurses and participated in We Care for Kids Day at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital for the past three years. Ms. Allen takes pride in her team, the neonatal transport team, being certified as air medical transport professionals. She attributes her success to her parents who instilled in her a great work ethic and taught her to give her best efforts at all times.

Currently pursuing her Master's Degree in Neonatal Nursing, Ms. Allen also received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Lipscomb University in 1996. A certified CPR instructor and NRP instructor, she is a member of the Middle Tennessee Nurse Practitioner Association and the Middle Tennessee Association of Neonatal Nurses. She hopes to become a nurse practitioner and continue working at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in the transport field. She would also like to work as a liaison for quality control and safety for the transport team.

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Posted by Bill Nichols at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)