For the past few years, GW Nursing Assistant Professor Erin Athey, D.N.P., FNP-BC, RN, FAANP has been working with United Medical Center (UMC) in Washington, D.C., running its mobile clinic program. Before COVID-19 struck, she partnered with the District of Columbia Housing Authority to provide primary and preventative care to people in Wards 7 and 8 public housing. The UMC mobile vans, out of which she operates the clinic, help to address health disparities and improve access to health care for the most underserved populations in D.C. These clinics also provide a unique and vital opportunity for GW Nursing students to get clinical hours and serve these communities.
COVID-19-era work
Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, the mobile clinic program received federal funds through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support its ongoing work and to equip it for the new challenges posed by COVID-19. By July 2020, the mobile clinic was going into the community two to three days each week. Dr. Athey and her students conducted extensive PCR COVID-19 testing during the summer and fall of 2020 while continuing to provide care such as HIV testing, general health care screenings, and referrals.
Beginning in 2021, once the COVID-19 vaccines received emergency use authorization, Dr. Athey used the vans as vaccination clinics, going to family properties throughout Wards 7 and 8. As was the case throughout much of the country, there was initially a huge demand for the vaccine, but in summer 2021, Dr. Athey and her team began to encounter fewer people willing to take the jab and more resistance to vaccination. This phenomenon is known as vaccine hesitancy.
According to Dr. Athey, the two main issues now leading to vaccine hesitancy and low vaccine uptake are access and trust. She said that even the complicated issue of misinformation can be broken down into having access to the facts and trusting the source enough to believe them. Overall, access issues can be greatly mitigated with the mobile clinic, which takes the shot directly to the people who might not have the time or means to get to the pharmacy. Trust, however, takes time to build. The strategy of the clinicians and students running the mobile van: Make connections, bring the facts, keep showing up. Dr. Athey said, “I do feel like it matters to go out, to show up… It’s not overnight that it’ll get fixed, but being there continuously over time makes a difference.”
Wards 7 and 8 have the lowest vaccine uptake of all of D.C., and given that these are primarily Black communities, this is a matter of health and racial equity. In D.C., Black people make up 56 percent of COVID-19 cases, 71 percent of deaths, and 46 percent of the total population, but they have received only 43 percent of vaccinations.i Continued vaccination efforts like those of the mobile clinic are crucial.
One unique way that Dr. Athey and her team have sought to reach new populations with the COVID-19 vaccine in recent months was the Beat the Streets program, a community outreach event in which they partnered with the Metropolitan Police Department. Outreach events like this allow Dr. Athey, the students, and other clinicians to talk to people in their own communities and help inspire confidence in vaccine safety, an approach that has been most successful with people who are still on the fence about the vaccine. With those who are firmly opposed to the vaccine, talking about its merits often has limitations. However, as vaccine mandates become more and more common among various employers—including the D.C. police, health care institutions, federal government, and many private businesses—there has been an influx of vaccine acceptance. Tapping into this, Dr. Athey and the mobile clinic team recently held a clinic downtown for restaurant employees as new mandates went into effect for their places of work.
The future of the clinic
The mobile clinic will continue to operate throughout the pandemic, providing testing and vaccinations, and building trust with the community. Dr. Athey hopes that the program will continue to grow. She is looking for grants, donors, and foundations to help fund the clinic’s care of the underserved communities in D.C. Furthermore, although UMC has not previously seen children, Dr. Athey is hopeful that the clinic can soon expand its services to include wellness exams, prevention, and vaccinations for kids. She also would like to expand the partnership with the D.C. Housing Authority and begin creating place-based clinics at some of the public housing properties. This would follow the cost-saving “minute clinic” model, utilizing nurse practitioners, nursing students, and resident navigators to continue to build trust and provide access to care.
GW Nursing is proud to be in partnership with Dr. Athey, UMC, the D.C. Housing Authority, and so many others who are working to advance health equity in our community. It is important for nurses and our GW Nursing community to be innovative and committed to equity, continuing to create new models of health care that build trust and increase engagement with disenfranchised communities. The mobile clinic is just one such model. As the most trusted health care professionals, nurses are in a unique position to lead this movement. Dream big and take action!
There is no neutral space between racism and antiracism, according to Ibram X. Kendi, a history professor at Boston University and author of “How to Be an Antiracist” (2019). One is either racist and endorses the idea of racial hierarchy, or one is antiracist and endorses racial equality.
Racism is a public health issue, and a dedicated group of GW Nursing students wants to address and resolve the racism that exists in health care institutions through the formation of a new student group, the Antiracism Nursing Students Alliance (ANSA).
While health care providers, educators, and researchers have focused on reducing health disparities for many years, a primary driver of those disparities—structural racism—has been absent from the conversation.
Last fall, Lynette Flaherty Glover, BSN ’22, and Madison Upshaw, BSN ’21, approached Sandra Davis, Ph.D., DPM, ACNP-BC, GW Nursing’s former assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, with their idea to form a student group. They had already been involved in the White Coats for Black Lives student organization at GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, but wanted a group that focused on the nursing school.
Dr. Davis put the two in touch with other advocacy-minded students, and the group officially launched last December. “We all came with our ideas of things we want to change in the nursing program and in general to raise awareness of racism in health care,” Mrs. Glover says. “How can we educate the future health care workers on solutions to what they can do to help be an ally?”
“How can we educate the future health care workers on solutions to what they can do to help be an ally?”
– Lynette Flaherty Glover, BSN ’22
The group developed plans to host a speaker series to address historical racism in health care and encourage meaningful discussions. They welcomed two GW faculty members to speak in the spring semester. Nemata Blyden, Ph.D., a professor in the GW Department of History, presented the inaugural lecture in January, celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sherrie Wallington, Ph.D., an assistant professor and health disparities researcher at GW Nursing, discussed her research findings on the social determinants of health and health disparities.
Several of the ANSA founding members have experienced racism because of their ethnicity, while others were recently drawn to advocacy work after the high profile Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Billy Baron, BSN ’21, admits to having grown up in “a bubble under a rock,” but was deeply affected by the protests after police officers killed George Floyd. “I lived four blocks from the Capitol building when a lot of the riots happened,” Mr. Baron recalls. “I felt very paralyzed, I couldn’t think, I just laid in bed, I didn’t know what was happening to me.”
“I spent the first sessions listening, but near the end of the sessions I was a main speaker, talking and challenging a lot of the faculty members with questions.”
– Billy Baron, BSN ’21
In-person instruction and clinical rotations were canceled due to COVID-19, and Mr. Baron was worried about how his mental health would affect his class work. After confiding in Dr. Davis about his concerns, she invited him to participate in Continuing the Conversation, a series of open forums that took place virtually at the school throughout the summer. “I went to every single one,” Mr. Baron says. “I spent the first sessions listening, but near the end of the sessions I was a main speaker, talking and challenging a lot of the faculty members with questions.”
Mr. Baron channeled his new passion for antiracism and social justice into shaping the goals of ANSA. Fellow founding member Kimberley Hollingsworth, BSN ’21, believes that GW Nursing students want to understand racial biases, and a major goal of ANSA is to shed light on the issue and get more people involved.
“A lot of staff and faculty aren’t very aware of the racial biases that a lot of these [minority] students go through,” Mrs. Hollingsworth says. As an Afro-Latina, she experienced racism in her own work as a patient care technician, phlebotomist, and testing site coordinator. “Based on the color of my skin and being a woman, of course there’s a lot of racism,” Mrs. Hollingsworth says. “I was passed over for promotions just because—there wasn’t a valid reason given. But I see my white counterparts who haven’t had nearly the same [work] experience get moved on.”
Mrs. Hollingsworth has witnessed similar situations in the classroom setting. “I have seen white [students] get graded differently or have certain opportunities that were not awarded to minority students,” she adds. “Everyone should be treated fairly all across the board. I feel as minorities we have to work twice as hard just to succeed.”
Exhorting the school to acknowledge the racism that its own students experience was a driving force behind the interest of Mimi Bui, BSN ’21, in the group. “The nursing school needs to be much more cognizant of the challenges that their nonwhite students face every day—financial challenges, language barriers, all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Bui says.
“The nursing school needs to be much more cognizant of the challenges that their non-white students face every day—financial challenges, language barriers, all that kind of stuff.”
– Mimi Bui, BSN ’21
Addressing systemic racism at large educational institutions can be fraught. Even acknowledging racism as a cause of health disparities has not been widely embraced. When Mrs. Glover was pursuing her associate’s degree at a community college, she was dismayed when her nursing instructors discussed the various chronic conditions from which Black females are at a higher risk of dying. “They never talked about why—in some ways, it was kind of brushed off,” she recalls.
Mrs. Glover is pursuing a nursing degree because she felt discriminated against as a Black female patient. “I wanted to be part of the change I wanted to see in the world,” she explains.
In addition to the challenge of dismantling systemic racism, the students of ANSA struggle with simply finding the capacity to devote to the group on top of their coursework and personal obligations. The Accelerated B.S.N. program spans just 15 months, a short amount of time to meaningfully engage in an extracurricular organization.
The founding members are working with GW Nursing faculty and staff to help advance ANSA’s mission as students cycle in and out of the school. “Having people like myself and others on this board who can actually speak up about [antiracism], and be able to go out there and advocate, that’s what I hope GW Nursing will continue when I leave the school,” Ms. Hollingsworth says.
Founding Members
Watch video introductions directly from ANSA’s founding members to learn why they’re part of the Alliance.
Contact ANSA
Students interested in ANSA can email gwsonansa@gmail.com to learn about upcoming meetings and events
The GW School of Nursing’s Center for Aging, Health and Humanities (CAHH) is on a mission: to make the world more age-friendly and livable for people throughout their span of life, by cultivating partnerships and generating innovative ideas.
The term “age-friendly” was first used by the World Health Organization in 2002 and was part of a strategy to improve the inclusion of older adults in cities and communitiesi. The age-friendly movement seeks to improve the economic, physical, and social environments through the “8 domains of livability”: housing; outdoor spaces and buildings; transportation; communication and information; civic participation and employment; respect and inclusion; health services and community supports; and social participationii.
Melissa Batchelor, Ph.D., RN-BC, FNP-BC, FGSA, FAAN, director of the CAHH, said that “age-friendly initiatives work to reduce the impact of ageism in society.” Ageism is “largely absent from the national dialogue on equity and inclusion,” she said, but it can “accelerate negative health outcomes for people,” especially at the intersection of racism and sexism. Dr. Batchelor said it is therefore a “national imperative to start and amplify the conversation about becoming more age-friendly.”
Dr. Batchelor, director of CAHH
Additionally, creating an age-friendly world should be of interest to people of all ages because “what we do now to make our communities good places to grow up and grow old will yield returns not only for today’s elders but also tomorrow’s—that is, for all of us.”iii After all, there’s one thing about aging— “everyone’s doing it.”
The CAHH has been involved with age-friendly initiatives since 2019 when it co-hosted, with the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement, a seminar featuring Dr. Terry Fulmer, in which she discussed the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative.
Since 2019, the CAHH has received three consecutive years of University Seminar Series grant funding, allowing it to host multiple age-friendly talks focused on four core areas: age-friendly businesses, health systems, arts and creativity, and long-term care workforce.
On May 4 and 5, 2021, the CAHH hosted the inaugural Age-Friendly Ecosystem Summit in conjunction with its Age-Friendly regional municipality partners: Age-Friendly Alexandria, Arlington, D.C., City of Hyattsville, and Montgomery County. This summit was the first of its kind: a convening of age-friendly regional leaders designed to raise awareness of national age-friendly initiatives, inspire cross-collaboration, and learn about best practices from each of these age-friendly partners and regional thought leaders.
Figure 1: Adapted from: Fulmer, T., Patel, P., Levy, N., Mate, K., Berman, A., Pelton, L., Beard, J., Kalache, A., & Auerbach, J. (2020). Moving Toward a Global Age‐Friendly Ecosystem. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 68(9), 1936-1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.16675
On day one, regional leaders presented LIVE “TED Talks” to share best practices, frameworks, and resources to advance an age-friendly ecosystem. On day two, local municipal leaders shared best practices and exemplary case studies of age-friendly initiatives. The group’s efforts were guided by a Venn diagram that depicts how various societal sectors are distinct while also connected, and are equally important in creating a wholly age-friendly society.
All of the money raised from this event helped to fund the Gene Cohen Research Award. Named after the CAHH’s founder and a pioneer in creative aging, this new scholarship is intended to support GW students to conduct interprofessional research on the impact of the arts and humanities on the health and well-being of older adults and persons with dementia.
Interested in the work of this summit or in supporting the Gene Cohen Research Award? Click the link below to purchase the recorded summit.
The summit and this type of collaboration is important, especially in an interconnected region like the greater Washington, D.C., area. It provided an opportunity for the age-friendly municipalities to step out of their silos, share best practices, expand partnerships, and replicate good ideas. “This type of sharing, replication, and lending of expertise only improves the lives of all residents in this region—and serves as a national model for the power of collective age-friendly initiatives,” said Dr. Batchelor. The hope is for this summit model to be replicated in other regions and to see more age-friendly communities created and strengthened.
When asked about the way in which the partnership between GW and the age-friendly municipalities has made a difference, Marci LeFevre, one of the CAHH’s partners and the age-friendly program lead for the City of Hyattsville, Maryland, said:
“By partnering with one another, we’re accelerating the discovery and exploration of promising policies, programs, and practices implemented by age-friendly programs elsewhere that can be replicated in our own municipalities. This is invaluable as the DMV region has a wealth of age-friendly resources, but they’re not necessarily widely known or promoted within and beyond our respective jurisdictions… By spotlighting and seeking ways to address these trends, such as the growing number of older adults experiencing homelessness in the DMV region, we can help identify and foster needed systems-level changes within and beyond our municipalities.”
The grant was used to support the CAHH’s event on October 27, 2021, the Age-Friendly Social Innovation Challenge. This event brought together a diverse, intergenerational group—including students, older adults, and working professionals—to design innovative strategies for building age-friendly infrastructures. The CAHH also used this as an opportunity to establish an Age-Friendly Regional Network for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The CAHH partnered with GW Nashman Center, Georgetown University, and the age-friendly regional municipalities, and looks forward to building even more partnerships.
When she applied to teach at the George Washington University, Crystel Farina, Ph.D.(c), RN, CNE, CHSE, knew very little about the School of Nursing or the university. “I applied solely because the dean was Pamela Jeffries,” said Ms. Farina, director of simulation and experiential learning.
Ms. Farina aiding students during on campus PPE fitting
A doctoral candidate at Notre Dame of Maryland University, Ms. Farina joined the Nursing School in August 2017. She had been aware of Dr. Jeffries, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, ANEF, FSSH, and her work on simulation since 2004, when Ms. Farina was teaching at Chesapeake College in Maryland and grew interested in simulation and nursing education.
“She was the one in all the articles who was teaching me how to actually do simulations,” Ms. Farina said of Dr. Jeffries, whom she first met in 2015 at the National League for Nursing’s Leadership Development for Simulation Educators. Dr. Jeffries was one of the “giants of simulation,” who formed a faculty group leading the program.
“It was like seeing a rockstar,” she said. “Oh my gosh, it’s her!”
Dr. Jeffries, who recently stepped down as dean at the School of Nursing—a role she held from 2015 to 2021—to become dean of Vanderbilt University’s nursing school, turned out to be “very down to earth, very relaxed, and very warm and fuzzy,” Ms. Farina recalled.
“I applied solely because the dean was Pamela Jeffries. She was the one in all the articles who was teaching me how to actually do simulations.”
– Ms. Farina
“Once I got over the awe of sitting with the godmother of simulation, it was very easy to have a conversation and talk about what we were doing at the college level, what we needed to do for nurse practitioners, and simulation in health care education,” Ms. Farina said.
This characterization of Dr. Jeffries as a down-to-earth, amicable rockstar is a common refrain among those who know and have worked with her. And the dean’s departure to Nashville, Tenn., comes amid a larger transitional time at the school and at GW.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many best-laid plans. From an academic and administrative perspective, the School of Nursing was lucky to have put certain programs and processes in place prior to the pandemic, which helped mitigate some remote- and digital-only growing pains.
Pamela Slaven-Lee, D.N.P., FNP-C, FAANP, CHSE, senior associate dean for academic affairs and clinical associate professor, now serves as interim dean of the School of Nursing. GW recently announced that Mark Wrighton, chancellor emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, will begin serving as interim president in January and will fill that role for up to a year and a half.The School of Nursing was about two-thirds of the way into its strategic plan when the pandemic began, requiring that in-person activities shut down in mid-March 2020. Despite this hurdle, the faculty and staff were able to fulfill the goals of that plan. And, although her departure was eminent, Dr. Jeffries saw to it that the next strategic plan was in place before she left. As she and her colleagues reflect on her legacy and vast achievements at GW, they see a bright future for the school, which has already earned national accolades that are more typical of much older and more mature schools.
The View from ‘Athens of the South’
Reached by video chat in Nashville, Dr. Jeffries said she hopes people will look back on her GW legacy as six years of bringing the school to another level. “We grew—maybe from adolescence to young adulthood,” she said.
Dr. Jeffries is very proud of starting GW’s doctoral nursing program and building up the breadth and depth of the school’s research base. “It still needs to grow more, but the quantity and quality of our research efforts have definitely scaled up,” she said. She also takes pride in the school’s No. 22 ranking for nursing graduate education by U.S. News & World Report and successful school-wide health policy branding.
Joe Velez, GW Nursing’s Executive Director of Operations, speaking with crew at remodel project
Six years ago, when Dr. Jeffries came to GW—after serving as vice provost for digital initiatives at Johns Hopkins University, and before that as an associate dean at Hopkins and at Indiana University Bloomington—her priorities were to build upon the foundation her predecessor, Jean Johnson, established as founding dean some five years prior. Having inherited high-quality programs, Dr. Jeffries wanted to take the school to the next level.
“I had an analogy of a three-story house. Dr. Johnson built the first floor. I had the second floor, which continued to build on our reputable programs,” Dr. Jeffries said. “To build the research base on the third level, I wanted to start a Ph.D. program and to diversify revenue, because we were very tied to tuition dollars and enrollment numbers.”
Dr. Jeffries started a professional development office called Ventures, Initiatives and Partnerships (VIP), and she sought to improve the school’s national rankings. She aimed in five years to move the school into the top 25 graduate programs in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. (It previously ranked No. 58.) It took six years, but the school bested that goal by three slots.
“I had an analogy of a three-story house. Dr. Johnson built the first floor. I had the second floor, which continued to build on our reputable programs,”
– Dr. Jeffries
In the 2022 U.S. News rankings (the Georgetown-based publication ranks schools based on the prior year’s data, which can sound like predicting the future), the Nursing School is also tied for No. 28 in the category of “Best Nursing Schools: Doctor of Nursing Practice” with Oregon Health and Science University; University of California, San Francisco; University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; and Washington State University.
In the U.S. News specialty nursing school rankings, the GW School of Nursing is No. 8 in “Best Master’s Nurse Practitioner: Family,” and is tied for No. 6 in “Best Master’s Nursing Administration” with University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And in the U.S. News online nursing program rankings, GW is No. 2 for “Best Online Master’s Nursing Programs for Veterans,”No. 3 for “Best Online Master’s Nursing Administration Programs,”No. 7 for “Best Online Master’s Nursing Programs (tied with University of Nevada, Las Vegas), and No. 7 for “Best Online Family Nurse Practitioner Master’s Programs.”
Creating a doctoral program to help train nursing scientists was necessary to become a top-tier school, according to Dr. Jeffries, who also is proud of starting the school’s Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement. The latter draws upon the school’s location in the nation’s capital.
“I don’t think I would have changed anything if I could have read the tea leaves and known COVID was going to hit in March 2020,” Dr. Jeffries says. “In fact, we actually prepared ourselves not knowing it was happening.”
Pivoting Online
Prior to March 2020, the Nursing School had already begun assembling the necessary personnel to strengthen its creation and delivery of online programming. Dr. Jeffries hired e-learning specialists, instructional designers, videographers, a graphic designer, and a director of online learning and technology.
“I’m glad that was done, because that served us well in COVID,” she said. “We already had online education going at GW Nursing, but I put more resources and support into building a team.”
She also brought on a team to help run the expanded simulation center on the Ashburn, Va., campus, home to a state-of-the-art Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) center. “They had to pivot during COVID to produce and really facilitate faculty with the virtual simulations,” Dr. Jeffries said. And after lockdowns ended, that team facilitated safe in-person lab simulations.
Associate Professor Dr. Karen Whitt monitoring OSCEs at VSTC simulation lab
During the pandemic, Dr. Jeffries would wake up each morning and ask herself what she needed to get through the day.
“I built community with our faculty, staff, and students,” she said. There were weekly town hall meetings for nearly 70 weeks, and Dr. Jeffries helped staff leaders, who had never managed people remotely, and professors, who could not see their students in person, navigate the new normal.
“We did keep community together,” she said, noting the school’s instructional continuity in particular. “Our students graduated on time for the most part.”
“Some of us thought—I was one—we could come back in three or four weeks,” she said of the beginning of the pandemic. “I stayed very focused to get through. I always had to hold it together. Someone has to be the leader.”
Looking forward, Dr. Jeffries notes that telehealth is poised to be a game changer for the profession, and she expects the pivot online will continue even after the pandemic is in the rearview mirror. There is a need for telehealth competencies and full integration into curricula, she said, and nursing schools ought to teach students to assess patients via digital platforms, such as Zoom. Patients are also increasingly tracking their own health data, something nurses should take advantage of.
“We’ve got to be mindful of that,” Dr. Jeffries said.
She looks forward to continuing to see the School of Nursing’s programs flourish, as well as new programs emerge. She expects the healthcare landscape to continue to change, and thinks public health is a priority, particularly the focus on health equity that COVID exposed, as outlined in the National Academy of Medicine’s report “The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity.”
“I see the next five years as a little different. Right now we are transitioning in COVID, but we are still in COVID. But our antennas are up for different things,” she said. “I think we’ve learned we can do things differently.”
Big Shoes to Fill
Dr. Slaven-Lee, now interim dean, came to GW two months before Dr. Jeffries did in 2015. She was excited to join a young school, about five years old, and the opportunities that its youth presented. Dr. Slaven-Lee served previously in a leadership role at Georgetown University and looked forward to returning to teaching. That was not in the cards, however.
“Dr. Jeffries developed our matrix structure with two communities and academic programs, and made a lot of infrastructure changes. With that, it opened up a lot of leadership opportunities,” Dr. Slaven-Lee said. “I came here saying, ‘I want to go back to teaching and not so much leadership.’ As is often the case, I ended up back in a leadership role.
Interim Dean Slaven-Lee (center), Patsy Deyo and Assistant Professor Dr. Maggie Venzke meet with Va. Del. David Reid at GW Nursing-run COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic.
”Dr. Slaven-Lee worked closely with Dr. Jeffries on developing the simulation program, which “became a signature part of our academic programs,” and building the academic affairs unit. “Really further developing all the things that you do as your school continues to mature—evaluation plans, standardizing how you evaluate your academic programs, master plans of evaluation, standardizing how you evaluate each course, clinical placement models, all those sorts of things,”she said.
In the past six years, Dr. Slaven-Lee has seen GW’s reputation soar and has noticed changes in the applicant pool. She does not think anyone else applied for the same job she did in 2015, but now, “The caliber of the candidates that we see trying to come to GW and join our faculty community is outstanding.”
Part of that, she thinks, is the national recognition the school has received in rankings. “Considering how young the school is—we’re 11 years old—that’s absolutely remarkable that we’ve been able to accomplish that,” she said.
Since becoming interim dean on July 1, Dr. Slaven-Lee has drawn on what she learned from working with Dr. Jeffries, whom she called “a great mentor.” She also is very focused on the school’s strategic plan.“
The strategy I have in my mind is to stay focused on the school. Stay focused on our students, faculty, staff, and strategic plan,” she said. She is also focused on enhancing the curriculum with an eye toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, she said, as well as the “Future of Nursing”report.
“The caliber of the candidates that we see trying to come to GW and join our faculty community is outstanding.”
– Dr. Slaven-Lee
“It’s not just, ‘Hold everything steady until a new dean comes.’ It’s ‘Continue on the upward trajectory.’ Holding things steady would be a disservice to the school. We’ve got to keep things moving upwards,” she said. “I’d be derelict in my duty if I just tried to hold things steady. When you’re ranked 22, that takes some work. You can’t just hold steady. You’ll fall backwards.”
Dr. Slaven-Lee expects the school’s rankings to continue to improve, and like Dr. Jeffries, she anticipates that there will be online and hybrid programming and teaching in the future. She also echoed Dr. Jeffries’ thinking about the school’s unique role in the heart of Washington, D.C.,and in northern Virginia.
“We want very much to brand and distinguish ourselves as the school of nursing that’s about health policy,” she said, noting that most GW School of Nursing researchers focus on health disparities and inequities.
“The juncture where it all starts coming together is the research informing the policy informing the practice. It’s not something we are trying to be. It’s something we are actually becoming,” she said. “We want to leverage our position in the nation’s capital.” The school also developed a dual Master of Science in Nursing and Master of Public Health degree, which matches renewed interest in that intersection.
She aims, she said, to fill Dr. Jeffries’ big shoes.“Dean Jeffries is an incredible leader. She is very well known for being a great communicator. She always had a vision,” Dr. Slaven-Lee said. “She did so much in the just six years she was here.”
The Power of Simulations
Dr. Slaven-Lee, Dr. Jeffries, and Ms. Farina—the director of simulation and experiential learning, who chose to apply to work at GW because of Dr. Jeffries—all point to simulation as one of the areas of greatest change at the School of Nursing in the past five years.
Dr. Slaven-Lee said it was “absolutely pivotal for the development of our programs” to require all faculty to be trained in best practices for simulations. “Simulation is a pedagogy that is incredibly powerful. By virtue of that, if it’s used inappropriately, it can have negative impacts on the students’ evaluation and development,” she said.
Simulation training on campus is also a signature event for the school and for students. “These are big events. That’s how they know the campus. It’s about developing alumni. We’re known in the community for being expert simulationists,” she said. And many professional societies and vendors come to GW for talks on best practice simulation.
GW Nursing students in virtual reality simulation room.
“It’s not uncommon to see a whole panel of GW faculty talking about simulation,” Dr. Slaven-Lee said.
Ms. Farina’s tenure at GW has seen sustained growth in the school, she said. When she began working at the school, there was summer enrollment for the first time; there had only been spring and fall terms previously. And some of the conferences and other events that provided the most momentum in pushing the school forward centered on simulation.
Much of that success is owed to Dr. Jeffries, who played an essential role in securing funding for renovations of the simulation center and for expanding its offerings.
“She was really supportive in ensuring that I had the authority to request that all faculty had a standard of education for simulation before they came and facilitated simulation experiences,” Ms. Farina said. She noted that Dr. Jeffries was also involved in creating a massive open online course (MOOC), in which more than11,000 learners have enrolled and participated.
GW Nursing School students now do a lot of virtual and face-to-face simulations, and the curriculum is aligned with didactic content, skills labs, and simulations.“It’s all lined up that way so that they can apply everything they learned each week to providing simulated patient care,” she said. “They sit in lectures; then they learn a few skills; and then they are able to apply all that knowledge to providing care for that simulated patient.”
Ms. Farina hopes the nursing program continues to expand and thinks the school has a shot at top 10 in the U.S. News rankings. She also expects the school to become, in the next two years, one of 2,000 accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. “It shows that our simulation is high fidelity, high quality,” she said of that accreditation.
Collaborative Culture
Majeda El-Banna, Ph.D., RN, CNE, ANEF, had previously taught at several nursing programs, large and small, stateside and abroad—including Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, where she was dean of the School of Nursing—before arriving at GW in 2013. She began as adjunct professor and is now associate professor, chair of acute and chronic care faculty community, and director of the Registered Nurse to Bachelor/Master of Science in Nursing (RN to BSN) program.
“GW really attracted me with the mission and vision,” she said. And when she started teaching at the school eight years ago, “I said, Oh my goodness!This is the place where I want to be.” She has been extremely happy at GW since.
Dr. Majeda El-Banna speaking to a classroom of Accelerated B.S.N. students.
Where some of her colleagues may think the School of Nursing’s growth has been meteoric, Dr. El-Banna, who has taught in nursing programs for more than 20 years, was part of one school that tripled in size in two years. That was a little more of a dramatic pace than she has seen at GW.
Still, when she first arrived on campus, the nursing program was small enough that communication could occur in a more ad hoc fashion. As the school grew, there needed to be more formalized processes.
She credits Dr. Jeffries’ establishment of the Ph.D. program as a very significant and difficult feat, and the faculty communities that Dr. Jeffries pioneered—the school’s take on departments—have facilitated growth, cooperation, and mentorship. When Dr. El-Banna compares Dr. Jeffries’ approach to communication between faculty and staff, spread across the Foggy Bottom and Virginia campuses and many others remote across the country, to those she has observed at other schools, she thinks what the School of Nursing has achieved is remarkable in this regard.
During Dr. Jeffries’ tenure, faculty was encouraged to collaborate on research, and research funding increased. A buddy system paired new hires in their first year with seasoned colleagues who helped them acclimate to GW. And the dean also welcomed faculty, staff, and students to her home regularly, including for holiday parties.
“GW really attracted me with the mission and vision. I said, Oh my goodness! This is the place where I want to be.”
– Dr. El-Banna
“How did she have the time to hold so many social events in her house?” Dr. El-Banna wondered. “That is different from other schools.”
The “culture of collaboration” at the School of Nursing is one of the things that attracted Dr. El-Banna initially, and which has kept her happily at the school. Dr. Jeffries would ask faculty members where they saw themselves in a few years, and once she knew their plans, would provide guidance on necessary future steps. She would also keep her eyes and ears open for future opportunities, which she would share with faculty.
“I don’t know how she remembers all the things about all the faculty,” Dr. El-Banna said. “It’s amazing.”
When she reflected more on the changes she has seen at GW during Dr. Jeffries’ tenure, and the culture she foresees continuing, Dr. El-Banna reached for an affable metaphor. “It feels more like a family,” she said.
GW’s inaugural Digital Health Summit looked at how technology has transformed the healthcare landscape.
The Digital Health Summit immersed George Washington University in the world of health care as defined by digital technology, bringing together over three days an interdisciplinary group of educators, clinicians, health system leaders and industry innovators.
GW Nursing Dean Pamela Jeffries said the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the necessity to adopt digital health solutions for the delivery of health care using technologies that are rapidly evolving and innovative approaches that connect patients and families in communities with the health care system.
The summit was co-hosted by GW Nursing, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the School of Engineering and Applied Science and GW Medical Faculty Associates. Over three days in mid-April, sessions offered discussions on topics such as what academic institutions can learn from practice institutions, how to translate innovation from the corporate sector to healthcare and using digital health for evidence-based practice and research.
Screen shot from Digital Health Summit session
The virtual assembly heard from among others imminent corporate leaders such as Heather Cox, chief digital health and analytics officer for Humana, Kristi Henderson, senior vice president for the Center of Digital Innovation at Optum Health, and Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer at Google Health.
“So much of what we need to do as the next phase in using data and technology in health care is simply just making sure that we have the right information and that we have transparency in operability and accessibility and understand consent and privacy,” Dr. Salvo said.
Bringing the three-day virtual summit to a close, Dr. Jeffries and Marc Garbey, CEO of ORintelligence, an information technology firm and consultant to the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, engaged Dr. Salvo in a “fireside chat” where she shared her experiences as an internist new to digital technology. She found herself providing urgent care during Hurricane Katrina at a time where she was unaware of digital technology—including not knowing what a text message was.
“There was a little envelope on my phone that wouldn’t go away,” she said, laughing.
From clinical and public health work she moved on to policy as an assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Service in the Obama’s administration, where she helped to bring federal health policy in line with the rapidly evolving field of telehealth. She currently leads a team of experts at Google Health in technological health care innovation.
When Dr. Jeffries asked what was the major challenge to digital health systems, Dr. Salvo said “equity.”
“The pandemic has, as many crises do, shown a spotlight on the fact that even a virus that theoretically should have an equal impact on a community. . .has a different impact because there’s already so much difference in access, outcomes and other underlying health issues,” she said.
Dr. Salvo said addressing these inequities would take more than just great medical care. Public health systems would have to be modernized and comparable social care data scaled up. “We were not as well trained in the U.S. context about understanding that most people’s health is driven by where they live and learn and work and play,” she said.
But if the pandemic revealed inequities, it was also a key driver in the uptake of telehealth, she said, “and clearly showed us that technology is a viable option in the digital toolbox.”
“It is so much easier to connect with someone to get the help you need…when that can be done virtually,” said Dr. Salvo, adding that it is essential the next generation of doctors and nurses are trained to use those digital tools.
She reminded the audience that Google is first and foremost a consumer company that has partnered with companies such as Fitbit Inc. and Mayo International Health on projects. As a business, Google has an incentive to share data, she said. “We’re all connected, and so the data has to be all connected in ways that are private and secure,” she said. “That allows us to not miss what’s coming next that might be impacting the population’s health or a person’s health.”
The student-run COVID-19 testing center, which got up and running in record time, offers an inspiring blueprint for the future, nursing experts say.
When Mark Tanner came to GW’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus weekly to get tested for COVID-19, the former assistant dean for the bachelor of science in nursing program parked adjacent to Enterprise Hall. He entered the building, scanned his GW badge, and walked up to the registration desk, where nursing students scannedQR codes on testees’ phones to call up their appointments, verify names and birth dates, and scan test tubes that would contain their samples. From behind plexiglass, the students—who were gloved and masked—wrote Dr. Tanner’s name and birth date on the test tube and verified his identity with his GW ID or license.
Dr. Tanner took his test tube and walked down a hall in the building’s former cafeteria, which was sufficiently capacious to accommodate the center, to one of six testing booths. If it was a busy time of day, he could wait a few minutes, but often he went right in. He would hand his test tube to the nursing student (gowned, gloved, and clad in an N95 mask and face shield), and the latter verified his birth date. Dr. Tanner had taught many of these students in first-semester didactic courses, but the students would invariably stick to protocol.
“Every experience I had, they always ask, ‘Hey. How are you? Have you done this before?’ even though they knew who I am, and they knew I’d done it before,” he said. “They’re doing the things that they should be doing. They’re neither relaxing nor taking anything off. There’s a sense of pride knowing they’ve come to our program; they’ve come this far; and they’re doing well with this very important task.
Each time, the student explained the procedure to Dr. Tanner, directed him to sit and drop his mask below his nose, and swabbed 10 seconds per nostril. The student nurse placed the swab in the test tube, broke it off and capped it, and then Dr. Tanner was ready to go. A courier picked up samples twice daily from the site, at noon and at 4 p.m., for delivery to Foggy Bottom for processing in a GW lab. Dr. Tanner usually had his results, which he could check via a mobile application, within about a day.
“It’s been very well and smoothly run,” he said. “I’m rarely there for longer than 5 to 10 minutes from the time I stand in line until the time I’m back in my car.” There’s a huge amount that happens in a very short clip, and the testing center did that more than 500 times per week at its peak. But equally as impressive is the speed with which the COVID-19 testing center was created and launched and how effective it has been during these difficult and uncertain times.
Dr. Karen Drenkard
An ‘Aha Moment’
When GW announced in March 2020 that it would be going virtual, the School of Nursing was already well poised for online instruction, which it had been doing previously, but clinical placements became a problem when area hospitals said they couldn’t accommodate student-nurses. The Commonwealth of Virginia ruled that simulations could count for clinical experience, so that semester’s students could graduate.
“But then the new group comes in. What do you do with the new group? Summer, fall, and now spring. We really were beginning to scramble a little bit,” said Karen Drenkard, associate dean of clinical practice and community engagement.
By early summer, Dr. Drenkard was representing the Nursing School on GW’s pandemic task force and was co-running the task force’s health and wellness subcommittee. As the university moved toward bringing essential community members back to campus, there was a need for a COVID-19 surveillance polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing program. Two testing centers were created in Foggy Bottom—one for symptomatic and the other for non-symptomatic people—and by mid-August, Dr. Drenkard had a mandate to create and operate a testing center on the Virginia campus for the 550 faculty, staff, and students, who reported there for work.
“I’m not sure when we had the aha moment, but it’s 25 miles away, and the students have their clinical labs in Ashburn, the employees work in Ashburn, and we have housekeeping staff, faculty, students, and essential staff that are all going to be there,” Dr. Drenkard said.
The semester was slated to begin some two or three weeks after the Nursing School received direction to start the testing center, so Dr. Drenkard—who had only been at GW for about a year—needed to move very quickly. The former chief nurse who spent a decade at the five hospitals of the Inova Health System, had served also on the Northern Virginia regional emergency preparedness disaster task force for the hospital alliance right after September 11, 2001.
“I had a lot of disaster management experience, and I had operations experience,” she said.
Dr. Drenkard corralled a group, which included people she hadn’t met before and who hadn’t met one another, and oriented everyone toward the goal and looming deadlines. “We were able to break down a lot of barriers very quickly,” she said. She also brought aboard two people with whom she had worked previously and upon whom she knew she could count.
She enlisted Bonnie Sakallaris—who was chief nurse of the Alexandria, Va., hospital system and had worked with Dr. Drenkard at Inova—as the COVID-19 testing center director. “She was thinking that she was going to retire. I called her on Aug. 12 and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing this with me? I have no idea how long it’s going to last, but it’s going to be crazy. Do you want to come with me?’” Dr. Drenkard said. “She called me back in two hours and said, ‘Yes. I do.’”
“When you’re a nursing executive or a hospital administrator in the executive suite, you stand up new programs frequently, and often without a whole lot of notice. I had never opened up a testing center before, but both Karen and I have on multiple occasions, with very little notice, developed a whole new program, staffed it, and opened it up,” Dr. Sakallaris said. “There are organizational things that you know you have to do. This was not foreign territory.”
Dr. Drenkard also hired Patsy Deyo, M.S.N. ’14—who is in her Ph.D. dissertation phase in translational health sciences at GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and who worked previously in academic affairs at the Nursing School—to run student-nurse educational training.
“I knew we could do it. I wasn’t sure how,” Deyo said with a laugh. “There were so many moving pieces and so many different things that had to happen in such a short time that anywhere along the lines there could have been hiccups that would have impacted our being able to do it.”
The group secured supplies (including the highest level of personal protective equipment, PPE, that it could to protect the student nurses), drafted colleagues from different parts of the university, and found ways to involve students. (It also created and ran a flu vaccination clinic adjacent to the COVID testing center, as a “one-stop shop,” for two weeks in October.)
“I said, ‘If I’m going to put students who aren’t licensed yet in a situation where they’re exposed to some people who could possibly have COVID, they have to have N95s, face shields, gowns, and nitrile gloves,” Dr. Drenkard said. “We used very stringent infection control, and none of my testers ever got COVID.”
From the start, staff members were very open with the student nurses, asking how the process could improve and what challenges could be foretold and skirted. “We kept modifying what we did based on what they were seeing and said, ‘No idea was too crazy or far-out to try,’” Dr. Sakallaris said.
Students have expressed to Dr. Sakallaris something quite similar to how she feels herself: that as the pandemic unfolded, she felt drawn to the front lines to do something useful and to be part of the solution.
“This offers that opportunity,” she said. “It’s very gratifying to know that you’re doing something really important to manage and eventually stop this pandemic. That feels really good. It’s fun to see a plan come together.”
And though the group went into creating the clinic expecting there would be great lessons but also initial glitches, the process went surprisingly smoothly from the start, according to Dr. Sakallaris. “There was no chaos,” she said. “It was all really well controlled.”
Nursing student volunteers in PPE receiving instructions
Charge Nurse
Throughout the day—10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays—student nurses rotate through three roles: registrar, tester, and charge nurse. One student is charge nurse in the morning, and another takes over after lunch. That person is in charge of ensuring the center has adequate inventory and supplies, oversees lunches and breaks, and enforces social distancing and masking protocols in the center. She or he also delivers test samples to the courier for transport to the Foggy Bottom lab.
Veronica Nguyen—who worked at the testing center during the spring 2021 semester—found it nerve wracking the first time she served as charge nurse. Only one other student from her group had held the charge nurse position before, and Nguyen trained with Dr. Sakallaris and with that previous charge nurse.
“You worry about keeping everyone happy and running daily operations as smoothly as you can,” Nguyen said. “Especially for someone with limited leadership experience, it can be daunting to delegate tasks and make decisions. However, developing my leadership skills in a setting like the testing center was incredibly helpful.”
Faculty provided a safe learning environment to facilitate student growth and development, and debrief sessions at the end of the day helped the team address collectively issues that arose during the day. “This time allowed me to reflect on my role and work with my peers to improve,” Nguyen said. “I’m thankful that the testing center created this role. These experiences can help us develop our leadership style and practice as we go into our jobs as full-time nurses.”
Working at the testing center also helped Nguyen bridge the gap between didactic knowledge and practical nursing skills. “The testing site represents a crossroads of our nursing education, training, and experiences at clinical. At the center, we can practice practical skills like properly donning and doffing PPE, participate in patient education, and learn among peers,” she said. “The testing site offers opportunities for team management and building leadership skills.”
Another student nurse who worked at the testing center spring 2021, Timothy Barksdale, also found that the experience connected directly to what he was learning in his classes. “I am learning about COVID procedures in all my clinicals and classes, so the PPE requirements and general knowledge is very intertwined,” he said. “This clinical has absolutely raised my confidence in patient care as a whole and with COVID specific protocols.”
When Seneka Lea worked at the center during that same semester, she discovered there’s a lot more to the center than just swabbing noses and scanning test tubes.
“I was surprised at the number of individuals tested at the Virginia campus everyday, and then more so at the Foggy Bottom campus. Before my experience, these numbers didn’t really mean anything to me,” she said. “But in understanding the importance of surveillance and contact tracing on preventing outbreaks in our GW community, it is impressive to see how many individuals we test on a weekly basis.”
Lea learned something different from each of the three roles at the testing center. As a tester, she learned to ensure sample quality and to reassure patients (nasal swabs aren’t fun, she assures). As registrar, she fine-tuned customer service skills and attention to detail. And as charge nurse, she learned the importance of teamwork and assuming responsibility.
Normally—when it’s not a pandemic—student nurses don’t get a lot of primary care experience, because their clinical experiences tend to focus on acute care.
“This is a real chance for them to see how a primary care, very-specialized clinic works, and to see all the roles that go into making it happen. It gives a different experience than we’ve been able to provide in the past, and it really allows them to understand the full picture of what’s going on,” Dr. Tanner said. “It’s a hopefully once in a lifetime opportunity to work through a pandemic and to provide this service.”
Nursing student volunteer wiping down chair
Student Innovations
In addition to their assigned roles as registrar, tester, and charge nurse, students also kept their eyes and ears open and made an impact on important parts of the testing center processes, center staff said.
One nursing student read the label on a sanitizer bottle and questioned testers taking the swabbed specimens where they needed to go and only then coming back and sanitizing chairs. The instructions said the sanitizer had to sit for a minute before cleaning to be effective. After the student approached staff with that realization, the center process changed. Now, testers spray the chair and let the sanitizer sit while they deliver the specimen. By testers’ return, the sanitizer has done its magic and is ready to be wiped down.
On another occasion, students got the idea to help Spanish-speaking facilities and housekeeping staff on the Virginia campus understand more about COVID in their mother tongue. One of the students, who was fluent in Spanish, provided the text for the educational materials. “The students felt that it was very important to do this project,” Deyo said. “It was so well received.”
“The students were really picking up on knowledge deficits among groups of people coming in to get tested and were able to put together educational materials to address that,” Dr. Tanner said. “They served a really good role. They were the ones who noticed that and brought it to the faculty, who were overseeing and working with them.”
In another instance, students suggested minimizing the distance between the donning and doffing site and testing booths, so they wouldn’t have to walk through the entire testing center in full PPE. A new, closer space was identified, with the students’ help, and students set it up, sanitized it, and arranged supplies, Deyo said.
In normal times, students have less of an opportunity to bring fresh sets of eyes and ears in their clinicals and to provide feedback that revolutionizes processes, according to Dr. Tanner.
“Absolutely, there are people who may have those ideas, but the nature of this being a new clinic, really gave them more a sense of freedom to go ahead and say, ‘Hey. I’m seeing this,’” he said. “When you’re a student and you’re going into a well-established clinical site, you see something, but you may wonder why they do that. You may ask that question, but it’s not going to be very typical—I certainly know that as a student I wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Hey. You guys should change this.’”
Nursing student administering flu vaccine
Looking Ahead
As Dr. Drenkard thinks back on all that GW was able to accomplish with its COVID testing, she thinks the university sits squarely in the top tier of those who showed leadership in pandemic management and surveillance. “The capacity to stand something up quickly and to use students who are in clinical training as a resource—these are all really important assets,” she said.
Dr. Drenkard also thinks that the testing center broadcasts an important and broad message about nursing. “As a profession, we’ve struggled a little bit to really shine as leaders, and this was an example of a combination of so many things going together,” she said. “Nursing and nurses taking on leadership and a nurse-led testing site and center shows what can happen and shows people what nurses are capable of.”
There will almost certainly be testing in some form over the summer, and the hope is that need will greatly reduce by the fall.
Now that COVID vaccinations are more prominent, the testing center has shifted to reduced hours. But there is still a potential role the center will play in vaccinations going forward.
It was able to do that with a flu vaccine clinic that the Nursing School stood up adjacent to the COVID-19 testing center, which provided flu vaccines in two weeks to everyone reporting to the Virginia campus who wasn’t already vaccinated. “The thing that we could really look at and see how we can incorporate is working on vaccination clinics,” Dr. Tanner said.
“It’s great to know we can do it on such a short time frame and make it effective. We hope that we don’t have to do it again that quickly,” he said of the COVID testing center. “Academics are made to move kind of slow and deliberate; it’s not the same thing as the clinical environment. But knowing that we were able to do that is a great thing to know and if we have a similar situation—which goodness I hope we don’t—it’s great to know that we were able to do that.”
Dr. Sakallaris agreed. “There’s going to be another crisis at some point, so this is the lesson that I would take away from that: When there’s a crisis looming, take a look at what your students can do, what can they learn from this, and how can we marry those two things. I think that’s been the most valuable thing,” she said.
“When there is a crisis, when there is something new going on, it’s a significant opportunity for learning for your students. Use that. Staffing this with student nurses is unique,” she added. “Other places have tested college students, but they’ve used contract labor and that sort of thing. I don’t know of any other place that has used their student nurses.”
And, of course, their flu vaccination clinic is likely to return in future flu seasons, as it has operated in the past. “It is a really good opportunity for student nurses to do IM (intramuscular) injections,” Deyo said.
“I remember being in class and Dr. Karen Dawn asking who spoke Spanish,” said Eva Cruz, an accelerated B.S.N. student in her final semester. “Instinctively, I raised my hand. It turns out I’d volunteered myself to do a project for global health.”
As the spring 2020 semester wore on amid the COVID-19 pandemic with the university making difficult decisions to ensure programmatic continuity while keeping students safe, many of them were disappointed to learn that all university-related international travel would be suspended. This had implications for Ms. Cruz and her colleague, Victoria Hinson. Both were nearing the end of the Accelerated B.S.N. program and were eager to broaden their nursing horizons in Costa Rica as part of their global initiatives community project requirement.
Like her colleague, Ms. Hinson was drawn to this opportunity because it offered a great opportunity to strengthen her medical Spanish skills and make a positive impact on an international community during such difficult times. “I was greatly disappointed with the travel restrictions cancelling the Costa Rica study abroad program, but I thought ‘no better way to give back than to work on this project with our in-country partners virtually.’”
“Our school was partnering with Global Learning in Costa Rica,” said Hannah Hahn, program associate in the Office of Community and Global Initiatives at GW Nursing. “Our two students and I worked with two of their local partners, Asociación por la Sonrisa de los Niños (ASONI) and Children’s Well-Being Foundation’s mobile clinics, to develop educational materials and provide donations of personal protective equipment.”
This virtual collaboration turned out to be a perfect way to demonstrate the hands-on knowledge and skills that Ms. Hinson and Ms. Cruz had learned throughout the accelerated B.S.N. program, while helping a community in need and discovering how effective they could be making an impact on people’s health and well-being from such a great distance.
Not knowing about the community and its needs, the students engaged the partners to help shed light who these families were, where they lived and what resources would be most beneficial. “During the conversations, we identified that educational materials could play a significant role in preventing the spread of COVID-19,” said Ms. Hinson. “And, of course, it would need to be virtual,” added Ms. Cruz.
The team decided to make three educational videos in Spanish for children ages 3-15 about how to prevent COVID-19, how to make masks with used T-shirts and how to wash your hands properly.
“We created scripts that were edited and amended by our partners,” said Ms. Hinson. “And after this exhaustive prep work, it was satisfying to see them come to life in these videos with the help of GW Nursing’s Community and Global Initiatives team and Online Learning and Instructional Technology team.”
The students were amazed by the end-product, and thrilled to learn that the videos they had created reached hundreds of Costa Rican children and their families. They were also excited to hear that rising final-semester Accelerated B.S.N. students would use this project as a launching pad for future projects.
“By choosing to work with our partners to provide informative health videos for Costa Ricans in need, I realized that my nursing skills could transcend internationally,” said Ms. Hinson. “My colleagues and I were encouraged to engage our creativity and think outside the box to see how we could engage children and their families for something bigger than a project. I am thrilled that other students will have this same opportunity, and I am excited to see what products will be created in semesters to come.”
“Despite the challenges and hard work this virtual global health project was a uniquely fulfilling learning experience,” said Ms. Cruz.
Watch the COVID-19 prevention videos developed by Ms. Hinson and Ms. Cruz.
Costa Rica Part 1 – What are the Germs and How to Prevent COVID-19
Costa Rica Part 2 – How to make masks with used t-shirt- No Sewing Needed
Costa Rica Part 3- How to wash your hands properly
Costa Rica Part 3 – How to wash your hands properly (spanish)
The Office of Clinical Practice & Community Engagement (OCE), created in 2019, serves as a central resource for GW Nursing’s community engagement partnerships and activities. Led by Karen Drenkard, the school’s inaugural Associate Dean for Clinical Practice and Community Engagement, the OCE houses GW Nursing’s centers (Center for Aging, Health and Humanities and the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement), global initiatives, and community engagement initiatives.
The community engagement initiatives aim to create partnerships using GW Nursing resources — faculty, staff, and students — with community organizations to enrich service-learning, scholarship, development opportunities, creative activity and research endeavors.
At GW Nursing, we prioritize our engagement in the community as some of our most important work. We are fortunate to have a multitude of local, regional and international partners, including community service organizations and volunteer groups. The OCE aims to leverage these partnerships through a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources to enhance our curriculum, teaching and learning experiences. Our partnerships help GW Nursing prepare educated, engaged nurses who contribute to the health of the diverse communities they serve.
One of our excellent partnerships is with the Alzheimer’s Association, an organization that seeks to “lead the way to end Alzheimer’s and all other dementia by accelerating global research, driving risk reduction and early detection, and maximizing quality care and support.”
In August, the Alzheimer’s Association and GW Nursing co-hosted a virtual webinar on dementia for nurse practitioner students, community health students and capstone students. This event consisted of an Alzheimer’s case study simulation, small group discussion and a Q&A with experts, all designed to introduce nursing students and stimulate conversation around dementia. There are also volunteer opportunities for students, faculty and staff through Memory Cafés and Virtual Community Education Programs.
Through this partnership, GW Nursing and the Alzheimer’s Association both hope to break down stereotypes of Alzheimer’s for our nursing students, equipping them to become advocates and better caregivers. The Alzheimer’s Association also conducts training and outreach with established medical professionals, but their hope is, by working with nursing students before they are deployed, that our students will enter their future jobs with more compassion, knowledge and skills in their tool belt. The goal is that our students, once professionals, will understand the unique challenges that come with working with dementia patients and will help to improve the way dementia is cared for in hospitals and the health system at large.
Delivering high-quality health care requires knowing more than a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate and weight. Patients are more than these numbers; where they live, what they eat, whether they exercise also play a role in their health. GW Nursing’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students are learning this crucial lesson through a participatory action research project conducted in partnership with the AnBryce Foundation.
“During this project, our nursing students, along with the middle school students whom they taught, learned the importance of social determinants of health and how they can facilitate or impede the making of a heart-healthy community,” said Sandra Davis, the school’s assistant dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, and principal investigator on this project funded by the NPHF/Astellas Foundation.
This project made such an impact on its community that it was on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture through May 2019.
The middle schoolers learned by completing a PhotoVoice project in which they explored and documented their surroundings by taking photos, writing commentary on what was unhealthy and noting how their environment could be made healthier.
“Children get used to what they see at home,” said Iris Fountain, a parent who attended the Saturday Institute PhotoVoice Exhibit held at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School in December. Ms. Fountain pointed out that neighborhoods in the D.C. area can have as many as three liquor stores on one block that open as early as 6 a.m. “If I notice, children notice it,” she said.
Indeed, one student wrote about the prevalence of alcohol.
“The picture on the left shows people drinking liquor and throwing it away in the streets. This shows that there are drunk people who hang out in the community, and that it is full of bottles of liquor,” one student wrote. “The photo can educate people in my community by showing what most people are hooked on, and telling them to cut down the amount of liquor they consume. The picture on the right is an example of how to improve the community. For every one liquor store you have there should be one organic store too.”
Through this project, area middle schoolers learned not only how to take care of themselves, but also how to advocate for and in their communities. GW Nursing BSN students guided the middle school students under instruction by Dr. Davis and her co-principal investigators, Assistant Professors Karen Dawn and Adriana Glenn, as part of the BSN program’s community health portion.
Social and environmental factors—such as education, housing, places to exercise and healthy places to eat—all matter when it comes to heart disease and risk factors for heart disease. Underrepresented groups, especially African Americans, suffer a disproportionate risk factor burden for heart disease. In addition to being one of the poorest cities in the United States, D.C. has one of the highest avoidable death rates from heart disease of all major U.S. cities.
Earlier this month, Ms. Fountain’s son wrote Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan encouraging him to create more community gardens in public areas. This was the Fountains’ first activity with GW Nursing and the AnBryce Foundation, but it will not be the son’s last as he hopes to attend Camp Dogwood, where BSN students provide first aid to campers, later this summer.
Diversity in the health care workforce, continuing education for care providers and building partnerships with community stakeholders are the pillars on which healthy, resilient communities are built, according to Jehan El-Bayoumi, executive director of GW’s Rodham Institute. Dr. El-Bayoumi gave the keynote address this winter at the first annual community partners engagement event.
Community partners from across the Washington, D.C., metro area, and GW and local care providers came together to share their ideas and success stories for relationship-building initiatives at an event themed “It Takes a Community!”
Hosted by GW Nursing, the event aimed “to align the goals of our community partners and faculty to better serve the health and well-being of the Washington, D.C., community,” organizers said.
Dr. El-Bayoumi’s keynote address, “Working Together to Improve the Health and Well-Being of the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia),” focused on the broad disparities between different parts of the city as well as some exemplars that have made strides in closing those gaps.
“We at the Rodham Institute like to present not just a problem but a solution,” said Dr. El-Bayoumi before introducing the institute’s three priorities in building health equity: community collaboration, education for health care providers and workforce diversity.
Dr. El-Bayoumi went on to say the model of community partnerships needs to change from one of top-down leadership with one group at the top—be it physicians, nurses or other stakeholders—to a wheel model with rotating leadership. GW Nursing practice and community partners in attendance said the event provided invaluable learning opportunities.
“One of the things that really struck me was the piece about diversity in the workforce,” said Charles Birdie, executive director of the Loudoun Free Clinic. “I’d like to see more minority physicians and health care personnel start to volunteer at the clinic, because I think it’s going to be better for everyone all around. I think the School of Nursing can help us with that.”
GW Nursing sends Bachelor of Science in Nursing students to the Loudoun Free Clinic for clinical assignments, and some students also volunteer there. The partnership has been beneficial for both the clinic and the school, he said.
“I’m really glad GW Nursing put this together, and I’m glad to see it’s the first annual event,” Mr. Birdie said. “I will certainly be back next year.”
