All of the most recent Belmont MSN graduates have passed the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Family Nurse Practitioner certification exam on their first attempt. This is the sixth consecutive year that graduates of the School of Nursing’s MSN program have achieved a 100% first-attempt success rate on the national certification exam.
ANCC is the world’s largest and most prestigious nurse credentialing organization, and a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association (ANA). ANCC certification is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies and the Accreditation Board for Specialty Nursing Certification. Their exams are a fair and accurate measure of professional competency. ANCC board certified nurses have met strong professional development standards, are in the greatest demand and command the highest salaries. Certification is accepted by governing boards, insurers, and the military.
The Master of Science in Nursing at Belmont University can be completed in 16 months attending full-time or in 28 months attending part-time. The director of the program, Dr. Leslie Higgins, has been an integral part of the program since its inception in 1994.
PT Student steps up for Special Kids
Katie Ritz, a second year physical therapy student, shares about some extra steps taken in her recent clinical at Special Kids. . . .
While doing my clinical at Special Kids in Murfreesboro, I was asked by my course instructor to think of an inservice or project that would identify a need at the clinic. I noticed that while working with the children, we often used stairs as a strengthening technique, but the 8 in stairs were too high for many of the kids. The therapists would improvise and use benches to create steps that were not as high, but the benches were not secure, and made a safety issue. I enlisted the assistance of my husband, and with the space guidelines from Special Kids, we designed the staircase with 4 3″ steps and 2 6″ steps and handrails at two different heights. My husband and I donated the material and built the steps in a weekend. It is a great feeling to know that the stairs now sit in Special Kids’ main gym and are utilized on a daily basis by many children!
OT Students Announce Pediatric Research Study
Belmont Occupational Therapy students Jessica Deal, Carleigh Evans, and Julie Kluska have announced a research study to assess the perceived need for pediatric aquatic therapy in Middle Tennessee. The study is being conducted under the supervision of two OT professors, Dr. Lorry Liotta-Kleinfeld and Dr. Jeanne Sowers.
The students are recruiting practicing pediatric occupational therapists to participate in the study through an anonymous and confidential survey.
OT Students act as advocates to Tennessee Legislature
First year OT students recently visited Legislative Plaza to talk with legislators, acting as advocates for recipients of TennCare who are at risk for losing services. This follows the OT curricular thread of Faith Based Advocacy. Pictured here is the group of students and Dr. Jeanne Sowers with the First Lady of Tennessee, Andrea Conte.
Haiti Update #4
Jen Watters Haiti Blog
Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 7:20pm
Bonswa!!! (which is Creole, last week I used the French!)
Wow! This week has gone by so fast! And this Wednesday will mark 4 weeks for me here in Haiti! Wow! I am definitely feeling settled in here, which is nice. While I miss home, I am happy to be staying two more months. I’m just starting to get a little bit of the language and I’m really enjoying getting to know our Haitian staff and my patients. I can tell I am starting to be “long term” here though, because my friends are starting to leave. There have already been a couple in the past week, but beginning next week the group that I came with will all start to leave without me – Sad!! Most people are only staying 4-6 weeks, so it is hard to see them come and go. But there is always a new group and everyone is great!
Haiti Update #3
Jen Watters Haiti Blog
Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 6:00pm
Bonsoir! (Good Afternoon!)
This has been a very bittersweet week for me in Haiti, which so many amazing things and also some big challenges. First, I found out on Tuesday that my grandmother passed away on Monday, her visitation was Wednesday and the funeral mass on Thursday, so there was really no possibility of me to go. It was really hard for me to be here in Haiti, so far away from everyone, but I did get to talk with my family several times – they even called me on my Haiti phone when the skype wasn’t working out, which I am sure they will regret when they see their phone bill – but I definitely appreciated it. Everyone here was great too and I got lots of hugs from my housemates! My grandma loved angels, and even though I am sad that she is not with us here, I know that now she is resting with the angels and I am comforted by the thought =) If you think of it – your prayers for my grandma and for my family will be much appreciated!
Belmont Professor Named President of Tennessee Occupational Therapy Association
Dr. Jeanne Sowers, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy at Belmont University, was recently elected as the 2010 President of the Tennessee Occupational Therapy Association (TOTA).
The statewide association supports and encourages the provision and availability of quality occupational therapy services to enhance the occupational performance of consumers in Tennessee through communication, education, professional development, advocacy and legislative involvement. TOTA aims to be a model for state occupational therapy associations in enhancing occupational performance among consumers. There are more than 2300 licensed practitioners of occupational therapy in the state of Tennessee.
Dr. Sowers has practiced as an occupational therapist for more than twenty years and has served in diverse roles within the profession. As a practicing clinician, Dr. Sowers’ experience is in the area of adult physical rehabilitation. She has published and lectured at local, state, and national conferences on various subjects including the provision of occupational therapy in the hospital intensive care unit, ergonomics, and rotator cuff dysfunction.
In addition to her new role as President of TOTA, Dr. Sowers serves the Nashville community as a board member for Homeplace, Inc., a group home sponsored by Belmont United Methodist Church.
PT Professor receives Lifetime Achievement award from APTA
Dr. Mike Voight, Professor of Physical Therapy at Belmont, has been honored by the American Physical Therapy Association as a recipient of the Turner A Blackburn Lifetime Achievement Award from its Sports Physical Therapy Section. The award signifies a lifetime of positive contribution to education at both the university and continuing education levels. Dr. Voight received the award at the recent APTA Combined Sections Meeting in San Diego, CA. Pictured with Dr. Voight (gray suit) are SPTS president Tim Tyler on his right and past president Tab Blackburn on his left.
In addition, Dr. Voight was inducted into APTA’s Sports Physical Therapy Hall of Fame, recognizing his positive impact on the profession of physical therapy for over 25 years.
A Dialogue to Build a Healthier Community
The public is invited to join A Dialogue to Build a Healthier Community, part of the Gordon E. Inman College of Health Sciences & Nursing Diagnosing Our Future speaker series. Admission is free.
Featuring Dr. David Williams, Professor of Public Health at Harvard University School of Public Health and Staff Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America.
ALSO PARTICIPATING
– Tom Cigarron – Co-founder and Chairman of Healthways, Inc. and Chairman of Alignment Nashville, a public education support organization
– Dr. Stephanie Bailey – CDC Chief, Office of Public Health Practice
– Juan Canedo – Director of Progreso Community Center
– Helen Moore – Director of Non-discrimination Compliance and Health Care Disparities for the Bureau of TennCare, and an Edgehill community member
– Jacky Akbari – Chairperson of the Middle Tennessee Diversity Forum
– Dr. Eleanor Bright Fleming – Edgehill Dental Collaborations and Policy
– Dr. Alisa Haushalter – Director of the Bureau of Population Health Programs for Metro Public Health Department
– Yvonne Joosten – Executive Director of the Office of Community Engagement at Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health
– Winona Yellowhammer – Spokesperson for the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee
– Ann Hatcher – Vice President of Workforce Development Programs at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)
– Belmont University faculty, staff and students
SCHEDULE
8:30am – Registration
8:45am – Welcome
9:00am – Framework for a Healthier Community – David Williams
9:30am – Dialogue I
11:00am – Dialogue II
12:15pm – Lunch break
1:30pm – Dialogue III with guest panelists
3:15pm – Closing Remarks – David Williams
TOPICS INCLUDE
How Our Neighborhood Affects Our Health
Partnering Together for a Healthier Community
A Community Perspective on Disparities Research
Beyond Health Care: Building a Healthier Community
Click here to get more information and RSVP.
Co-sponsored by:
Belmont University’s Center for Community Health & Health Equity
Presentation Partners Include:
Nashville Health Disparity Coalition
Meharry Medical College
Metro Public Health Department
Haiti Update #2
Jen Watters Haiti Blog
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 1:40pm
Bon Jour !!!!
First I want to give a disclaimer that I am typing this on a French computer and while I’m getting more used to the different keyboard, I haven’t mastered it yet, so please forgive my typos !!
Wow ! What an amazing week ! I’m not sure if I should write more frequently or just save everything up for Sunday. I’m afraid these « little » updates will turn into novels very quickly ! I guess you can always read them little by little, so I’ll just write and not worry about it ! =)
This week I was stationed at the same antenna as last week (CDTI) ; which was great for getting to know the local staff ; the patients ; and also the Americans at the hospital next door. We’ve really had some nice collaboration where they’re referring pts to us and I’m taking pts up there, which is a nice change from me just running up there 3 or 4 times a day ! We had our busiest week at the clinic yet ; one day we had 54 pts who had come by 12 :30 ! (we are set up to see about 45 a day) so that was little crazy ! We also had the clowns without borders come and do shows at all our hospitals and clinics this week which was SO awesome ! Unfortunately I missed the show at my clinic because that was the day we had so many pts, but I saw some pictures from the other clinics and they were great ! I could definitely hear everyone laughing so, it sounded like they had a great time !
If you put it that way…
Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
“Newtonian mechanics is satisfactory,” says Polkinghorne, “for largish objects moving at ten miles an hour, unsatisfactory for the same objects moving at a hundred thousand miles a second.” “Kuhn dismisses as an irrelevancy the well-known fact that Newtonian mechanics is the slow-moving limit of Einstein’s mechanics. Yet to physicists this relationship would seem to be important, for it explains why classical mechanics was so long an adequate theory and why it remains so for systems whose velocities are small compared with the velocity of light.” (One World The Interaction of Science and Theology, pp. 14,17)
Probably Newtonian mechanics sufficed for explaining the movements of your vehicles on ice and snow this winter in the U.S. The reports about your winter have been remarkable, especially since, while the Equator crosses southern Uganda, the elevations are high enough to make it balmy most of the time. Some days have been downright chilly, a few hot in the afternoons. Mornings in paradise are almost always perfect mornings of comfortably cool freshness. And the look from our “tree house” apartment is always one of lush rain forest. Here is a photo from the family home in Ohio where I spent my teen years and one from where we are living now to show the difference this winter. We also see monkeys in the trees around our house, unlikely in either Ohio or Tennessee.
Haiti Update #1
Jen Watters Haiti Blog
Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 1:41pm
Hello! Bon jour! (which works in French and Creole)
I hope that this finds everyone doing well!! Today is Sunday, which is our day off every week. It was a very nice surprise since I wasn’t sure if we would work straight through the week or not. Today has already been a very nice day. I got up this morning and went to mass at the main cathedral in Port Au Prince with several of my housemates. Even though the cathedral was completely destroyed, the crucifix is still standing! And there are several other churches like that in the city – amazing! We had mass outside.
PT Professor lends expert analysis to television investigative report
Belmont PT professor, Dr. Kevin Robinson, recently provided expert analysis for an investigative report by WLKY in Louisville, KY about fit shoes. The news report video and story are linked here.
PT’s Voight speaks in Dublin, Ireland
PT Professor Mike Voight recently gave a keynote address to over 100 medical clinicians in Dublin, Ireland on the topic of Golf Fitness. Pictured with Dr. Voight are Lance Gill, Head Athletic Trainer for Titleist Golf Company, and Padraigh Harrington, three time major champion and past PGA player of the year and currently ranked in the top 10 players in the world.
From third-year PT student Ann Howard. . . .
Hello from Jackson, Mississippi!
Wow! I cannot believe that the second of our four 8-week clinical rotations is soon coming to a close. I am definitely sad to leave Mississippi Methodist Rehabilitation Center (MMRC), but excited about the knowledge and relationships gained from an incredible clinical experience working with patients who have suffered spinal cord injuries. This rotation has truly been life-changing! Patients in rehab facilities require physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual therapy. I am so grateful that MMRC encourages this type of care. I also have enjoyed and learned from the team approach involved at MMRC including the physicians, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, recreational therapists, speech therapists, respiratory therapists, and neuropsychologists.
At MMRC, the therapeutic recreational therapists provide many opportunities to take patients on “outings” when they are medically stable. Last week, my clinical instructor and I had joined the recreational therapist and two of our patients on a “movie theater outing”. Through this, I’ve seen how extremely important it is to provide these patients with the motivation they need to regain experience in the environment. You could see it on the patients’ faces how excited they were to be outside of the hospital and enjoying life again! What a blessing it has been to work in this field of physical therapy!
Social Work student’s internship helps lead organization to community award
Senior Belmont Social Work student, Jimmy Smith interned last fall with The Contributor, Nashville’s “street newspaper” that focuses on the issues surrounding homelessness and poverty and is sold by homeless and formerly homeless individuals on the street as an alternative to panhandling. During Jimmy’s internship, he helped nominate the organization’s volunteer Executive Director, Tasha French, for the 2009 Titans Community QB Award. French recently won the award which resulted in a $10,000 grant from Tennessee Titans owner KS “Bud” Adams Jr and the Tennessee Titans Foundation to the organization.
From third-year PT student Stacey Apple. . . . .
Greetings from Virginia Beach!
The first clinical of the third year is already half way over! I am currently working in an outpatient neurological rehabilitation center. It is completely different from any setting I have been exposed to thus far. The clinic consists mainly of patients who have had strokes; however, there are currently additional diagnoses including traumatic brain injury, amputee, and spinal cord injury. Every patient comes to “Day Rehab” for 6 hours a day for intensive therapy. Each patient must qualify for at least two out of the three disciplines offered: physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. I have been very fortunate to gain experience working in a clinic that focuses on a team approach to therapy. A speech therapy student and I just had the opportunity to plan a Super Bowl party for the patients incorporating therapeutic activities and, of course, football. It was not all work for the patients though. The halftime show of karaoke was a huge hit!
The clinic has recently purchased a Wii system and a Wii balance board to be used during therapy. Therefore, I have logged many hours on the Wii and the WiiFit finding different ways to incorporate all three disciplines into “Wii-habilitation” and choose activities appropriate for each individual patient to present as an inservice to the clinic. Who would have ever thought that a patient with a spinal cord injury could sit on the balance board, and his weight shifting could be tracked the same way an ambulatory patient would? It has been a wonderful experience using a commercially available technology to train my patients and find new, entertaining approaches to therapy.
Tell it slant
Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
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?
And then they went home
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.
From NPR – Wanted: Men for OT Jobs
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.
School of Nursing Awards Foundation Scholarships
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.
First Year Pharmacy Students Receive White Coats
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.
Program Hudgens Helped Develop Wins Award
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.
Belmont Nursing Grad serves aboard the USNS Comfort in Haiti
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.
College of Health Sciences to host civil rights pioneer, Fred Gray
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.