Lifelines 2022

99 Jonathan Lucas Street MSC 160 Charleston, SC 29425-1600

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INSIDE:

Looking to the Next Horizon

Table of Contents

Front Matter Dean’s Welcome Message

Academics n Transforming Approaches to Nursing n New AACN Essentials n Power of Play n Feature: Shaping the Future of Palliative Care

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The Next Horizon n Preserving the Personal Connection n Innovating Excellence n Blazing New Trails n Travelin’ Man n Boosting Engagement n Addressing the Nursing Shortage

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Research n Envisioning the Next Horizon of Patient Care n Feature: Exploring New Realms with TACHL n Funded Federal Grants n Scholarship: Publications

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Practice n Partners in Healthcare n Opening Vistas n Stepping into the Spotlight n A Meeting of Minds

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Join us in lighting the way for the next generation of the nursing profession.

MUSC College of Nursing is inspiring nurses to become the leaders of tomorrow through transformative education, practice and research. To learn how you can make a lasting impact on our students and support our vital mission, please contact Lilia Correa, Director of Development, at correal@musc.edu or 843-792-8421.

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Global Initiatives No Longer a World Away

Parting Shot CONStrong

54 Diversity & Inclusion n Promoting a High-Trust, Caring Environment n DEIB Highlights n Chronic Disease Through the Lens of COVID-19

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Around the College n Our CONStrong Community n Student Scholarships

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82 Making a Difference n Diversify, Engage, Commit n Reality Check n Golden Grads n A Legacy of Love n Creating Impact n The Next Chapter n Every Gift Matters

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On the front and back covers: College of Nursing ABSN and DNP students celebrate during their Convocation ceremony in May. Photos by Josh Goodwin.

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Special moments from the College of Nursing Convocation ceremonies held in May 2021, December 2021, and May 2022. Photos by Josh Goodwin.

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Dean’s Welcome Message

Dear Friends and Colleagues, As the second oldest training school for nurses in the United States, MUSC College of Nursing (established in 1883) has traversed and mastered many challenges over the past 139 years, as our profession matured and as we navigated nursing’s role within health care in promoting the health and well-being of individuals.

These past two years have tested our resilience, our ability to be nimble and our need to focus on the future, while dealing with many unprecedented challenges such as the COVID pandemic, widening socioeconomic inequity, social political division, structural racism, violence, climate changes, migration, social determinants of health, the great resignation and new forms of technology.

As we continue to look forward in creating what is possible in our complex world, Lifelines provides an important opportunity to reflect on some of the many outstanding accomplishments of this past year. In this issue, we share innovative examples of how MUSC College of Nursing continues to move forward and evolve, despite some of the most pressing challenges of our time. We found creative and respectful ways to engage and support one another as we ‘leaned in’ and ‘reached out’ to our community and practice partners. We overcame what appeared to be insurmountable barriers to the education of our students, fulfillment of our practice partnerships and pursuit of innovative research. Faculty created new ways to prepare our graduates to be confident and competent as they enter or advance their practice within new models of care delivery, with fewer nurse role models and care team members, and within rapid changes in health care systems and resources.

With hard work, noting that we still have a lot of work to do, we amplified our commitment to promoting an environment and culture that support our core values of integrity, innovation, impact and inclusivity. Led by our new Diversity and Inclusion Officer, faculty, staff and students engaged in many critical conversations to foster inclusive mindsets and belonging. Rather than focusing solely inward, we concentrated on meeting the needs of stakeholders and constituents locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Among several important topics, this Lifelines issue shares examples of our dedicated research priorities, including advancing symptom self-management, leveraging our Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles (TACHL) to improve access and quality of care, and conducting research focused on the effects of COVID-19 on Black South Carolinians with preexisting chronic conditions. In addition to our leadership in palliative care education and practice, we highlight our faculty’s commitment to improving the lives of others, from designing an innovative tool to build social emotional intelligence in children to serving our practice and community partners, such as Partners in Healthcare and Healthy Steps, and pioneering a virtual global health training program. We also pay tribute to several of our alumni for making a difference in the lives of others.

Finally, with great appreciation, we honor our donors and development board members, without whom we would not be able to look to the next horizon of ‘what is possible’ for our students, faculty and staff and those whom we serve and care for. Thank you for partnering with us as we create a bright future for nursing.

Respectfully and with caring, Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N. Dean and professor

Lifelines

A publication of the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing VOLUME XIV // ISSUE � // ���� Executive Editor Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N. Professor & Dean Editor Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications & Marketing Photographer Josh Goodwin Multimedia Content Developer Graphic Designer Wade Harris Wade Harris Design MUSC Writers Helen Adams Leslie Cantu Bryce Donovan Kimberly McGhee Kelsi Schagunn MUSC Photographer Sarah Pack PUBLISHED BY

nursing.musc.edu SEND COMMENTS TO: Jennifer A. Turner MUSC College of Nursing 99 Jonathan Lucas Street, MSC 160 Charleston, SC 29425-1600 turnerja@musc.edu POSTMASTER: Send corrections to Lifelines, MUSC College of Nursing, 99 Jonathan Lucas Street, MSC 160, Charleston, SC 29425-1600. © Copyright 2022 by the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without permission from the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing.

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The Next Horizon

The College of Nursing has always been a tightknit community, but the last two years tested our resilience in ways we could never have imagined. Rigorous safety measures, enhanced virtual instruction, new teaching approaches and innovative collaboration: through it all, we never lost our sense of purpose or pride in our mission. Now, we are ready to take the lessons we learned and the bonds we formed to shape the future.

Scenes from the College of Nursing during the pandemic.

Photos by Josh Goodwin.

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The Next Horizon

Preserving the Personal Connection

By Jessica Krasny Williams, Director of Student Services and Alumni Affairs Just like in our communities, the COVID-19 pandemic affected College of Nursing students in a myriad of ways. From physical health to mental health, finances and increased stressors of juggling child care or virtual learning, our Student Services team knew we would have to find unique ways to support our students during these unprecedented times. As a team, we were feeling the same challenges while trying to manage work and family and could only imagine how the added demands of an already rigorous nursing program were impacting students.

Needing to connect with students, From left: Student Services team members Kimrey Stump, Sonya Smalls, Jessica Williams, Kaleigh Larson and Alexis Cunliffe help out during Convocation. Photo byJosh Goodwin. our team and program coordinator partners established and hosted virtual office hours via Microsoft Teams. By taking advantage Services, who offered mental health and wellness strategies to of this resource, we were able to see our students and work help students navigate their plans of study amid new COVID-19 around their schedules to provide support as they navigated policies. The experiences of the past two challenging years personal and academic challenges. We discovered virtual office taught us to be more creative and resilient in our advisement hours provided greater availability, allowing us to liaison, in real methods. Today, we continue virtual team meetings and have time, with other team members or faculty to support and guide developed ways to effectively offer orientation and prospective students. student sessions as well as large group advising through Teams.

We hosted listening sessions in order to connect with student cohorts, which provided consistency in communications and updates about important resources. Eventually, these evolved into town hall sessions with college administrators and representatives from MUSC Counseling and Psychological 6

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We are thankful that we were able to maintain high quality service for our students during the pandemic. Our dedicated teamwork, coupled with a commitment to quality and compassionate support, continues to have a positive impact on student success.

I N N O V A T I N G

EXCELLENCE

From the beginning of the pandemic, the College of Nursing recognized continued didactic education was paramount.

Faced with unique challenges to preserving students’ learning experiences and attention to self-care via virtual means, both undergraduate and graduate faculty drew on a culture of innovation to strengthen their programs.

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he Accelerated BSN program quickly transitioned from an in-person on-campus didactic classroom setting to a virtual learning environment during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring of 2020. With the support of the University, College of Nursing administration and our Nursing Technology Center, undergraduate faculty successfully navigated the challenges of online teaching and evaluating student learners. Creative teaching strategies were implemented to engage students and promote their clinical judgment skills. Additionally, course content to encourage well-being was introduced to students in the fall of 2021. Mindfulness practice was included during the ABSN student orientation and continued in the health assessment course to promote self-care in the program. In the spring of 2022, a hybrid method of offering a virtual platform for didactic along with in-person classroom teaching was implemented as COVID-19 cases began to decrease. We are proud to report stellar student outcomes, such as the ABSN 2021 annualized NCLEX-RN first time pass rate of 98%.

— Melody Reibel, Ph.D., MSN-Ed, R.N., ABSN Faculty Lead The COVID-19 pandemic presented unique stressors and challenges for RN-BSN students as they typically work in health care while pursuing their baccalaureate degrees. In the fall of 2021, RN-BSN faculty developed self-care modules aimed at promoting well-being among RN-BSN students which were embedded within each semester of the program. Self-care strategies and resources were provided, and students wrote guided reflections about their experiences. Students reported reduced feelings of stress and burnout, increased optimism, improved patient care and an enhanced sense of well-being. We look forward to ongoing efforts encouraging self-care practices in all nursing students.

— Christina Beall, DNP, APRN, FNP-C, RN-BSN Faculty Lead

The APRN DNP program has been a fully asynchronous online education program since 2010 with four on-campus required Learning Intensives.

During the summer of 2020 the program successfully pivoted to virtual learning for these on campus Learning Intensives in partnership with expert colleague clinicians and the Center for Clinical Evaluation, Teaching and Simulation (CCET). Faculty ensured the successful implementation of a virtual lecture series that summer and observed clinical skills evaluation (OSCE) via standardized patients and a telehealth framework which continued to the spring of 2022. Didactic course scores, preceptor evaluations and board certification scores have remained high and well above the national benchmark! Kudos to the creativity and hard work of the DNP faculty team.

— Catherine Durham, DNP, FNP, FAAN, Assistant Dean for Graduate Practice Programs While the Ph.D. program is online, our students typically visit campus four times throughout the program for in-person Learning Intensives (LIs). This is an intense week filled with interactive workshops, hands-on training and deep scholarly discussions. Students have an opportunity to present their research and practice scientific presentation skills. We made the initial shift to online LIs quickly, with the Ph.D. faculty collaborating to develop and host virtual live sessions. We met after our first intensives to discuss student feedback and applied those lessons to improve subsequent LIs. Students desired more unstructured scholarly discussion time, so we added a virtual coffee hour with faculty as well as a virtual happy hour for socialization and bonding. Although not quite the same, this gave us an opportunity to bond with our students and spend quality time together in the early days of COVID isolation. We are excited to be back together for LIs, but we will keep some of the virtual elements such as pre-recorded interviews and data sets for future students to review before we meet.

— Sarah Miller, Ph.D., R.N., Learning Intensives Coordinator

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The Next Horizon

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he upheavals of COVID and challenges of a virtual classroom forced College of Nursing faculty to identify new ways to engage with their students and head off the temptation to disconnect. While some may associate only limitations with a screen, faculty saw opportunities to incorporate interactive lessons and innovative assessments. “It was very important that we thought of new ways to keep our students engaged in a live online experience,” said Assistant Professor Kathryn Kinyon, DNP, PPCNP-BC, AHN-BC. “We needed to think outside the box.

This involved the use of innovative educational games. Many of these activities were so successful, they have been incorporated back into the face-to-face classroom. While the pandemic challenged both students and faculty to learn new technologies, it also allowed us to explore creative ways to approach assignments, such as using video to record a health assessment checkup. Students were clever with the ways they quickly adapted to our new approach to teaching the curriculum.”

BLAZING NEW TRAILS A major challenge in the online world is creating a sense of community and support. This is particularly difficult when class sizes are large and students are new to the program. Kinyon developed a unique way to create a sense of community through the House Cup Race which boasts Scruffy, her pandemic quarantine dog, as mascot. Launched during virtual learning, the House Cup Race is now a firmly established part of the ABSN program. Students are sorted into Houses to compete for points via their academic achievements, innovative ideas and acts of kindness. Conceived as a way to build camaraderie and teamwork during virtual learning, the race also served as a grounding force for students as they returned to in-person classes. “The House Cup has given students a new Kinyon and Scruffy in lens to view their work and ability to collaborate with others,” shared Kinyon. the College of Nursing’s “For faculty, we have fully embraced this opportunity to meaningfully Skills Lab. Photo by Josh Goodwin. enhance our classrooms.”

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing 8

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’ n i l e v a r T

Man

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing

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hen the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit, ABSN alumnus Thomas Kelechi ’18 was working in Charleston and ready for a change. Preparing to be furloughed with the rest of his peers when non-critical procedures were wiped from the books, he turned to travel nursing, an already popular field that exploded amid the stress and chaos of a global health pandemic crisis.

Often framed as life’s next big adventure, travel nursing can also be a grueling undertaking, as Kelechi experienced first-hand while serving on short-staffed COVID units desperate for help. His exotic destinations were cities under lockdown with post-apocalyptic vibes, and his downtime was spent not relaxing on a beach but commuting via trains and buses in the dead of winter, eating not-so-nutritious meals, and finding little opportunity to socialize. The time spent away from his family was particularly taxing.

Yet, Kelechi did gain something that made the journey worthwhile: a deep trust in his own ability and the knowledge that through all those long, solitary shifts where someone’s life hung in the balance, he was there, and he made a difference. Relaying his experiences to his mother, herself a lifelong nurse, sparked meaningful discussions about purpose, loyalty to the profession, and soldiering on even when the way seemed impossible. It also revealed their shared and deeply held commitment to serving patients and their families.

Now with the pandemic receding and a travel nursing assignment in Arizona, he is finally getting a moment to simply be outdoors, one of his favorite things to do. It’s a chance to breathe deeply and enjoy what was promised seemingly eons ago: the opportunity to embrace being somewhere new.

From Top: Kelechi exploring in Box Canyon, AZ and adopting his dog Bea at the Kindness Ranch in Wyoming. Provided.

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The Next Horizon

Boosting Engagement

Q&A with Vanessa Matheson ABSN ’22

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing In the fall, Vanessa Matheson ’22 was recruited by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) to serve as a social media advocate for their vaccine awareness campaign.

How did you get involved in SC DHEC’s vaccine awareness campaign?

The campaign manager reached out to me, as SC DHEC was looking for more voices on social media to share their experience with receiving the COVID vaccines and how students made decisions to get vaccinated. She reached out to me because I am also in the health care field, so I have a good background of knowledge and understanding in seeing the effects of COVID in hospitals. The campaign consisted of sharing story sets of information from SC DHEC that included available resources and creating my own story set and posts about my experiences with COVID and the vaccines.

The overarching goal was to aid in removing the political polarization about the vaccines.

What motivated you to become a vaccine advocate?

I jumped on this opportunity because it is a topic that I am passionate about, and I believed in their mission. With the campaign sponsored by DHEC, I knew it was a reliable source that I could advocate for. As a nursing student, I had a front-row seat in seeing the devastation that COVID causes, especially in unvaccinated individuals. There has been so much misinformation regarding COVID and the vaccines, so I wanted to use my platform and position to share credible information and resources along with my personal experiences.

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Matheson on the MUSC Horseshoe. Provided.

What have you enjoyed the most about the campaign?

The most rewarding part of this campaign to me was receiving positive feedback and personal messages from people about how much they appreciated that I was advocating and sharing credible information. With COVID and the vaccines becoming controversial, many people became hesitant to have these important discussions with their family, friends and acquaintances. For this reason, many people were thankful that I was willing to share my experiences and knowledge.

What are your future plans and goals? Do you hope to continue advocacy work?

After graduation, I plan to work as a bedside nurse to get sufficient hands-on experience. My goal is to work in global health, whether that is through intermittent mission trips or potentially making that full-time work. Ultimately, I plan to pursue travel nursing and further education to become a nurse practitioner or a midwife. I would love the opportunity to continue advocacy work throughout my career to further my reach of sharing information that I believe is important for public health.

Addressing the Nursing Shortage: Advocacy

By Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., Dean and Professor As a Dean and faculty member of a College of Nursing, I am acutely aware of the current and growing nursing workforce shortage, which is particularly high in South Carolina, and its impact on ensuring the health and well-being of all individuals, families and communities. As faculty, we understand that the demand for nurses, including entry level as well as advanced practice, is growing faster than for all other professions and that this shortage is expected to continue through 2030. If left unchecked, we will surely all feel the impact well beyond 2030.

Imagine a day when as a patient or family member, there is not a trained nurse to provide comfort and compassionate care, to hold your hand or lean on when navigating the simple tasks of daily living, to help manage symptoms of acute and chronic health conditions, to advocate for patient preferences as health care is managed, and to traverse the difficult journey during palliative care needs and end-of-life. As nurses on the frontlines of patient care, as educators, researchers, administrators and leaders, we must be more intentional and proactive in advocating for the future of nursing.

The issues contributing to the nursing shortage, including the nurse faculty shortage, are complex and challenging, which was true even before the COVID-19 pandemic. It certainly has been exacerbated by the pandemic due to the strain on nurses, our health care systems, COVID artificial early retirement, and a hesitancy in individuals entering nursing programs or licensed working nurses looking to advance their degrees. When we layer the pandemic effects onto a growing population of older adults who often require an increase in health care services due to age-related conditions, a record number of baby-boomer aged nurses and faculty retiring and leaving the workforce, and the desire of working nurses to find better work-life balance while other professions are providing ways for their employees to work remotely from almost anywhere, we understand that these challenges impact not only colleges of nursing and our health systems, but also everyone who needs or will need nursing care in the future.

This past year, I spent an increasing amount of time, often in collaboration with colleague deans and directors across South Carolina, and in support of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research initiatives, in advocating and lobbying at the state and federal level for funding. We worked to garner support to increase student scholarships; support the Future Advancement of Academic Nursing (FAAN) Act (funding to support education pathways, hiring and retaining diverse faculty, and modernizing education infrastructures); additional funding for Title VIII – Nursing Workforce Development programs; and an increase in funding to the National Institute of Nursing Research. As I write this in June 2022, while early in Congressional appropriations, the draft FY2023 funding bill looks favorable with increases in funding to support many of the above. Stay tuned!

So, from whom and where do we seek and get help to address this growing critical issue? We will not be able to significantly impact the nursing and faculty shortage without federal and state funding support. The funding support will only result when we all work collectively and advocate with our legislators in helping them understand the true impact that an unchecked shortage will bring, not just today but in the future: A future when qualified faculty are no longer available to train the next generation of nurses; where hospital and clinic halls and patient rooms are no longer filled with licensed RNs or APRNs to manage and direct care; when there are no trained nurse scientists to conduct research needed to inform and advance nursing practice.

To address these pressing needs in South Carolina, I seize opportunities to connect with and provide data to the Governor’s office and our state legislators regarding the growing nursing shortage, as well as its potential future impact. While it looks like we will see some state funding support for FY23, these initial appropriations are only sufficient to begin to address the workforce shortage and in preventing the negative impact on the health and well-being of South Carolinians. In order for our efforts to be truly transformative, I encourage all who support nursing, and who benefit from the care of a nurse, to connect with your state legislators and advocate for an increase in funding to mitigate the nursing workforce shortage.

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ACADEMICS

Transforming Approaches to Nursing Resilient: adjective

1. Capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture 2. Tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change (merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilient, accessed: March

22, 2022)

‘Resilient’ is the current buzzword used to describe a requisite characteristic of our current and future nursing workforce. In reflecting over what our faculty, students and clinical partners have faced, endured and witnessed over the past two years, they have displayed the ability to transform their approaches to nursing as educators, learners and clinicians to uphold Provision 5 of the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses: The nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth (ANA, 2015).

Photo by Josh Goodwin.

By Sharon L. Kozachik, Ph.D., MSN, R.N., FAAN Associate Dean for Academics and Associate Professor

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I never imagined that two years after my inaugural Lifelines article, I would still be reflecting on COVID-19. Our ABSN faculty and students have demonstrated mettle and resolve as we worked to help one another normalize an experience that was far from normal. Remote work necessitated that all didactic courses be delivered virtually. Having the empty classrooms was actually a blessing in disguise. Student nurses need opportunities to practice skills and tasks of care, and social distancing requirements necessitated that our skills labs and low fidelity simulated learning activities be temporarily set up in our classrooms. Our nimble faculty had to reimagine how learning would occur and how students would demonstrate mastery of content. And despite this altered learning environment, our graduates’ first-time pass rate on the NCLEX-RN national licensing exam exceeded those of the state of South Carolina and the overall United States rates. We are very proud of our graduates, and we thank our talented faculty for the care and attention that they invested into educating this new generation of front-line providers.

Although our DNP and Ph.D. programs are asynchronous and fully online, both programs have on-campus learning intensives that offer our doctoral students opportunities to have immersive learning and networking experiences with their faculty and peers; these learning intensives occur throughout the academic year.

Our DNP and Ph.D. faculty were able to pivot their learning intensives into fully virtual activities – including Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) – to ensure that our clinical doctoral students were able to demonstrate mastery of physical and psychosocial assessment skills.

Many of our DNP and Ph.D. students are currently employed in nursing and practice in acute care settings, at the bedside. They, along with our clinical partners, have dealt with unprecedented on-the-job physical and emotional stress secondary to the pandemic. What they have seen, along with the direct and indirect tasks of care they have provided, has forever changed them. How do we best prepare our pre-licensure nursing students to manage patients with critical and life-limiting illnesses, as well as manage their own self-care needs, in the context of a post-pandemic health care landscape? What will our post-pandemic health care landscape look like? What are

the Essential Skills that our graduates will need to carry forward to enable them to go into work environments that will test their mettle and grit?

The MUSC College of Nursing is preparing our students to meet these challenges. For example, Dr. Kathryn Kinyon infuses principles of holistic nursing to help new pre-licensure nursing students learn how to attend to self and use mindfulness practices to promote well-being. Dr. Christina Beall, Dr. Stephanie Armstrong and Dr. Amy Gulledge integrated online modules on resiliency in our RN-BSN program. Dr. Catherine Durham, Dr. Melody Reibel and Dr. Christina Beall are leading curriculum revisions in our Graduate and Undergraduate Practice programs, incorporating competency-based learning principles to meet the new Essentials as approved by the AACN. Dr. Kathleen Lindell and Dr. Carrie Cormack are mapping the future of Palliative Care education through the approval of the firstever digital badge in Palliative Care at MUSC. These examples illustrate the innovative and transformative approaches faculty embrace as we pave the future in nursing education.

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OFFICE OF ACAEDEMICS

Implementing the New AACN Essentials

By Catherine O. Durham, DNP, FNP, FAAN, Assistant Dean for Graduate Practice Programs and Melody Reibel, Ph.D., MSN-Ed, R.N., ABSN Faculty Lead

The College of Nursing (CON) faculty are committed to implementing our 2020-2025 Strategic Plan: Roadmap to the Future. A primary academic goal set forth in the CON Strategic Plan is to continue the transformation of nursing education. As nurse educators, we are challenged to explore new ways of thinking and teaching to ensure our graduates are competent and ready for practice in a rapidly evolving health care system.

To provide clarity regarding the knowledge and competencies required of nursing graduates at the entry and advanced levels of practice, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) approved and published The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (AACN, 2021). The re-envisioned Essentials provide an educational framework for preparing persons for professional nursing practice. The framework is underpinned by eight core concepts and specifies competencies in each of the 10 domains. Further, each competency contains sub-competencies designated for entry and advance levels of practice. Competency is an outcome statement of what learners can do with what they know (Giddens et al., 2021).

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Concerted efforts are well underway to operationalize the AACN Essentials in the undergraduate and graduate nursing programs over the next three years. Undergraduate and graduate faculty are cognizant of the need to shift from a traditional medical/disease teaching model to a curriculum with a competency-based approach, as outlined by the Essentials.

In 2021, across both our programs as part of their curriculum committees, a complete curriculum comprehensive review was conducted, and the work of revision began. Program content has been mapped to identify threads of core competencies as well as gaps in the core competencies across both programs.

Results of the content map analysis will facilitate faculty with the next steps of revising course objectives and course content to meet the Essentials. Additionally, implementation of innovative teaching strategies and alternative clinical experiences to promote development of students’ critical thinking, clinical judgment and diagnostic reasoning for advanced practice registered nurses has remained front and center in the undergraduate program. Next steps will involve creating valid and reliable assessments to ensure students’ competency attainment. Visit aacnnursing.org/AACN-Essentials to learn more.

Power oƒ Play

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing Building children’s social emotional intelligence (SEI) is critical to their growth and well-being, yet many parents and caregivers lack resources to support such efforts. For College of Nursing faculty members Joy Lauerer, DNP, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, and Amy Williams, DNP, APRN, CPNP-PC, the answer lies in something that comes naturally to childhood: play. Conceptualized as a subscription box program that arrives at a child’s home every six to eight weeks, their Little Beeings initiative includes interactive learning products such as SEI-focused games, activities and toys specifically tailored to the stages of development for ages three to six. “It is a social emotional toolkit of resources for families that is aligned with the time in a child’s life where it benefits to learn these skills most,” noted Lauerer. “Our innovation scaffolds SEI skills

over three distinct levels termed eager, ready and wise (aligned to the typical developmental tasks of toddlers, preschoolers and early school-age children).

The product provides parents and caregivers simple, gentle, kind and wise evidence-based strategies to teach SEI and address challenges inherent to these age groups. Its interactive nature also strengthens family relationships.”

Lauerer and Williams worked with a children’s illustrator to develop the initial visuals of the key SEI concepts for their first proposed subscription box, with bees playing a central theme. “Entomology research tells us that bees are among the smartest, most collaborative insects,” said Lauerer. “We develop an early relationship between children and the outdoor environment/ecosystem through exposure to the cooperative work that naturally takes place between animals.” This spring, they received a Technology Development Grant from the MUSC Foundation for Research Development to build out their “Beeing You Box” subscription.

Once they create four or five more boxes, the next step will be finding a company or a person to pursue a licensure purchase. “These early years are critically formative in brain development,” Lauerer emphasized.

“Our goal with Little Beeings is to provide children with a social emotional foundation for building emotional intelligence skills to utilize “Beeing You Box” conceptual over the course of their lives.” artwork. Provided.

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ACADEMICS

Leading and Shaping the Future of Palliative Care In November 2020, mid-pandemic, my husband and I moved from Pittsburgh to Charleston, where I was honored to become the first recipient of the Mary Swain Endowed Chair in Palliative Care Health at the MUSC College of Nursing. Besides being a dream come true for me, this position is a testament to the recognition of palliative care as a crucial dimension in modern nursing.

Photo by Josh Goodwin.

By Kathleen Oare Lindell, Ph.D., R.N., ATSF, FAAN, Associate Professor and holder of the Mary Swain Endowed Chair in Palliative Care Health

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F E AT U R E

When I began my nursing career, palliative care was not a term that was used, and there weren’t palliative care teams. I received my initial nurses’ training from St. Francis General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where the guiding mantra was body, mind and spirit to provide the best possible care for patients and their families.

As my career evolved, I became the Pulmonary Clinical Nurse Specialist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (PENN Lung Center) in Philadelphia, where I gained immense knowledge in caring for patients with lung disease and participated in developing evidence-based programs to improve care for patients with serious lung disease.

In 2001, I join the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and obtained my Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of Pittsburgh. Palliative care was gaining more attention in the United States, and my position provided an excellent opportunity to engage in patient-centered research that focused on early delivery of palliative care in patients with advanced lung disease, many of whom had immense suffering and lacked understanding of the magnitude of their illness, while their caregivers experienced high burden.

My study findings revealed that there was broad support for the early palliative care among these patients with lung disease and family caregivers, but in clinical practice, patients frequently were not receiving palliative care. Unfortunately, this is common in other serious illnesses, such as heart failure, dementia and kidney disease, to name a few.

While it is difficult to quantify the ongoing burden of serious illness in South Carolina, recent data estimates that more than half (53.8%) of South Carolinians who died in 2018 did not receive palliative care, which can reduce symptom burden (both physical and psychological) and improve quality of life for patients and their caregivers.

There is still much confusion about palliative care and why it’s so important for patients with serious illness. Palliative care provides an “additional layer of support” and is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of serious illness.

Often confused with hospice or as “my doctor is giving up

on me,” palliative care can be provided to patients alongside curative care. As nurses, we are in opportune positions to work with our interprofessional colleagues to advocate for our patients’ comfort and improve quality of life.

MUSC College of Nursing has been recognized for its holistic approach to emphasizing the value in palliative care, and since 2017, has expanded its palliative care education to include undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty. The college launched the first DNP program in Lifespan Palliative Care in 2020 and empowers nurses to transform care of serious illness. As we continue to expand our work across the college’s tripartite mission to increase palliative care awareness, I think back to my early nursing days and how those values instilled

by St. Francis were the foundation for my palliative care knowledge. It is truly humbling to know that the foundation we are providing our students will in turn shape their trajectory and the future of palliative care in the years to come.

WHAT IS PALLIATIVE CARE? Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients (adults and children) and their families who are facing problems associated with life-threatening illness. It prevents and relieves suffering through the early identification, correct assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, whether physical, psychosocial or spiritual. – World Health Organization, 2020

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Palliative Care Highlights

By Kathleen Oare Lindell, Ph.D., R.N., ATSF, FAAN and Carrie L. Cormack, DNP, APRN, CPNP The MUSC College of Nursing is leading the nation in palliative care education and has fully invested in faculty training and palliative care education for undergraduate and graduate programs. The college launched the nation’s first DNP program in Lifespan Palliative Care in 2020 and established MUSC’s first digital badge in Palliative Care in 2022. Planning is underway to collaborate with regional schools of nursing to share palliative care education resources as well as host an upcoming Palliative Care Leadership Summit.

EDUCATION

In December 2021, the MUSC Digital Badge Committee approved digital badges to be awarded to all students completing the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) modules as part of their nursing curriculum. The college is the first of the MUSC Health Sciences to award this type of recognition to students.

In the spring of 2022, a joint effort was launched between the College of Nursing and the MUSC Palliative Care team to initiate a quality improvement project on Palliative Care Education for inpatient nurses. This initiative consists of didactic, independent learning and face-to-face advanced communication training that is being piloted on an inpatient unit at MUSC. Carrie Cormack, DNP, APRN, CPNP was named a 2021 ELNEC Award of Excellence recipient. Last fall, she joined MUSC colleague Patrick Coyne, MSN to teach ELNEC in Salzburg, Austria. Selected nurses from Eastern European countries attended the week-long training to develop their 18

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skills in palliative and end-of-life care. This experience was supported by the Open Medical Institute, and both Cormack and Coyne will be returning to Austria this fall.

Current Ph.D. student Shannon V. D’Alton, MSN, CPNP-PC, CHPPN had her manuscript “The bereavement experiences of children following sibling death: An integrative review” published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing.

Kathleen Lindell, Ph.D., R.N., ATSF, FAAN served as co-editor of the textbook Palliative Care in Lung Disease, published in October by Humana Press. She also co-chaired the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation’s task force to craft new palliative care statements (for providers and patients) that emphasize the incorporation of palliative care early in the medical journey of patients living with pulmonary fibrosis.

Christina McDaniel, DNP, R.N., and Elizabeth Higgins, M.D., led an initiative to develop video recordings to address Moral Distress. The videos appear in curriculum for MUSC nursing and medical students.

F E AT U R E

RESEARCH

In October, Cormack, Lindell, Coyne, and Dean Linda Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., discussed the College of Nursing’s palliative care initiatives at the American Academy of Nursing Health Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. This work continues to gain attention and will be presented at the Carolinas Center Hospice and Palliative Care Annual Conference in August 2022 with the inclusion of McDaniel. Cormack continues with funding from the Clare MUSC Health Palliative Care team members at MUSC-Charleston. Provided.

Foundation to support palliative care Amy Smith, MSN, R.N., CNE received the Maralynne D. education initiatives within College of Nursing programs.

Mitcham Interprofessional Fellowship Award and designed an interprofessional end-of-life simulation course, which is now Teresa Kelechi, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, who has devoted her research being used in the Advanced Palliative Care graduate program. to wound care, recently completed a study evaluating palliative wound care, resulting in two publications.

Whitney Smith, DNP, AGNP, and Donna Reinbeck, Ph.D., R.N., OCN have been instrumental in the development of palliative care certificate coursework. They will continue to serve as graduate curricula experts as palliative care programs expand.

Nicole Sartor, R.N., C-PNP-PC became the first graduate of the Advanced Practice Palliative Care program when she earned her DNP degree in May. Sartor was awarded a 2022 Nurse in Washington Internship (NIWI) scholarship sponsored by the Nursing Organizations Alliance (NOA).

CLINICAL

The MUSC Palliative Care team led by Coyne, McDaniel, and Conrad Williams, M.D., includes members in both the pediatric and adult hospitals and faculty from the College of Nursing. In November 2021, the team held a retreat at the Shawn Jenkins Hospital Conference Center and the College of Nursing. After continued challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus was on downtime for self-care with activities including resiliency training, a teambuilding scavenger hunt, music and art therapy, massages, yoga and much more.

McDaniel accepted the position of Palliative Care Program Manager in January 2022 for MUSC-Charleston. A College of Nursing alumna, she serves as an adjunct faculty member in the undergraduate programs.

Diana Layne, Ph.D., R.N., CPHQ received a MUSC KL2 career development award to study adapting the Program of SUPPORT for patients with dementia and their caregivers.

Lindell received a MUSC Telehealth grant from the South Carolina Telehealth Alliance to adapt a research intervention “A Program of SUPPORT” for telehealth application in patients with advanced lung disease and their caregivers.

Suparna Qanungo, Ph.D., is working to implement a home-based palliative care program for cancer patients in rural India, facilitated by community health workers (CHW). From virtually training CHWs located half a world away to traveling to India to take part in home visits, she is deeply invested in seeing these initiatives succeed.

POLICY

Sharon Kozachik, Ph.D., MSN, R.N., FAAN serves as the Chair of the Expert Panel on Nursing Palliative and End-of-Life Care for the American Academy of Nursing.

Current Ph.D. student Jessica Madiraca, R.N., CNS, CCRN-K, who is a clinical instructor at the University of Delaware, has been selected to be the Delaware State Ambassador for the Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association (HPNA).

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ACADEMICS

The Importance of Palliative Care

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uture family nurse practitioner Parag Raychoudhury considers her school’s emphasis on palliative care training as essential. “Palliative care isn’t just about death and dying. Any illness deserves the respect of comfort and what the patient wants,” she said.

Raychoudhury is learning how to provide that at the College of Nursing at the Medical University of South Carolina, the only nursing school in the state to include palliative care training for all students through the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC). The consortium, an international effort to improve palliative care, is part of the nonprofit American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

Associate professor Carrie L. Cormack, DNP, APRN, CPNP, is the lead faculty member in palliative care education at the College of Nursing. “It is essential that we are including palliative care in our nursing curricula, since nurses must be fully prepared in caring for individuals with serious illness and their families,” she noted. “We definitely didn’t do enough training in our nursing curriculum in the past.” Cormack explained how she describes palliative care to students and patients.

“I'll often say the palliative care team is another arm of support for navigating what can often be a very challenging and difficult journey for patients with serious illness and their caregivers.”

By Helen Adams, MUSC Digital News Editor, Office of Public Affairs and Media Relations

Above: Palliative care is designed to improve people's quality of life. Photo by National Cancer Institute via Unsplash.

Opposite, from left: Cormack talks with Raychoudhury during a rotation with the palliative care clinical team at MUSC Health. Photo by Sarah Pack.

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F E AT U R E

Palliative care is specialized care that emphasizes compassion, cultural sensitivity and ensuring that patients and families’ health care wishes are known. A focus on palliative care aids in relieving pain and suffering as well as symptoms such as nausea, shortness of breath, constipation, loss of appetite, depression, difficulty sleeping, anxiety and fatigue that often go along with serious illness. Patients and families also get help managing stress and connecting to available community resources. Palliative care teams aim to improve overall quality of life for patients and their families throughout the illness trajectory.

The aim is that they feel much more comfortable now, after completing ELNEC training. Raychoudhury, a future family nurse practitioner, is also taking palliative care electives as well as completing a clinical rotation with the palliative care team at MUSC Health. “I think every day when you take care of a patient, you need to have palliative care in mind,” she said.

“Focusing on quality of life is an important part of being a nurse.”

“Education is key. Many people still consider palliative care hospice or end-of-life care. And it's not. I like to think of it more as an umbrella term that describes the overall support that's given to patients and families during difficult times.

Ideally, palliative care will start at the time of diagnosis, not necessarily just at end of life or when patients are really, really struggling or seeing kind of a downhill trend in their illness.

It's meant to be ongoing throughout a journey of a serious illness,” Cormack said.

Palliative care training for nursing students at MUSC involves self-paced online training modules. “We're very structured in how we roll this out, because the content can be pretty sensitive. This is not something that I would encourage a new nursing student to just go ahead and do on their own. We incorporate group discussions and expert-facilitated lectures with the self-paced modules to give students an opportunity to debrief and talk about it,” Cormack said.

MUSC also offers a post-master’s Doctor of Nursing Practice in Palliative Care degree for students who want to make palliative care a key part of their advanced nursing careers. It’s an important shift for a field that was ripe for change. “When I started this work about five years ago, I asked my graduating seniors, 'How comfortable do you feel caring for a patient at end of life or caring for a patient with serious illness?' And the comfort level was not there,” Cormack said.

Some illnesses whose treatments may benefit from palliative care: n n n n n n

Cancers Cardiac diseases Stroke Diabetes Kidney disease Alzheimer’s disease

Pediatric experts encourage a palliative care referral for any patient with the presence of a chronic, complex or life-threatening illness/ condition, which may include: n n n n n n

Neurological Oncological Metabolic Chromosomal Cardiological Prematurity and trauma

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True to Life: Creating an Interprofessional End-of-Life Simulation Experience

By Jennifer A. Turner, Director of Communications and Marketing As the recipient of the Maralynne D. Mitcham Interprofessional Fellowship, College of Nursing Instructor and DNP student Amy Smith, MSN, R.N., CNE created a powerful interprofessional simulation experience to address the importance of the care team as end-of-life support for patients.

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What led you to undertake the production of this simulation experience? What was your inspiration?

Discuss the production process for the series— who were your collaborators, and what was the most enjoyable aspect of the creation process?

The Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs reached out to me one day and asked if I had seen the information about the Maralynne D. Mitcham Interprofessional Fellowship. We discussed the idea of designing a high-fidelity simulation for educational purposes. In writing my fellowship proposal letter, I decided to focus on end-of-life care because we were just starting to learn about COVID-19, and health care was burdened with severely ill clients and an overwhelming number of deaths. I wanted to create a simulation that educated health care providers on the importance of interprofessional collaboration when caring for someone at the end of life.

I received the fellowship in July 2020, which provided me $5,000 to design the simulation. Initially, I spent the first few months collaborating with my mentor, Dr. Carrie Cormack, and other health care professionals to write the simulation script.

As I began to write the script, I recognized that palliative care was another vital aspect of end-of-life care that needed to be included in this simulation.

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So many wonderful individuals helped guide me in writing the script. Dr. Cormack assisted with building palliative care into the simulation. Several members of the MUSC Health

F E AT U R E

Opposite: Simulation participants gather on the day of filming. Above: Film scenes from the project. Photos by Josh Goodwin.

Palliative Care team provided suggestions and thoughts about what would be most helpful to include in the simulation. As the simulation was filmed, each participant added their own expertise to the scenarios to promote realism.

My favorite part of this project was filming day and watching all my work come to life in the scenarios. We hired three standardized patients to play the young patient, mother and brother of the patient. All three of them did a phenomenal job with learning their roles and making the scenarios as realistic as possible. In addition, there were multiple members of the MUSC Health Palliative Care team who participated in various scenes showcasing their professional roles in caring for a patient from diagnosis to end of life. There were also a few faculty members from the College of Nursing who were recruited to play the roles of nurse, nurse manager and nurse practitioner.

The experience was a collaborative effort with our practice partners.

What are your long-term goals for the project?

How do you see expanding its reach in the future?

Recently, I had the privilege of collaborating with the Office of Instructional Technology and Faculty Resources to create a self-guided online course for students and faculty that encompasses the simulation and educational resources developed through the fellowship. MUSC Senior Instructional Designer Alex Walters designed the course in Articulate Rise.

This course will be offered to MUSC College of Nursing DNP students through the elective Palliative Care Management I or II courses in summer 2022. In the future, I would like to offer

an interprofessional course to health care programs across the MUSC campus and eventually to health care programs nationwide. In addition, I am writing a paper about the fellowship and the project I designed, with hopes to publish it in an interprofessional education journal.

Both professionally and personally, why is palliative care important to you? Why have you decided to make it the focus of your DNP work?

My first job as a nurse was on an oncology unit, where I cared for inpatient cancer patients and stem cell transplant patients.

It was on this unit that I discovered my passion for oncology, but I always felt like we could be “doing more” for our patients.

When I first started at MUSC College of Nursing in 2019, I realized that what my oncology patients were missing was the opportunity to have a palliative care team that focused on their quality of life and symptom management. After attending an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) conference, I realized that I wanted to contribute in sharing palliative care education and helping all health care providers learn how to provide basic palliative care to their patients and families.

My DNP project has a different area of focus within palliative care. I am partnering with nurse practitioner Brooke Smith at Hollings Cancer Center to implement a validated screening tool to increase early palliative care referrals for oncology patients. Part of my DNP project will include an educational piece for providers on what palliative care is and why it is so important for oncology patients at time of diagnosis.

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RESEARCH

Envisioning the Next Horizon of Patient Care

By Teresa Kelechi, Ph.D., R.N. FAAN, Associate Dean for Research and Ph.D. Studies, Professor and holder of the David and Margaret Clare Endowed Chair Back in my clinician days working as a certified wound care nurse, I developed the nurse-managed Skin Integrity Clinic in 2000, which was affiliated with a tertiary-care ambulatory clinic at MUSC and Photo by Josh Goodwin. provided specialty wound care for patients with a variety of skin problems, one of which was lower extremity wounds. I became aware of a dire need of these patients: They suffered with distressing symptoms related to their wounds and many also had numerous chronic conditions such as vascular/circulation disorders, diabetes and arthritis. These patients would complain about the sharp shooting pain “that grabbed” them in their legs without warning, the intense itch of their leg skin that would never go away and leg cramps that disturbed their sleep. They also talked about unrelenting fatigue they described as lack of energy—“I can’t do another thing.” I could see these symptoms were taking a toll on their quality of life. Unfortunately, the focus of treatment back then was all about the wounds; little attention was paid to help patients manage their symptoms, which we now know could have made a difference in improving their quality of life and aiding the healing of their wounds. The question was, what could be done for these patients to help them manage their symptoms?

Fast forward to nursing science and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), a pioneering force around symptom and self-management sciences that recognized these gaps in 24

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health care and began offering a competitive P20 Exploratory Grant Mechanism to support the initial enhancement of research capacity at institutions with emerging research programs. The resulting Centers focused on building research expertise and teams for the future by providing grant awards for small exploratory research projects that are conducted by several investigators focused on a common research theme.

In 2016, I became the proud director of one such initiative, the MUSC College of Nursing Symptom Self-Management Center (SSMC) for Pain and Fatigue. Our SSMC joined forces with the Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles (TACHL) at the college and focused on the use of technology-enhanced solutions to provide interventions around patient self-management of pain and fatigue. For example, technological platforms that track a patient’s daily symptoms and are linked to care providers reduce barriers to care and can provide medical intervention when symptom profiles become elevated. We also tapped into the excellent research resources provided by the NIH-funded South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR) at MUSC. By deliberately focusing on technology as a pathway to alleviating pain and fatigue, our goal was to create innovative ways to treat patients and make them partners in the management of their own symptoms.

Over the past six years, I have had the immense pleasure of witnessing the SSMC foster extensive mentorship and specialized training to build a nationally-recognized expertise in digital health technology, caregiving, self-management of symptoms and qualitative/mixed methods research designs,

all contributing to the college’s research mission to generate, translate and disseminate scientific knowledge. Through the enrichment and support of the SSMC, six highly talented College of Nursing faculty have undertaken and will continue to advance symptom self-management science to substantially contribute to the research conducted at MUSC. They have acquired new skill sets, grown as nurse scientists and conducted six different clinical trial projects with new and existing interprofessional partners from MUSC—such as Hollings Cancer Center and the College of Medicine—and other universities such as Duke, Case Western University, Emory and the University of Florida. The SSMC also has supported six pilot projects and provided consultation to over 20 different investigators working on symptom-based intervention projects both locally and nationally. I am enormously proud of these rising innovators and leaders who are now highly sought after by colleagues from around the world because they “change what’s possible.”

As for the wound population my symptom research serves, my involvement in SSMC—beyond the mentorship and leadership roles I play—facilitates advancement of healing science in two major ways. My knowledge and investigations are informed by the interventions our team develops for patients to self-manage the leg itch, pain and cramping associated with leg and foot wounds, which in turn lead to new funding from the NINR to support this ongoing program of research. Moreover, with the continuing support of NINR, I am studying other “hidden” symptoms and their influence on wound healing – the relationships among loneliness and social isolation and how the mechanism of inflammation alters healing. This is an exciting opportunity to partner with colleagues from George Washington University and the University of California, Los Angeles as we envision the next horizon of this important aspect of patient care.

Forging new relationships among junior and senior scientists, building new research communities that break down silos, providing recognition for the numerous contributions our researchers have collectively made toward improving the quality of life for our patients: The SSMC has afforded all this, and there is so much more to come.

SSMC’s Six Clinical Trial Projects Julie Barroso, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN Feasibility and acceptability of an mHealth cognitive behavioral stress selfmanagement intervention to ameliorate HIV-related fatigue Brantlee Broome, Ph.D., R.N. Food allergy symptom self-management with technology (FASST) for caregivers: An mHealth intervention to address psychological outcomes in caregivers of children with newly diagnosed food allergy Sarah Miller, Ph.D., R.N. RESP-FIT: Technology-enhanced selfmanagement in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Michelle Nichols, Ph.D., R.N. Managing Asthma and obesity related symptoms (MATADORS) study: An mHealth intervention to facilitate symptom self-management among youth Shannon Phillips, Ph.D., R.N. A family-centered self-management program for children with sickle cell disease Kathy VanRavenstein, Ph.D., R.N. A nurse delivered hybrid telehealth/mHealth aging in place intervention to address pain and fatigue in low-income older adults

The Symptom Self-Management Center is expanding to provide expertise to anyone who is considering, or currently conducting, symptom management research. We consult with project investigators on study designs such as mixed-methods, qualitative, dyadic and methods to analyze complex data collected from apps and biosensing or wearable devices. To date, six pilot projects conducted by nurse scientists have been completed and many more are in progress. Data from these projects are leading to larger studies and engaging new patient populations using technological advances in app development as the major delivery mode for the interventions. For more information, email kelechtj@musc.edu

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Exploring

TACHL

New Realms of Health with

I appreciate this opportunity to highlight our work in the College of Nursing within the Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles (TACHL). I often stress to colleagues and trainees the importance of choosing a mission about which they are passionate when launching new areas of research or practice. This is what has driven our progress. Our mission is to leverage technology to improve access and quality of care. You will see in the following pages how that mission has driven us to address the needs of a wide range of populations – from victims of child abuse to victims of elder abuse; from traumatic injury survivors to disaster survivors; and other high-risk populations (e.g., transplant patients, firefighters).

Photo by Josh Goodwin.

By Ken Ruggiero, Ph.D., holder of the SmartState Endowed Chair of the Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles (TACHL)

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F E AT U R E

We are proud of our successes so far, but there is still much to do. We have developed and tested technology-based resources, but only some are widely available. Others are still being tested, and we have many steps to take before we achieve high reach into each of our targeted populations nationally. We also have invested more time and resources on equity in our recent work and are building key partnerships with health equity experts with this goal in mind.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the other ten key members of our TACHL team, including faculty members Drs. Jessica Chandler, Tatiana Davidson and Leigh Ridings; Dr. Hannah Espeleta, a postdoctoral fellow who will join the faculty in July; program managers Olivia Bravoco and Tonya Hazelton; program coordinators Kristen Higgins, Samantha Pairet and Hannah Sebald; and program assistants Gabriela Becerra and Nicole Litvitskiy. Every single one of them has been with us for more than two years and makes tremendous contributions while serving various leadership roles across our initiatives.

They drive this ship, and I couldn’t be more excited about where we’re headed on this journey together.

A sampling of the areas in which TACHL is rooted: n

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AppBuilder wins big n

Disaster mental health: Apps, like Bounce Back Now (available both in English and Spanish), address postdisaster PTSD, depression and sleep difficulties as well as connect people with the resources they might need during very difficult times.

First responder well-being: The Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health offers a multitude of tools, apps and online resources that provide assistance to and advocacy for first responders addressing suicide prevention, mental health discrimination and alcohol misuse, among other areas of need.

Mental health care: Supporting Providers and Reaching Kids (SPARK), as well as S.C. Safe Seniors – a training program to teach health care providers how to identify elder abuse – are just two of the tools available to both providers and patients.

Emotional recovery after trauma: The MUSC Trauma Resilience and Recovery Program (TRRP), a model of care that is gaining national attention, addresses the mental health needs of traumatic injury patients at the bedside, but also with text messaging, chatbot and telehealth-based follow-up long after they have left the hospital.

Chronic disease management: Smartphone Medication Adherence Stops Hypertension (SMASH), a program that emphasizes the importance of medication adherence as well as patient-provider communication.

From left: Bernard Jansen and Chandler celebrate after delivering the winning pitch for AppBuilder during the Shark Tank competition.

Photo by Sarah Pack.

A TACHL-backed creation, AppBuilder is a content management system designed to help investigators and innovators wireframe and launch mobile health apps without extensive involvement of app development teams. It can be used by researchers or program staff who have no coding experience and can significantly shorten the timeline and cost for building mobile health apps. During MUSC’s Innovation Week in April, AppBuilder advanced to the MUSC Charleston Shark Tank competition and won first place in the Research division! The $15,000 prize will go toward pilot projects that will investigate how well AppBuilder works for real-world users.

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RESEARCH

TACHL Combines Technology with Humanity to Ease Pain and Suffering

By Bryce Donovan, MUSC Public Information Coordinator Office of Public Affairs and Media Relations The mission of the Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles (TACHL) is simple but powerful: leverage technology to improve population health. Created a decade ago by MUSC College of Nursing, TACHL was immediately recognized as one of the S.C. SmartState Centers for Economic Excellence. Today, TACHL is a behemoth – a giant umbrella that services a range of needs, from families displaced due to a natural disaster to firefighters dealing with depression.

Annalise Gunn was the second person to believe the girl. For months, the teenager sitting across from the seasoned therapist had been repeatedly sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

When she finally got up the nerve to tell her mom, she was laughed at and told she needed to stop making up stories for attention. How does something like that not break a human being? It was a family friend who finally took the girl seriously.

Together, they reported the man to the authorities, and the teenager moved in with the friend. Eventually, her path would lead her to the Dee Norton Child Advocacy Center, where she would find herself sitting across from Gunn, the woman entrusted with the near impossible task of helping to put this girl back together.

“I just remember she wasn’t responding much at the beginning,” Gunn recalled. “Maybe an occasional ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but that was about it.” And why should she? After all, what had adults ever done for her but bring pain and humiliation? Ask any therapist who regularly works with kids who have experienced trauma, and they will tell you the same thing: Traditional methods rarely work.

“Something I’ve discovered over the years is, oftentimes, getting too cerebral with a child can hinder any sort of progress you might be able to make,” Gunn said. Approaching things differently, she explained, creating a more relaxed environment, that is usually the way to go. “If you think about how kids learn in school, they don’t just sit there and listen to the teacher talk 28

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all day,” she said. “They do activities, worksheets, go to learning centers. So when you’re working with traumatized youth, it makes sense that a similar approach might be the best way to go.”

Thanks to programs like SPARK (Supporting Providers and Reaching Kids) — an initiative that utilizes technology in the form of interactive touch-screen games, drawing tools, trivia, relaxation activities — therapists like Gunn now have more of those types of resources at their disposal. Created by the Medical University of South Carolina’s College of Nursing, SPARK falls under the umbrella of the college’s Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles, or TACHL. Program director Kenneth Ruggiero, Ph.D., said the program seeks to lend a hand to anyone willing to accept it: the couple who lost their house in a hurricane and are living out of their car. The man who fell out of his deer stand 30 feet above the ground and broke his back. The teenager who was abused by her mother’s boyfriend. These are the faces of TACHL, the people Ruggiero and his team want to keep helping. According to the National Center for PTSD, about 15 million adults in the US are battling post-traumatic stress disorder during a given year. “Many of those adults do not get the help they need due to access and quality of care barriers. With better reach through technology, we want to cut that number in half,” Ruggiero said.

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“Bottom line, our goal is to improve access and care through the use of technology,” he explained. “Whether it’s through an app on your smart phone or something as simple as text-based instruction, everything we do is designed to reach a high volume of individuals to give them tools to improve their health and connect them to best practice care. It starts right here in South Carolina, but our goal is to go beyond that.”

TACHL isn’t just cool apps and fancy websites. In addition to technological innovation, the program also mentors and lends its expertise to researchers. Say someone has a great idea but might not be the most tech savvy or know the first thing about how to write a grant to get funding for their idea: TACHL is there to help. Program liaison Jessica Chandler, Ph.D., remembers the transplant surgeon who wanted to do post-transplant research, focusing on outcomes, but didn’t know the best way to go about capturing the data. Chandler and her team came up with a Bluetooth-enabled remote monitor for transplant patients who consented, which he could use to track how they were doing in real time. “Not only that, we walked him through the entire grant application process — something he had no experience with,” Chandler said.

Currently, she’s working on a project that uses technology to monitor and improve blood pressure in patients with hypertension and diabetes. Yes, there will be an app, but the real heavy lifting comes from working closely with the clinician to figure out specifically what data he or she needs and in what format. Tonya Hazelton, the program manager for TACHL, works directly with end users — sometimes it’s the clinicians, but more often than not, it’s the regular, everyday people who are using the tools created by TACHL. “Jessica. Ken. Me. We all come at a problem from different perspectives,” Hazelton said. “But what we all have in common is, at the end of the day, we’re all focused on reaching — and

TACHL uses technology to connect patients with critical health resources. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

ultimately helping — the people who might not normally get access to these kinds of services.”

Ruggiero believes that as more providers, institutions and states see what MUSC is doing with TACHL, they’re going to want to emulate it. But even more important to him and his team is how the program affects individuals — the people who utilize the tools TACHL has created to make their lives better. “A lot of patients who need help don’t get it because of cost, stigma, transportation, you name it,” he said. “TACHL has made it easier for people to access the mental health care they need, often in their own homes.”

For Gunn, the child therapist, sometimes it’s approaching things differently that yields the most satisfying results. Thanks to TACHL and SPARK, the teenager she was working with ended up making tremendous progress. “It took some time, but eventually she opened up to me. She started excelling in school again. She regained hope for her future,” Gunn said. “It was just so amazing. She even started to talk about what she wanted to be when she grew up — a doctor.”

As it turns out, with the right tools and the right people, sometimes you can begin to put a human being back together again.

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RESEARCH

Bounce Back Now: Disaster Mental Health bouncebacknow.org Through several versions, Bounce Back Now has supported people surviving: n

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September 11 terrorist attacks, lower Manhattan (2001) Hurricane Ike, Texas (2008) Spring tornadoes, Joplin, Missouri & northern Alabama (2011) Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria (2017) Hurricanes Florence and Michael (2018)

Screenshots from the Bounce Back Now app. Provided.

Natural and human-caused disasters can affect tens of thousands or even millions of people simultaneously. Disaster response agencies meet many basic needs of disaster survivors, but their mental health needs often go unaddressed. More than half of those who develop anxiety or mood related disorders after a disaster do not receive mental health services. “Wanting to deal with it on my own” is the most common reason given for not receiving mental health care. Bounce Back Now is a self-help app developed by TACHL that puts disaster mental health tools into the hands of disaster survivors. It provides education, coping tools, tips for parents, guided self-help treatment and phone- or text-based guidance about how to access immediate crisis intervention or local mental health services. The app is freely available in English and soon will be available in Spanish.

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Clinical trials led by TACHL have found that Bounce Back Now decreases symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression and sleep problems. It is not a good substitute for best practice mental health care, but it can reduce symptoms while building momentum toward seeking professional services for those who need them. TACHL is currently partnering with the American Red Cross and other national agencies to increase awareness of the Bounce Back Now app among disaster-affected communities. Team members are also in the process of adapting the app for a variety of trauma-affected populations and are looking to partner with disaster mental health agencies to develop alternative solutions for individuals who do not use smartphones.

F E AT U R E

SPARK: Supporting Providers and Reaching Kids sparktoolkit.org Mental health providers who serve children in community mental health service agencies or Children’s Advocacy Centers face many challenges. High turnover rates and burnout are near the top of the list. These clinicians often carry 50 or more patients on their caseloads, and many of the children they treat have different needs and family structures and are at different developmental levels. It is asking a lot of them to expertly deliver dozens of best practice mental health treatments in an engaging way to children who are accustomed to technologyenhanced learning in the classrooms.

The SPARK system is designed to change the way mental health providers deliver skills-based treatment to children who have mood, anxiety or behavior disorders. SPARK is a collection of games and activities grounded in cognitive and behavioral treatments. This includes drawing tools, dragand-drop activities, writing tools, videos and other interactive learning tools that providers routinely use in session to improve children’s engagement and learning. SPARK was developed

SPARK features 12 chapters that can be used by providers during individual sessions with each child. Provided.

and is being tested in a large study by TACHL but was built in close partnership with expert trainers, mental health providers and children and parents. It has been used by over 30 clinics, 100 providers and 200 families during this testing phase, and the hope is to roll it out nationally once more is learned about its impact. The games and activities can be used in person with an iPad or other tablet, but also can be used on telehealth platforms.

SMASH: Smartphone Medication Adherence Stops Hypertension African American adults have disproportionately higher rates of uncontrollable hypertension compared to NonHispanic Whites. Medication adherence is a behavior that is crucial to improving blood pressure control in African American patients, and there is a high utilization rate (approximately 80%) of mobile phones and receptivity to health technology within the African American community. Frank Treiber, Ph.D., and Jessica Chandler, Ph.D., partnered with MUSC Family and Internal Medicine health care providers Vanessa Diaz, M.D., and Elizabeth The SMASH app and linked Bluetooth pill cap and blood pressure machine. Provided.

Kirkland, M.D., to develop Smartphone Medication Adherence Stops Hypertension (SMASH), a randomized control trial that enrolled over 200 African American patients with a sole diagnosis of hypertension.

SMASH employed smartphone and mobile health technology to improve medication adherence and blood pressure. It provided a patient-centered, theoryguided, self-management program that emphasizes the importance of medication adherence as well as patient-provider communication. During post-trial interviews, SMASH participants indicated they enjoyed the personalized reminder SMS messages related to taking their blood pressure and hypertension medications, the enhanced communications and relationships built with providers, and how attentive, helpful and caring the TACHL research staff members were. Preliminary analyses indicate that the SMASH group participants statistically and clinically improved their medication adherence and subsequently their blood pressure control when compared to the enhanced standard care group. The program is currently in the data analysis phase.

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Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health

cffbh.org Fire Captain Colt Roy. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

The Sofa Super Store Fire of 2007, which took the lives of nine Charleston firefighters, devastated the Charleston community. MUSC partnered with firefighter-serving agencies to ensure that the behavioral health needs of firefighters were addressed in the aftermath of this tragedy.

TACHL became more integrally involved in this effort in 2010 with the development of “Helping Heroes,” an online provider training course to educate mental health practitioners about firefighter culture and best practice treatment of mood and anxiety disorders after critical incidents in the fire service.

TACHL then went on to establish the Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health and develop many apps and web-based resources for firefighters, their peers and their families in partnership with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

The “RIT Tools for Suicide Prevention” app helps firefighters

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to identify and respond appropriately to suicide risk among their peers. The “Firefighters Helping Firefighters” website is a digital storytelling resource in which firefighters and fire service leaders describe their experience with mental health symptoms and decisions to seek treatment. The goal is to address stigma as a key barrier to accessing needed care. The team, led by Tatiana Davidson, Ph.D., has developed apps to address substance use and misuse, track symptoms and determine need for services after critical incidents. Family-facing apps educate spouses and family members about supportive actions they can take to minimize risk of behavioral health symptoms.

F E AT U R E

A Partnership that Bridges the Gap

By Fire Captain Colt Roy A 19-year veteran in the Fire Service, Colt Roy is a full-time firefighter for Joint Base Charleston Fire & Emergency Services and works part time as a Captain with Central Berkeley Fire & EMS, where he serves as the department’s Public Information Officer. He is a passionate advocate for the Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health.

The topic of behavioral health in the Fire Service has traditionally been a touchy subject. As the Fire Service itself is one steeped in tradition, we find ourselves constantly having to “keep up with the times.” Sure, the most basic objective of the job remains the same—we “put the wet stuff on the red stuff”—but our delivery has come a long way from the days of bucket brigades and coal-fired, horse-drawn engines. Of all the things on the job that endanger our lives, the uncomfortable truth is that more firefighters’ lives are taken by their own hands than by performing our job in the line of duty. For this reason, one aspect that must be removed from our culture is the stigma that talking about mental health is a sign of weakness.

I am a nineteen-year veteran in the Fire Service with the distinct pleasure of being a member of two fire departments in the Charleston, South Carolina area. For me, the Fire Service was a calling that I was fortunate enough to answer. As a woolyhaired senior in high school with the entire world in front of me, I went to the fire station and asked for an application to become a volunteer. From this point forward, the rest of my adult life would be a blur, where I have been left with great memories and some of the best friends a guy could have. However, this is a job that in one shift can be the most challenging and taxing day of your life and yet equally rewarding at the same time. I can tell you first-hand that organizations like the Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health and the Lowcountry Firefighter Support Team are the reasons that I am here today and able to write this article. It is one thing to simply say that there are resources available to you if you need them, but what has been created here is a wrecking ball that can be swung into the walls that we, as firefighters, have put up.

I first learned about the Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health when I helped with the filming for a project the Center was conducting. This subsequently led to me playing a part in

the production for the “Warning Signs” feature in the Pocket Peer app where I portrayed the part of a firefighter on the brink of divorce and with a serious drinking problem. Although I did not realize it at the time, the character I played in that project wasn’t an act. It was shortly thereafter that I was the walking warning sign, going through a divorce, drinking more than I should, not talking about it with anyone, and often finding my mind swimming in dangerous thoughts. This was a very dark period of my life, my work ethic suffered, friendships were destroyed, and I found it difficult to find joy in anything when I did not even like the person I had become. I was faced with knowing what needed to be done and the right thing to do, and yet I found picking up the phone to ask for help to be the most difficult decision I had ever made.

I have since become a peer mentor myself through the Lowcountry Firefighter Support Team. Often, I have had the opportunity to speak with those in the local First Responder community and share resources that the Center has provided.

One thing that I feel is extremely important and effective is how the Center has worked beside firefighters as they have developed solutions for us. The Fire Service can be a tough crowd to engage and walking in as an outsider while talking about such a sensitive topic would otherwise be a failure. The solutions we seek for change in the Fire Service must come from within, but to be effective there is a necessity for the expertise that is outside the scope of your average firefighter.

The Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health has done a solid job of helping bridge that gap, providing resources to both the individual and at an organizational level.

The task at hand is a difficult one, and even though progress has been made, there is so much more work left to do. The Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health has provided the Fire Service with a toolbox full of resources that are proven and effective.

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RESEARCH

SC Safe Seniors Within South Carolina, 11% of community residing older adults have been victims of elder abuse, but detection by health care providers is less than 1%, and actual service provision for elder abuse is less than one-tenth of 1% of cases. Under the leadership of Associate Professor Tatiana Davidson, Ph.D., the SC Safe Seniors program addresses this need with a unique two-prong approach through (1) training health care providers and (2) providing information, referral and telehealth-based mental health treatment and relevant services for elder abuse.

Throughout the past six years, over 5,000 providers across South Carolina have been trained in “Identifying and Referring Elder Mistreatment” and have served hundreds of victims either through community outreach or direct patient care. This program has increased awareness about the prevalence of elder abuse and gaps in resources for victims.

SC Safe Seniors works closely with the City of Charleston’s Mayor’s Office on Aging and has gained the support of Mayor John Tecklenburg through a city-wide proclamation on World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Provided.

SC Safe Seniors also has established several regional, statewide and national partnerships, including the SC Department on Aging, Department of Social Services, SC Victim Assistance Network, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In 2020, our service area expanded to include the entire state, allowing for more access to underserved communities. This program continues to raise awareness about elder abuse, advocate for abuse screening standard practice throughout the lifespan and recommend increasing use of trauma-informed care, including engaging in collaborative conversations about symptoms and service referrals.

From left: SC Safe Seniors team members Theresa Skojec, Dr. Tatiana Davidson and Mara Allport engage with the local senior community through the “The Power of Flowers,” which incorporates mindfulness into a flower arrangement activity. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

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F E AT U R E

Trauma Resilience and Recovery Program trrphealth.org

A

nnually, 3 million impact of TRRP with adult traumatic individuals in the United injury patients. Results of these studies States experience will advance what is known about best traumatic injuries (e.g., practice treatments for traumatic injury serious car crashes, gunshot wounds) patients and have high potential to that require hospitalization. More influence policy and practice at the than 600,000 develop posttraumatic national level. The new MUSC Burn stress disorder or depression in the Center also recently began implementing first year post-injury. Trauma centers an adaptation of TRRP. naturally prioritize survival and physical recovery, but often neglect the patients’ mental health needs. In 2015, TACHL leadership (Ken Ruggiero, Ph.D., and Ridings shows TRRP’s newest app.

Tatiana Davidson, Ph.D.) partnered Photo by Sarah Pack. with MUSC’s Trauma Surgery leaders to launch the Trauma Resilience and

By Leslie Cantu, MUSC Public Information Coordinator Recovery Program (TRRP), a technology-enhanced model Office of Public Affairs and Media Relations of mental health care, and since then, it has provided mental health follow-up services to thousands of traumatic injury Between 20% and 40% of trauma patients will develop patients. significant mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, in the year after the incident that TRRP’s success has led to its adoption in 12 trauma centers in brought them to the hospital. The Trauma Resilience and the Carolinas and the launch of several major grant initiatives.

Recovery Program (TRRP) helps those patients struggling with Davidson is leading three such initiatives: two to implement the mental aftereffects of traumatic injury. Last year, 161 of its TRRP in trauma centers in the Carolinas and one to test the patients were under the age of 18. Now, Leigh Ridings, Ph.D., one-year impact of the model with adolescent traumatic associate director of child and family services at the TRRP and injury patients. Leigh Ridings, Ph.D., is in her second year of an assistant professor in the College of Nursing, is developing a five-year grant to establish a new model of care drawing an app to meet the needs of parents or other caregivers from some of the strengths of TRRP to address the unique whose children under age 12 have been injured. Some 20% needs of families with young children who are seriously injured. of caregivers also experience PTSD or depression after their Ruggiero also is leading a new grant to test the one-year children are injured, she said.

Psychologist Working on App to Help Parents of Injured Children

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Ridings received a grant from the NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to undertake this project, which builds on the existing work of the TRRP. She has been working with Bernard Jansen in MUSC Digital Health Solutions on the technological aspects of the app, which will include a check-in for the child’s emotional recovery and provide information about the recovery process, as well as a check-in for the adult’s emotional recovery. It’s common for parents to berate themselves or ruminate over the “if onlys” after a child is injured. The app normalizes such feelings, Ridings said, and will also include some “what to expect”-type information. For example, after a car crash, a young child may become distressed when buckled into a car seat. Young children may become extra clingy or may start throwing temper tantrums after a trauma. “How do they know what’s normal?

And then, when does it cross that line into really problematic?

And what do you do if it does cross that line?” Ridings said.

The app will include resources to connect with mental health providers and resources for parents, like tips on mindfulness, deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.

Ridings said this work to address mental health is gaining recognition as an important part of recovery. Grants from The Duke Endowment have allowed the TRRP team to replicate the model at Trident Medical Center, Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital and Prisma Health Richland Medical Center. Nationally, however, follow-up with trauma patients is spotty. Ridings said she just completed a project looking into this and found that about half of pediatric trauma centers do some sort of work on mental health. Even fewer adult trauma centers do. “The majority of people after traumatic injury do get better, and they do OK in terms of mental health,” Ridings said. “But we want to make sure that no one’s slipping through the cracks.”

College of Nursing Funded Federal Grants January 2021 April 2022 Elder Abuse Assessment Training and Mental Health Services Program PI: Tatiana M. Davidson, PhD Sponsor: Victims of Crime Act Program (VOCA) Total award: $212,645 Project dates: 10/01/2021-09/30/2022 Telehealth Solutions to Improve Access and Quality of Care for Firefighters PI: Tatiana M. Davidson, PhD Sponsor: Dept. of Homeland Security/ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Total award: $496,111 Project dates: 09/01/2021-08/31/2023 36

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(R01) Evaluation of Trauma Center-Based, Technology Enhanced Stepped Care Intervention for Adolescent Traumatic Injury Survivors PI: Tatiana M. Davidson, PhD Sponsor: NIH/NICHD Total award: $2,405,837 Project dates: 09/01/2021 – 08/31/2025 (R01) Improving the Collaborative Health of Minority COVID-19 Survivor & Carepartner Dyads Through Interventions Targeting Social and Structural Health Inequities PI: Gayenell S. Magwood, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN Sponsor: NIH/NINR Total award: $3,340,174 Project dates: 09/15/2021 – 06/30/2026

Nurse Faculty Loan Program PI: Susan Newman Sponsor: Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Total award: $71,643 Project dates: 07/01/2021 – 06/30/2022 The Impact of Addressing Loneliness on Opioid Use PI: Tracy Stecker, PhD Sponsor: University of Rochester/ NIH/NIDA Total award: $65,378 Project dates: 06/15/2021 – 08/31/2022 CBT by Phone to Promote Use of Alcohol Related Care and Reduce Drinking: COVID-19 Administrative Supplement PI: Tracy A. Stecker, PhD Sponsor: Sub. Rochester University/NIH Total Award: $51,582 Project Dates: 12/02/2020 – 08/31/2021

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���� Faculty Publications Book Chapters Kelechi, T. J., Brunette, G., & Burgess, J. (2021). Venous insufficiency, venous ulcers, and lymphedema. In L.L. McNichol, C. Ratliff, & S. Yates (Eds.), Wound, ostomy and continence: Nurses Society core curriculum, wound management (pp. 455-492).

Wolters Kluwer.

Bonham, P. A., Brunette, B., Crestodina, L., Droste, L. R., Gonzalez, A., Kelechi, T. J., Ratliff, C. R., & Varnado, M F. (2021). Guideline for the management of patients with lower-extremity wounds due to diabetes mellitus and/or neuropathic disease. In Wound, ostomy and continence. Wound Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society.

Gaulden, J., Snyder, E., & Wilson, C. (2021). Pharmacotherapy for ears, nose, mouth, and throat conditions. In B. Luu, G. Kayingo, & V.M. Hass (Eds.), Advanced Pharmacology for Prescribers (pp. 145–158). Springer.

Sylvia, M., Vigil, I.M. (2021). Population Health Analytics. Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Sylvia, M. (2021). Data management and evaluation of translation. In K. White, S. Dudley-Brown, & M. Terhaar (Eds.), Translation of Evidence into Nursing and Healthcare (3rd ed., pp. 245-254). Springer.

Chike-Harris, K. E., Rutledge, C., Buchanan, L., Shea, J., Eckhoff, D., McCumber, S., & Corcoran, K. (2021). The missing link: The iSOAP model for incorporating telehealth within simulations. Clinical Simulations in Nursing, 59, 39-51. doi: 10.1016/j. ecns.2021.05.006.

Chike-Harris, K. E., Garber, K. M., & Derouin, A. (2021). Telehealth educational resources for graduate nurse faculty. Nurse Educator, 46(5), 295-299. doi: 10.1097/ NNE.0000000000001055.

Chike-Harris, K. E. (2021). Telehealth education of nurse practitioner students. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 17(3), 310–316. doi: 10.1016/j.nurpra.2020.12.029.

National Association of, P. N. P., School-Based Health Care, S. I. G., Chike-Harris, K., Cavanaugh, N., Yeager, L., Page, A., Gaylord, N., Wendling, T., & Bains, R. (2021).

NAPNAP position statement on school-based health care. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 35(4), 428-429. doi: 10.1016/j.pedhc.2013.01.004.

Rutledge, C., Mason, A., O’Rourke, J., Chike-Harris, K., Behnke, L., Melhado, L., Downes, L., & Gustin, T. (2021). Telehealth competencies for nursing education and practice: The four Ps of telehealth. Nurse Educator, 46(5), 300-305. doi: 10.1097/ NNE.0000000000000988.

Articles

Adams, L. E., Chapman, A. K., Cormack, C. L., Ebanks, A.H., Annibale, D. J., & Hollinger, L. E. (2021). Emanuel syndrome and congenital diaphragmatic hernia: A systematic review. Journal of Pediatric Surgery, S0022-3468(21), 00777-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2021.11.005.

Bowen, F.R., & Chinnis, S. (2021). Multidisciplinary intervention highly effective in decreasing restraint use in pediatric acute care. Evidence-Based Nursing, 25(2), 58. doi: 10.1136/ebnurs-2021-103467.

Mazanec, P., Ferrell, B., Malloy, P., Virani, R., & Cormack, C. (2021). Preparing advanced practice registered nursing students to provide primary palliative care. Nurse Educator, 46(4), 221-224. doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000000928.

Broome, B., Madisetti, M., Prentice, M., Kelechi, T. J., & Williams, K. W. (2021).

Food allergy symptom self-management with technology (FASST): An mHealth intervention to address psychosocial outcomes in caregivers of children with newly diagnosed food allergy: Protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial. JMIR Research Protocols, 10(3), e25805. doi: 10.2196/25805.

Stephens, T. M., & Cormack, C. (2021). Integrating palliative care competencies into an online RN-BSN program. Nurse Educator, 46(1), 4. doi.org/10.1097/ NNE.0000000000000838.

Cason, M., & Reibel, M. (2021). Progressive application of the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric in an accelerated undergraduate program. Nursing Education Perspectives, 42(4), 252-254. doi: 10.1097/01.nep.0000000000000612.

Wabnitz, A., Chandler, J., Treiber, F., Sen, S., Jenkins, C., Jill, C., Newman, J.C., Mueller, M., Tinker, A., Flynn, A., Tagge, R., Ovbiagele, B. (2021). Program to avoid cerebrovascular events through systematic electronic tracking and tailoring of an eminent risk factor: Protocol of a RCT. Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, 30(8), 105815. doi: 10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2021.105815.

Chike-Harris, K. E., Lauerer, J. A., Powers, A. R., & Stanley, A. Y. (2021).

Telehealth professionalism education for APRN students. Nursing Education Perspectives. doi: 10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000910.

Egede, L. E., Davidson, T. M., Knapp, R. G., Walker, R.J., Williams, J. S., Dismuke, C.E., Dawson, A. Z. (2021). HOME DM-BAT: Home-based diabetes-modified behavioral activation treatment for low-income seniors with type 2 diabetes: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Trials, 22(1):787. doi: 10.1186/s13063-021-05744-1.

Gilmore, A. K., Leone, R. M., Hahn, C. K., Oesterle, D., Davidson, T. M. (2021). Barriers to accessing mental health care after a sexual assault medical forensic exam. Journal of Forensic Nursing, 17(2), 84-92. doi: 10.1097/JFN.0000000000000321.

Hernandez-Tejada, M., Skojek, T., Frook, G., Allport, M., & Davidson, T. M. (2021).

Addressing the psychological impact of elder mistreatment: Community-based training partnerships and telehealth-delivered interventions. Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect, 33(1), 96-106. doi: 10.1080/08946566.2021.1876578.

Egede, L. E., Walker, R., Williams, J. S., Knapp, R., Dismuke, C. E., Davidson, T. M., & Campbell, J. A. (2021). Financial incentives and nurse coaching to enhance diabetes outcomes (FINANCE-DM): Study rationale and design. BMJ Open,10, e043760. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043760.

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Gulledge, A., Miller, S., & Mueller, M. (2021). Social support and social isolation in adults with cystic fibrosis: An integrative review. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 150, 110607. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2021.110607.

Kinyon, K., D’Alton, S. V., Poston, K. M., & Anderson, B. S. (2021). Changing student outcomes without sacrificing student satisfaction. The Journal of Nursing Education, 60(3), 169–171. doi: 10.3928/01484834-20210222-09.

Morrow, C., Johnson, E. E., Simpson, K., & Seo, N. J. (2021). Determining factors that influence adoption of new post-stroke physical rehabilitation devices. Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 29, 1213–1222. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2021.3090571.

Thorpe-Williams, J., Baptistek, D., Jarboe-Costello, J.E. & Kozachik, S. (2021).

Implementation of enhanced discharge teaching protocol to reduce 30-day hospital readmissions in adults diagnosed with sickle cell disease. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 11(6), 60-66. doi: 10.5430/JNEP.V11N6P60.

Johnson, E. E., Macgeorge, C., King, K., Andrews, A., Teufel, R., Kruis, R., Hale, K., Ford, D., & Sterba, K. (2021). Facilitators and barriers to implementation of school-based telehealth asthma care: Program champion perspectives. Academic Pediatrics, 21(7), 1262-1272. doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2021.04.025.

Gordon, J.M., Robidoux, H., Gaffney, K., Cirrito, B. L., & Lauerer, J. (2021).

Conceptualizing the early detection and intervention of infant mental health disorders in neonatal nursing. Journal of Neonatal Nursing, 27(1), 6-13. doi: 10.1016/j. jnn.2020.10.002.

Macgeorge, C. A., Cristaldi, K. K., Andrews, A. L., Sterba, K. R., Johnson, E. E., Brinton, D. L., Teufel, R. J., Kruis, R., & Ford, D. W. (2021). School nurse perception of asthma care in school-based telehealth. Journal of Asthma. 59(6), 1248-1255. doi: 10.1080/02770903.2021.1904978.

Ambrose, J. W., Layne, D. M., Catchpole, K., Evans, H., & Nemeth, L. S. (2021). A qualitative protocol to examine resilience culture in healthcare teams during COVID-19. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(9), 1168. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9091168.

Jordan, K., Harris, H., Reese, K., Broderick, C., & Jordan, A. (2021). A qualitative exploration of school nurse continuing education needs. The Journal of School Nursing, 10598405211064146. doi: 10.1177/10598405211064146.

Jordan, A. W., Jordan, K., & Sutphin, A. (2021). Care matters: Student perspectives of mental health determinants in an alternative high school. Health promotion practice, 15248399211046582. doi: 10.1177/15248399211046582 Jordan, K., Lofton, S., & Richards, E. A. (2021). Strategies for embedding population health concepts into nursing education. Nursing Forum, 56(1), 208–213. doi: 10.1111/ nuf.12498.

Kelechi, T. J., Madisetti, M., Prentice, M., & Mueller, M. (2021) Cooling intervention (MUSTCOOL) for prevention of lower extremity ulcer recurrence: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing, 48(3), 203-210. doi: 10.1097/WON.0000000000000753.

Kelechi, T.J., Muise-Helmericks, R.C., Theeke, L.A., Cole, S.W., Madisetti, M., Mueller, M., Prentice, M.A. (2021). An observational study protocol to explore loneliness and systemic inflammation in an older adult population with chronic venous leg ulcers. BMC Geriatrics, 21, 118. doi: 10.1186/s12877-021-02060-w.

Hauck, C., Kelechi, T. J., Mueller, M., & Cartmell, K. (2021). Trial-level factors affecting accrual and completion of oncology clinical trials: A systematic review. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communication, 24, 100842. doi: 10.1016/j. conctc.2021.100843.

Bernstein, S., Kelechi, T. J., Catchpole, K. R., & Nemeth, L. S. (2021). Prevention of failure to rescue in obstetric patients: A realist review. Worldviews on Evidence Based Nursing, 18(6), 352-360. doi: 10.1111/wvn.12531.

Kinyon, K., (2021). A stress reduction intervention for first semester nursing students during Covid-19. Beginnings: American Holistic Nurses Association, 41(5), 6-9.

Kinyon, K., D’Alton, S.V., Poston, K., & Navarrete, S. (2021). Improving physical assessment and clinical judgment skills in a prelicensure nursing health assessment course. Nursing Reports, 11(3), 600-607. doi: 103390/nursrep/113000057.

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Campbell, A., Layne, D., & Scott, E. (2021). Relational quality of registered nurses and nursing assistants: Influence on patient safety culture. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(2), 189. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9020189.

Ambrose, J. W., Layne, D. M., Catchpole, K., Evans, H., & Nemeth, L. S. (2021). A qualitative protocol to examine resilience culture in healthcare teams during COVID-19.

Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(9), 1168. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9091168.

Aronson, K.I., Danoff, S.K., Russell, A.M., Ryerson, C.J., Suzuki, … Lindell, K.O., …, & Swigris, J.J.; on behalf of the American Thoracic Society Assembly on Clinical Problems.

(2021). Patient-centered outcomes research in interstitial lung disease: An official American Thoracic Society research statement. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 24(2), e3-e23. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202105-1193ST. Lindell, K.O., Klein, S.A., Veatch, M.J., Gibson, K.F., Kass, D.K., Nouraie, M., & Rosenzweig, M.Q. (2021). Nurse-led palliative care improves knowledge and preparedness in caregivers of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Annals of American Thoracic Society, 18(11), 1811-1821. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202012-1494OC. Alder, J.K., Sutton, R.M., Iasella, C.J., Nouraie, M., Koshy R., … Lindell, K.O., … & McDyer, J.F. (2021). Lung transplantation for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis enriches for individuals with telomere-mediated disease. The Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation, 41(5), 654-663. doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2021.11.008.

Iyer, A.S., Sullivan, D.R., Lindell, K.O., Reinke, L.F. (2021). The Role of palliative care in COPD. CHEST, 161(5), P1250-1262. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2021.10.032.

Goobie, G.C., Ryerson, C.J., Johannson, K.J., Schikowski, E., Zou, R.H., … Lindell, K.O.*, & Nouraie, S.M.* (*Senior Authors). (2021). Neighborhood-level disadvantage impacts on patients with fibrotic interstitial lung disease. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 205(4), 459-467. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202109-2065OC. Guler, S.A., Lindell, K.O., Swigris, J.J., & Ryerson, C.J. (2021). American Thoracic Society Patient Education / Information Series, What is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis?

IPF Part 1. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care, Medicine, 203(2), P5-P6. doi: 10.1164/rccm.2032P5.

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Guler, S.A., Lindell, K.O., Swigris, J.J., & Ryerson, C.J.. (2021). American Thoracic Society Patient Education / Information Series, Medications for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: IPF Part 2. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 203(3), P7-P8. doi: 10.1164/rccm.2033P7.

Guler, S.A., Lindell, K.O., Swigris, J.J., & Ryerson, C.J. (2021). American Thoracic Society Patient Education / Information Series, Nondrug treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: IPF Part 3. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 203(4), P10–P11. doi: 10.1164/rccm.2034P10.

Klein, S.J., Logan, A., & Lindell, K.O. (2021). A scoping review of unmet needs of caregivers of patients with pulmonary fibrosis. Current Opinion in Supportive & Palliative Care,15(4), 226-232. doi: 10.1097/SPC.0000000000000571.

Gilmore, A. K., Walsh, K., López, C., Fortson, K., Oesterle, D. W., Salamanca, N. K., Orchowski, L. M., & Davis, K. C. (2021). Sexual assault victimization: Latinx identity as a protective factor for sexual minorities. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 886260521999122, 1-22. doi: 10.1177/0886260521999122.

Lopez, C. M., Gilmore, A. K., Brown, W. J., Hahn, C. K., Muzzy, W., Grubaugh, A., & Acierno, R. (2021). Effects of emotion dysregulation on post-treatment posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms among women veterans with military sexual trauma. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 8862605211005134, 1-19. doi: 10.1177/08862605211005134.

Wu, K., Lopez, C. M., & Nichols, M. (2021). Virtual visits in prenatal care: An integrative review. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 67(1), 39-52. doi: 10.1111/ jmwh.13284.

Pucciarelli, G., Lommi, M., Magwood, G. S., Simeone, S., Colaceci, S., Vellone, E., & Alvaro, R. (2021). Effectiveness of dyadic interventions to improve stroke patientcaregiver dyads’ outcomes after discharge: A systematic review and meta-analysis study. European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing: Journal of the Working Group on Cardiovascular Nursing of the European Society of Cardiology, 20(1), 14–33. doi: 10.1177/1474515120926069.

Halbert, C. H., McDonald, J. A., Magwood, G., & Jefferson, M. (2021). Beliefs about genetically targeted care in African Americans. Journal of the National Medical Association, 109(2), 98–106. doi: 10.1016/j.jnma.2017.02.004.

Potter, K., Miller, S. N., & Newman, S. D. (2021). Environmental factors affecting early mobilization and physical disability post–intensive care: An integrative review through the lens of the World Health Organization international classification of functioning, disability, and health. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 40(2), 92–117. doi: 10.1097/DCC.0000000000000461.

Potter, K., Miller, S. N., & Newman, S. D. (2021). Patient-level barriers and facilitators to early mobilization and the relationship with physical disability post-intensive care: Part 2 of an integrative review through the lens of the World Health Organization international classification of functioning, disability, and health. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 40(3), 164–173. doi: 10.1097/ DCC.0000000000000470.

McManus, K., Forester, B., Mueller, M., Hermida, A.P., Nykamp, L., Harper, D.G., Seiner, J., Sanghani, S.N., Patrick, R.E., Gentry, M.T., Kung, S., Leal, J.C., Johnson, E.K., Petrides, G. (2021). Simulated ECT: A novel approach to a control group in clinical trials. The Journal of ECT, 35220356. doi: 10.1097/ YCT.0000000000000832.

Wagner, J. L., Mueller, M., Hellier, T. S., Smith, G., & Modi, A. (2021). ADHD and epilepsy related QoL in youth with epilepsy. Epilepsy & Behavior: E&B, 123, 108250. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2021.108250.

Valcarce, V., Stafford, L.S., Neu, J., Cacho, N., Parker, L., Mueller, M., Burchfield, D.J., Li, N., Larkin, J. (2021). Detection of SARS-CoV-2 specific IgA in the human milk of COVID-19 vaccinated, lactating women. Breastfeeding Medicine, 16(12), 1004-1009. doi: 10.1089/bfm.2021.0122.

Sieverdes, J.C., Mueller, M., Nemeth, L.S., Patel, S., Baliga, P.K., Treiber F.A. (2021). A distance-based living donor kidney education program for Black wait-list candidates: A feasibility randomized trial. Clinical Transplantation, 35(9), e14426. doi: 10.1111/ctr.14426.

Lisanby S.H., … Mueller, M., Petrides, G., Prudic, J., Rosenquist, P.B., Rudorfer, M.V., … Kellner, C.H. On behalf of the CORE/PRIDE work group. (2021).

Longitudinal neurocognitive effects of combined electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and pharmacotherapy in geriatric major depressive disorder: Phase 2 of the PRIDE study. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 30(1), 15-28. doi: 10.1016/j. jagp.2021.04.006.

Parker, L.A., Cacho, N., Bendixen, M.M., Sullivan, S., Magalhaes, M., Krueger, C., Mueller, M. (2021). Measures of lactation outcomes in women delivering preterm infants. Nursing Research, 70(3), 193-199. doi: 10.1097/NNR.0000000000000502.

Hauck, C., Cartmell, K., Mueller, M., Kelechi, T. (2021). Scoping review: Barriers and facilitators to enrollment in pediatric oncology clinical trials. Pediatric Nursing, 47(2), 79-96.

Luccarelli, J., Forester, B.P., Dooley, M., Patrick, R.E., Harper, D.G., Seiner, S.J., Petrides, G., Mueller, M., Henry, M.E. (2021). The effects of baseline impaired global cognitive function on the efficacy and cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in geriatric patients: A retrospective cohort study. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 30(7), 790-798. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2021.12.008.

Pembroke, M., Bradley, J., Mueller, M., Mollica, M., & Nemeth, L. S. (2021).

Feasibility of breast radiation therapy video education combined with standard radiation therapy education for patients with breast cancer. Oncology Nursing Forum, 48(3), 279–290. doi: 10.1188/21.ONF.279-290.

Bunnell, B. E., Nemeth, L. S., Lenert, L. A., Kazantzis, N., Deblinger, E., Higgins, K. A., & Ruggiero, K. J. (2021). Barriers associated with the implementation of homework in youth mental health treatment and potential mobile health solutions.

Cognitive Therapy and Research, 45(6), 272–286. doi: 10.1007/s10608-020-10090-8.

Sieverdes, J.C., Nemeth, L.S., Mueller, M., Rohan, V., Baliga, P.K., Treiber F.A. (2021). Acceptability of a mobile-health living kidney donor advocacy program for Black wait-listed patients. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(16), 8239. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18168239.

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RESEARCH

Fluharty, M., Nemeth, L. S., Logan, A., & Nichols, M. (2021). What do neonatal intensive care unit policies tell us about kangaroo care implementation? A realist review. Advances in Neonatal Care: Official Journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses, 21(4), E76–E85. doi: 10.1097/ANC.0000000000000808.

Nichols, M., Nemeth, L. S., Magwood, G., Odulana, A., & Newman, S. (2021).

Exploring the contextual factors of adolescent obesity in an underserved population through photovoice. Family & Community Health, 39(4), 301–309. doi: 10.1097/ FCH.0000000000000118.

Alfred, M. C., Cohen, T. N., Cohen, K. A., Kanji, F. F. F., Choi, E., Del Gaizo, J., Nemeth, L. S., … & Catchpole, K. (2021). Using flow disruptions to examine system safety in robotic-assisted surgery: Protocol for a stepped wedge crossover design.

JMIR Research Protocols, 10(2), e25284. doi: 10.2196/25284.

Specker Sullivan, L., Pelzer, D., Rice, A., Peterson, Y. K., Sade, R. M., Townsend, D., Vaughan, L. M., Nichols, M., & Zisk, N. (2021). Responsibility for structural racism in medicine: Reflections and recommendations from one institution. Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, 11(2), 221–229. doi: 10.1353/nib.2021.0073.

Reich, K., Nemeth, L. S., Mueller, M., Sternke, L. M., & Acierno, R. (2021).

Psychosocial functioning in veterans with combat-related PTSD: An evolutionary concept analysis. Nursing Forum, 56(1), 194–201. doi: 10.1111/nuf.12519.

Phillips, S., Kanter, J., Mueller, M., Gulledge, A., Ruggiero, K., Johnson, M., & Kelechi, T. J. (2021). Feasibility of an mHealth self-management intervention for children and adolescents with Sickle Cell Disease and their families. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 11(3), 724-732. doi: 10.1093/tbm/ibaa132.

Reich, K., Nemeth, L. S., Mueller, M., Sternke, L. M., & Acierno, R. (2021).

Does psychosocial functioning improve with prolonged exposure in veterans with PTSD? Exploring traditional and home-based telehealth delivery methods.

Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 59(2), 31–40. doi: 10.3928/2793695-20201015-01.

Camp-Spivey, L. J., Newman, S. D., Stevens, R. N., & Nichols, M. (2021). “We’ve had to build the plane as we flew it.”: Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on schoolbased weight management interventions. Childhood Obesity, 17(8), 497-506. doi: 10.1089/chi.2021.0037.

Phillips, S., Kanter, J., Ruggiero, K. J., Mueller, M., Johnson, J., Prentice, M., & Kelechi, T. (2021). Feasibility of a self-management mHealth intervention for transition-aged youth with SCD. Journal of Sickle Cell Disease & Hemoglobinopathies, 8(3), 17-18.

Haviland, K., Burrows Walters, C. & Newman, S.D. (2021). Barriers to palliative care in sexual and gender minority patients with cancer: A scoping review of the literature.

Health Soc Care Community, 29, 305-318. doi: 10.1111/hsc.13126.

Phillips, S. (2021). Care of the individual with sickle cell disease. American Nurse, 16(6), 6-11.

Sarfo, F. S., Norman, B., Nichols, M., Appiah, L., Osei Assibey, S., Tagge, R., & Ovbiagele, B. (2021). Prevalence and incidence of pre-diabetes and diabetes mellitus among people living with HIV in Ghana: Evidence from the EVERLAST study. HIV Medicine, 22(4), 231–243. doi: 10.1111/hiv.13007.

Camp-Spivey, L. J., Logan, A., & Nichols, M. (2021). Theoretical and contextual considerations for self-management strategies of children and adolescents with chronic diseases: An integrative review. Journal of Child Health Care, 26(2), 242-261. doi: 10.1177/13674935211013697.

Miller, S., Teufel, R.J., Nichols, M.G., Davenport, P.W., Mueller, M., Silverman, E., Madisetti, M., Pittman, M., Kelechi, T.J., Strange, C. (2021). Feasibility of RESPFIT: Technology-enhanced self-management intervention for adults with COPD. International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, 16, 3263-3273. doi: 10.2147/COPD.S326675.

Akinyemi, R. O., Jenkins, C., Nichols, M., Singh, A., Wahab, K., Akpalu, A., …

Arulogun, O. (2021). Unraveling the ethical, legal, and social implications of neurobiobanking and stroke genomic research in Africa: A study protocol of the African neurobiobank for precision stroke medicine ELSI project. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19, 10.1177. doi: 10.1177/1609406920923194.

Nichols, M., Newman, S. D., Nemeth, L. S., & Magwood, G. S. (2021). The influence of parental participation on obesity interventions in African American adolescent females: An integrative review. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 30(3), 485–493. doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2014.12.004.

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Kanter, J., Phillips, S.M., Schlenz, A.M., Mueller, M., Dooley, M., Sirline, L., …Adams, R.J., (2021). Transcranial doppler screening in a current cohort of children with sickle cell anemia: Results from the DISPLACE study. Journal of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology, 43(8), e1062-e1068. doi: 10.1097/MPH.0000000000002103.

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Phillips, S., Kanter, J., Mueller, M., Schlenz, A. M., Ruggiero, K., & Kelechi, T. (2021). Comparison of the impact of an mHealth self-management intervention on adolescents versus young adults with sickle cell disease. Blood, 138(S1), 2995-7. doi: 10.1182/blood-2021-154336.

Phillips, S.M., Schlenz, A.M., Mueller, M., Melvin, C., Adams, R.J., Kanter, J. (2021). Identified barriers and facilitators to stroke risk screening in children with sickle cell anemia: Results from the DISPLACE consortium. Implementation Science Communications, 87, 2-11. doi: 10.1186/s43058-021-00192-z.

Noisette, L., Phillips, S., Schlenz, A., Mueller, M., & Kanter, J. (2021). Changes in care delivery for children with sickle cell anemia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, 43(8), e1231-1234. doi: 10.1097/ MPH.0000000000002008.

Loewenstein, K., Barroso, J., & Phillips, S. (2021). The experiences of parent dyads in theneonatal intensive care unit: A qualitative description. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 60,1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2021.01.023.

Powers, Aqan., & Lajoie, D. (2021). Understanding civilian mental health providers’ knowledge in providing care for active-duty service members: Opportunities for improvement. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 10783. doi: 10.1177/10783903211011673.

Calvo-Schimmel, S., Qanungo, S., Newman, S.D., & Sterba, K.R. (2021). Supportive care interventions and quality of life in advanced disease prostate cancer survivors: An integrative review of the literature. Canadian Oncology Nursing Journal, 31(4), 412-429. doi: 10.5737/23688076314412429.

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Qanungo, S., Calvo-Schimmel, A., McGue, S., Singh, P., Roy, R., Bhattacharjee, G., Panda, N., Kumar, G., & Cartmell, K.B. (2021). Barriers, facilitators and recommended strategies for implementing a home-based palliative care intervention in Kolkata, India. Am J. Hosp Palliat Care, 38(6), 572-582. doi: 10.1177/1049909120969127.

Alspaugh, A., Reibel, M., Eun-Ok, I., & Barroso, J. (2021). “Since I’m a little bit more mature”: Contraception and the arc of time. Women’s Midlife Health, 7(3). doi: 10.1186/ s40695-021-00062-7.

Reneau, M., & Nichols, M. (2021). Veterans’ insights on heart rate variability biofeedback to treat fibromyalgia-related pain. Pain Management Nursing, 23(2), 196-203. doi: 10.1016/j.pmn.2021.06.003.

Ennis, N., Anton, M., Bravoco, O., Hunt, J., Ridings, L., deRoon-Cassini, T. Davidson, T. M., & Ruggiero, K. R. (2021). Prediction of posttraumatic stress and depression 1-month post-injury: A comparison of two brief bedside screening instruments in a Level I Trauma Center. Health Psychology, 40(10), 702-705. doi: 10.1037/hea0001114.

Ridings, L. E., Espeleta, H. C., Streck, C., Davidson, T. M., Litvitskiy, N., Bravoco, O., Kassam-Adams, N., & Ruggiero, K. J. (2021). Assessing service quality and access in trauma centers through behavioral health screening, education, and treatment after pediatric injury. Journal of Pediatric Surgery, S0022-3468(22), 00075-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2022.01.014.

Maihofer A.X., . . . Ruggiero K.J., Rung A., Rutten B.P.F., Saccone N.L, Sanchez S.E., . . . & Nievergelt C.M. (2021). Enhancing discovery of genetic variants for PTSD through integration of quantitative phenotypes and trauma exposure information. Biological Psychiatry, 91(7), 626-636. doi: 10.1016/j. biopsych.2021.09.020.

Macias, D., Hand, B., Pipkorn, P., Williams, A., Chang, S. S., … Ruggiero, K. J., Sterba, K., & Graboyes, E. (2021). Association of inventory to measure and assess image disturbance – head and neck scores with clinically meaningful body imagerelated distress among head and neck cancer survivors. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 794038. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.794038.

Walsh, K., Gilmore, A. K., Barr, S., Frazier, P., Ledray, L., Acierno, R., Ruggiero, K., Kilpatrick, D. G., & Resnick, H. S. (2021). The role of discrimination experiences in post-rape adjustment among racial and ethnic minority women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 8862605211028006. doi: 10.1177/08862605211028006.

Macias, D., Hand, B. N., Maurer, S., Balliet, W., Ellis, M. A., …Ruggiero, K. J., …& Graboyes, E. M. (2021). Risk factors for head and neck cancer-related body imagerelated distress using a head and neck cancer-specific, patient-reported outcome measure. JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, 147(12), 1019-1026. doi: 10.1001/jamaoto.2021.1378.

Nadig, N.R., Sterba, K.R., Simpson, A.N., Ruggiero, K.J., Hough, C.T., Goodwin, A.J., White, K., Ford, D.W. (2021). Psychological outcomes in family members of acute respiratory failure patients: Does inter-ICU transfer play a role? Chest, 160(3), 890-898. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2021.03.025.

Lesher, A. P., Gavrilova, Y., Ruggiero, K. J., & Evans, H. (2021). Surgery and the smartphone: Can technology improve equitable access to surgical care? Journal of Surgical Research, 263,1-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2020.12.066.

Taylor D.J., Dietch J.R., Pruiksma K., Calhoun C.D., Milanak M.E., …Ruggiero K.J., Bunnell B.E., Wilkerson, A.K. (2021). Developing and testing a web-based provider training for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of Insomnia (CBT-I). Military Medicine, 186(Suppl 1), 230-238. doi: 10.1093/milmed/usaa359.

Bunnell, B. E., Nemeth, L. S., Lenert, L. A., Kazantzis, N., Deblinger, E., Higgins, K. A., & Ruggiero, K. J. (2021). Barriers associated with the implementation of homework in youth mental health treatment and potential mobile health solutions. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 45(2), 272-286. doi: 10.1007/s10608-020-10090-8.

Modi, A. C., Patel, A. D., Stevens, J., Smith, G., Huszti, H., Guilfoyle, S. M., Mara, C. A., Schmidt, M., & Wagner, J. L. (2021). The psychosocial impact of COVID-19 within the first six months of the pandemic on youth with epilepsy and their caregivers. Epilepsy & Behavior: E&B, 117, 107855. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2021.107855.

Smith, W., Chinnis, S., Durham, C., & Fowler, T. (2021). Pulmonary function testing for the primary care nurse practitioner. The Nurse practitioner, 46(12), 14-20. doi: 10.1097/01.NPR.0000798216.19617.e4.

Snyder, E., Davis, S., Aldrich, K., Veerabagu, M., Tiziana, L., Abenavoli, L., & Buccuto, L. (2021). Management of Crohn’s Disease: Identification, diagnosis, and clinical management. The Nurse Practitioner, 46(12), 30-31. doi: 10.1097/01.

NPR.0000804156.31359.38.

Williams, A. A., & Johnson, E. E. (2021). A programmatic evaluation of school preparedness for latinx children and families: A partnership program. Hispanic Healthcare International, 15404153211063639. doi: 10.1177/15404153211063639.

Fawcett, S., Williams, A. A., Johnson, E. E., & Ramsey, K. (2021). Improving treatment of chlamydia and gonorrhea infections during the COVID-19 pandemic: A quality improvement study utilizing provisional centers for disease control guidance. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 34(2), 373-380. doi: 10.1097/JXX.0000000000000642.

Sumneangsanor, T., Ruchiwit, M., & Weglicki, L. (2021). Non-drug stress management for patients with cancer: A systematic review. The Open Nursing Journal, 15(1), 211-217. doi: 10.2174/1874434602115010211. *Krause-Parello, C.A., Flynn, L., Moreno, S. J., Dillon, J., Hibler, D., Lapiz-Bluhm, M.D., Mullins, D.C., Peterson, A., Presciutti, R., &; Weglicki, L. (2021). Operation PCOR: A community engagement project preparing veterans as full partners in PTSD-related research. Journal of Veterans Studies,7(1), 14–22. doi: 10.21061/jvs.v7i1.202. *Alzyoud, S., Boukerdenna, H., Abbadi, A., & Weglicki, L. (2021). Knowledge and beliefs about the inclusion of health warnings on waterpipe tobacco packaging in Jordan. Global Journal of Health Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, 13(6), 134-144. doi: 10.5539/gjhs.v13n6p134.

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PRACTICE

PARTNERS IN HEALTH CARE

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing Kosobud-Sossamon talks with a patient at PHC. Opposite, from left: Smith, Durham, Fowler. Photos by Josh Goodwin.

A collaboration between non-profit East Cooper Community Outreach (ECCO) and the MUSC College of Nursing (CON), Partners in Healthcare (PHC) addresses the primary health and chronic disease concerns of uninsured families in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester Counties each year. Staffed by two faculty nurse practitioners, the practice provides innovative interprofessional education to students from the College of Nursing, Pharmacy, Medicine and Health Professions. PHC is also an incredibly energizing and rewarding place to work! Lifelines recently interviewed CON faculty and students about their experiences working at PHC. CON faculty members PHC provider Cathy Durham, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC PHC Director of Clinical Services Terri Fowler, DNP, APRN, NP-C PHC provider Whitney Smith, DNP, APRN, AGPCNP-BC

more than 10 years or as an adult. Our patient population is underserved and uninsured, and we have been able to make a significant impact on their health and quality of life. I also love the ability to engage students from various programs who learn about interprofessional practice and working in teams.

CON DNP student Tricy Kosobud-Sossamon, MHA, BSN, R.N.

Fowler: ECCO understands that health is impacted by more than just access. Addressing social determinants of health such as healthy food, stable and safe housing and financial stability are as important to improving health outcomes as the provision of quality patient care. I enjoy seeing the impact that Partners in Healthcare and ECCO’s comprehensive services have on improving health and decreasing health inequities in the community.

What do you enjoy most about working with ECCO? Durham: I love partnering with patients to establish a health care plan that meets their needs and optimizes their health.

Many times, we are the first provider a patient has seen in 42

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Describe a typical day for you at the clinic—what makes you smile?

Smith: High-fiving a patient for an A1C that’s controlled for the first time in years, or for a blood pressure that is finally where it should be, or for successfully losing 5, 10, 20 pounds—the patients’ successes are so rewarding! We precept interdisciplinary students (PharmD, PA, R.N., and DNP), and I enjoy watching their professional growth, as well as their understanding for how to best provide medical care for those who are uninsured and face financial barriers. For many it is their first experience with patients who face these types of constraints.

Durham: A typical day involves a meeting with the health care team pre-briefing on the patients scheduled that day and prioritizing. We then begin clinic where the students perform the intake history and physical in a small team—they then brief the preceptor, and we come to a shared decision with the patient.

We end the day with a debrief and spend time talking about what worked well and what we could improve upon.

Kosobud-Sossamon: What made my heart full was the appreciation expressed by every individual who was seen at the clinic and the ability to provide them with evidence-based health care, resources and food, that otherwise was unaffordable and unobtainable.

How has the experience helped you grow? What are your hopes for the program?

Smith: I treasure the sense of community working with ECCO and with our patients. Working within the interprofessional teams at PHC has highlighted the importance of these opportunities within all health care schools/programs.

Durham: My biggest hope is that local health care systems and academic settings see the great value to the community and community partners in this practice partnership. We provide high quality care to an underserved population and do this by engaging expert clinicians, future health care providers and our patients. We also have the ability to implement patient focused care and quality improvement.

How is this CON initiative helping to change what’s possible for the tri-county community?

Fowler: Partners in Healthcare provides access to high quality primary care health services to individuals and families who are uninsured and may otherwise have limited access to health care. Through the partnership with ECCO and the CON, patients are engaged in preventive primary care, chronic disease management, lifestyle modifications and self-management with improvement in health outcomes and prevention of emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

Kosobud-Sossamon: PHC is a life-changing CON initiative for the tri-county community that provides a safe place where otherwise reluctant individuals entrust their care, change their lifestyles and transform into healthier, happier individuals, all because of the trust we gained as compassionate medical professionals. Every individual deserves quality health care, and PHC/ECCO are making that possible every time a person in need walks into the clinic. The interprofessional approach provides an additional holistic encounter for the patients that allows access to optimal health care. PHC is an inspiring experience that epitomizes health care and humanity at its best.

Interested in supporting this innovative practice? Contact Lilia Correa, Director of Development, at correal@musc.edu or (843) 792-8421 to find out how you can be involved!

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PRACTICE

Chinnis looks over her hometown from the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital observation deck. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

Opening Vistas

First inspired by nursing as a teenager, Dr. Simone Chinnis, Class of 2005 and 2017, knows the power of perspective. Now a MUSC College of Nursing alumna and faculty member, she is committed to opening vistas for the next generation of nursing students.

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing

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We get to be agents of change in the community and meet the needs of marginalized populations.

—Dr. Simone Chinnis

As a high school student at Charleston’s Academic Magnet, Simone Chinnis, DNP, MBA, FNP-C, was drawn to the field of community health and the chance to improve the lives of her neighbors and friends. For her capstone research project, she connected with MUSC College of Nursing faculty member Carolyn Jenkins, Ph.D., who opened the door to a world of scientific research and broadened her perspective of a future dedicated to helping others. At Furman University, Chinnis majored in health exercise science and Spanish and also continued to pursue community health opportunities, including interning one summer at the City of Charleston Mayor’s Office, where she helped with the placement of a nurse in each Charleston County school. Recognizing the joy she found in those experiences, she was conflicted about a future career until reconnecting with Jenkins and other nurses, including Debbie Bryant, Ph.D., Teresa Kelechi, Ph.D., Gayenell Magwood, Ph.D., and Susan Newman, Ph.D. Chinnis was inspired by their fulfilling journeys as nurses as well as their passionate advocacy for community health and equity care.

Chinnis’ aunt, a dedicated licensed practical nurse, sealed the deal by offering the following advice: “If you want a job, get a job. But, if you want a career, become a nurse.”

After enrolling in the accelerated BSN program at MUSC, Chinnis eventually earned her Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree and in 2020 became a full-time faculty member after serving as an adjunct since 2017. With a professional focus on eradicating health disparities by improving the quality and delivery of health services, she was the perfect fit to assume the directorship of PARTNER (the Psychiatric Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Technology-Enhanced Residency Program) when her mentor Bryant retired. Funded through a three-year

Duke Endowment grant and the first revenue generating practice program at the College of Nursing, PARTNER is a collaborative project involving the college, MUSC Health Center for Telehealth and the Institute of Psychiatry. Its goal is to meet the immense behavioral health needs of S.C. patients across the lifespan by advancing equity through telehealth. For Chinnis, the opportunity to open vistas for both underserved patients and nurses new to the profession was irresistible.

“In South Carolina, there is a higher prevalence of mental illness and lower rate of access to psychiatric care, especially in rural areas,” she shared. “Through the use of telehealth, PARTNER’s residents are able to provide care to patients by eliminating geographical barriers. This is the first in the nation telepsychiatric residency for Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioners, who receive additional training while providing care in partnership with primary care providers.” Currently, PARTNER trains two new fellows a year under the Duke Endowment Grant, and Chinnis’ goal is for the program to reach a level of self-sustainable growth. With its potential for impact, the program also helps fulfill Chinnis’ long-held desire to help people by expanding opportunities for care. “We get to be agents of change in the community and meet the needs of marginalized populations,” she emphasized. “PARTNER is a testament that the College of Nursing has visionaries who are able to forge new paths in our quest to advance health equity.”

To find out more about PARTNER, visit nursing.musc.edu/partner

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PRACTICE

Spotlight on Advocacy:

SC ETV Features Game-Changing Healthy Steps Program In April, South Carolina Educational Television (SC ETV) highlighted Healthy Steps, an innovative national program growing throughout the state that provides early childhood development support to families in the pediatric primary care office. A certified pediatric nurse practitioner who has been a primary care provider at MUSC Children’s Health University Pediatrics North Charleston clinic for the past 14 years, Dr. Amy Williams, Class of '00, '06 ,'14, has been instrumental in bringing the dynamic Health Steps program to MUSC and championing the initiative’s impact and growth.

I feel compelled to work in the early childhood space because it coincides with where the most sensitive and rapid brain development occurs in a person’s life. I intently focus on developmental and behavioral promotion in these first five years by building community-based systems that aid parents and caregivers in fostering their child’s development, including early intervention when necessary. MUSC Children’s Health University Pediatrics is a patient-centered medical home where families seek care for their children from the newborn period through their 18th birthdays. The clinic is unique in that it serves a majority of first generation Latin American population, and I, along with most of the clinic staff, speak Spanish in the practice.

Prior to establishing the Healthy Steps program at the clinic, I first piloted a home-visitation program, funded by the Duke Endowment, for children ages zero to five in Spanish-speaking households. Tailored to serve a need in the community where there were no existing programs, it was designed to combat the staggering statistic that Latin American children

By Amy Williams, DNP, APRN, CPNPPC, Associate Professor, DNP program Williams holds Alexia Lopez while talking with Honeyda Solomon about her daughter as part of the Healthy Steps program. Photo by Sarah Pack.

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are diagnosed with developmental delays, including pervasive developmental disorders like autism spectrum disorders, later as well as less often than their English-speaking peers. Proven successful, the program has been implemented in other parts of South Carolina and is now sustained by federal preschool development grant funding.

However, I recognized the high potential for impactful work to be done directly with my patients and their families in the clinical setting. Currently, I am a principal investigator on a grant that delivers Healthy Steps, an evidenced-based national model from Zero to Three, an early childhood advocacy and policy organization based in the science of childhood

development and headquartered in Washington, D.C. An evidence-based program that occurs concurrently during well child care in pediatric clinics, Healthy Steps is for patients ages zero to three. This model partners patients and families with a Healthy Steps specialist who is trained in early childhood development, behavioral challenges or behavioral needs during that age group and then also offers connections to resources that families may need during those early years of their child’s life.

Healthy Steps is a tiered system, with some patients receiving more high intensity services. For example, these families have a Healthy Steps specialist present during every well child visit with their primary care provider for the first three years of life. In addition, by virtue of being a Healthy Steps site, each child, ages zero to three, receives routine and structured developmental screenings, and mothers receive routine and structured postpartum depression screenings after giving birth and through the first six months of their child’s life. Finally, families receive needs assessments, where we’re looking at things like housing insecurity, food insecurity and other social determinants of health that can affect a child’s health care.

A typical week in my life blends teaching, practice, grant-based work and my family. I like my work because I get the privilege of hearing every family’s unique story, including what virtues and what things they may feel are important to pass along to their children. It’s really a bonus when I get to work alongside a family to help them understand what programs might be available, like Healthy Steps, that can help them put their child on a path to successful development and work hand in hand with that individual family.

As a primary care provider, I precept College of Nursing Accelerated BSN students at my clinical site when they are in their community health rotation and serve as a primary clinical preceptor for students enrolled in the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner track of the DNP program. They see patients from birth after hospital discharge to 18 years of age for well visits, health promotion, vaccinations or episodic visits, in addition to managing children with complex and chronic illness from the primary care standpoint and in conjunction with subspecialists and allied health professionals.

To serve populations within a state or community, as a health care provider, you must engage and uplift those same populations through a service commitment. In addition to my scholarship and subsequent grant funding, totaling 3.3 million dollars in secured funding mapped to the early childhood years of zero to five, I am also active in health care policy at the state level. I hold two Governor’s appointments as the medical provider to the state boards that conduct early childhood activities for the state of South Carolina, First Steps to School Readiness and the Early Childhood Advisory Council. By concurrently serving on the board of PASOs of South Carolina, a statewide Latinx advocacy organization that is a part of the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, I engage in grassroots advocacy work that is done in communities across the state and that gains attention from and is tested by researchers providing new evidence-based programs.

Being able to witness firsthand the impact of a program such as Healthy Steps has only increased my passion for advocacy work, and I eagerly anticipate where the next step will lead.

To watch SC ETV’s feature on Healthy Steps, scan the QR code or visit scetv.org/watch/carolinaclassrooms (First Five SC video, April 21, 2022).

Did You Know?

Last July, the South Carolina Department of Education chose Healthy Steps as one of several South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness early childhood education and parenting support initiatives to share over three years $14.7 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. Choosing to include Healthy Steps in this award was a significant distinction that recognized the important role health education programs play in creating school readiness, especially during the pandemic. The funding will help expand the Healthy Steps program to other sites in South Carolina and ensure they are able to recruit and retain qualified individuals.

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PRACTICE

A Meeting of Minds I N T E R P R O F E S S I O N A L S I M U L AT I O N P R O J E C T

By Melody Reibel, Ph.D., MSN-Ed, R.N., ABSN Faculty Lead In March 2021, faculty from the Colleges of Nursing (Dr. Melody Reibel, Dr. Dawn Terzulli, Dr. Kristen Poston), Pharmacy (Dr. Marc Lapointe, Dr. Jason Haney), Health Professions (Dr. Amanda Sammons, Dr. Ashley Bondurant), and Medicine (Dr. Margaret Dorlon) piloted an innovative interprofessional (IP) simulation experience with MUSC health profession students. The purpose of the IP simulation project was to engage the IP team of students to build collaborative teamwork, communication competencies and clinical judgment skills; all are essential skills for practice ready graduates. Focused on the acute care of a complex trauma patient, the experience involved standardized patient actors to facilitate therapeutic patient communication. Interactive whiteboard technology was used to capture and assess students’ clinical judgment and effective team-based communication during the simulation.

IP Student Team: Colleen Cieslak, Kelsey Cannon, Hannah Dorsch (College of Nursing); Amanda Everett, Melissa Farris (College of Pharmacy); Acacia “Cayce” Williams, Katy Smith, Kirsten Fink, Jackson Morgan (College of Health Professions); Lauren Brady, Austin Lewis (College of Medicine).

Photos by Josh Goodwin.

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DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Promoting a High-Trust, Respectful and Caring Environment

By Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., Dean and Professor and Tonya Hazelton, CON Diversity Officer Tonya Hazelton. Provided.

This past year, we thanked Dr. Tina Lopez for her passion and leadership these past five years as the College of Nursing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Officer, as she transitioned her time to concentrate on a new NIH-funded research grant. The college was fortunate that Dr. Lopez had worked closely with, mentored and was supported by Tonya Hazelton in DEI activities. We all saw the energy and creative ideas that Tonya brought to the DEI Council, to our Diversity and Inclusion Openness Talking Series (DOTS) and to the Diversity Inclusion Champions of Excellence (DICE) group. As Dean, I did not have to look far to know that we had the perfect person to step into the college’s DEI Officer role. This past year, I—along with mentorship and support from MUSC Chief Equity Officer Dr. Willette Burnham-Williams, the MUSC DEI Department and the CON DEIB Council—have provided Tonya with the tools she needs to lead and implement our DEIB strategic plan objectives as well as coordinate the responsibilities and activities of the DEIB Council. I look forward in anticipation of the innovative and meaningful DEIB work that CON will undertake in the months ahead.

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From Tonya: The college’s Diversity and Inclusion team continues to ensure that our environment and culture revolve around valuing individuality, respect and a sense of belonging. The DEIB Council and DICE group are proactive about leading and implementing opportunities and initiatives that foster growth through inclusive mindsets.

DOTS participation has steadily increased, signifying that faculty and staff are united in being open as well as committed to inclusivity. The DEI team collaborates with CON faculty, MUSC resources and community leaders to bring a variety of DEIB topics to our DOTS conversations every month as a form of education, fellowship and training. The sessions and discussions have covered a myriad of topics, such as racial passing, plantations (new neighborhoods and the past), new Sheriff Kristen Graziano’s priorities, George Floyd’s killing, the Emanuel film, the John C. Calhoun statue removal, effective allyship, the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, transgender and gender nonconforming patients, educational gerrymandering and interracial marriages.

The DEI team knows that small efforts matter in helping people to feel included. It was exciting to host the “D&I Welcome Back to the College of Nursing,” which provided some swag and refreshments at the first fully in-person faculty and staff Assembly in over a year. Additionally, the team is partnering with other units at the college to strengthen research, student education and the onboarding process as we manifest the College of Nursing pledge to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging by promoting a high-trust, caring environment.

New DNP initiative launched Led by Catherine Durham, DNP, FNP, FAAN, Graduate Practice Program Assistant Dean, and DaNine Fleming, Ed.D., Associate Chief Officer for Inclusive Excellence at MUSC, the DNP faculty spent the fall semester engaging in valuable diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) discussions and critical conversations with a book club review. Their work culminated in four DEI Pilot Project Capstone presentations, during which they created and shared their ideas for potential projects moving forward and engaged with colleagues. Planning is already underway to continue the book club this fall.

Meet the new DICE co-chairs!

What makes DICE such a dynamic group?

Theresa: DICE allows people of differing backgrounds and experiences to have real discussions about difficult topics in order to inspire positive and impactful initiatives that benefit the DICE members and the college as a whole.

Mara: Each member of DICE brings a unique perspective which really adds value to the initiatives we set to carry out this year. It’s one of my favorite meetings of the month because I leave each session with a new nugget of insight from one of the members that I had not previously thought about.

What’s on the horizon for DICE this year?

Theresa: Expansion and growth.

Mara: A fun get-together later this year!

Why is this work so important to you?

Theresa: My background in mental health, and my specific clinical experiences working with diverse populations, have given me the opportunity to witness the true impact issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belongingness can have on our psychological well-being.

Mara: I believe it’s my duty to be an ally and fight for equity and inclusion within the medical university culture.

Why “Belonging” Matters From left: Skojec, Mental Health Services Manager, SC Safe Seniors; Allport, Training Program Manager, SC Safe Seniors

The College of Nursing’s Diversity and Inclusion Champions of Excellence (DICE) group works with the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Council to promote meaningful initiatives throughout the college and across campus. As DICE’s new co-chairs, Mara Allport and Theresa Skojec are excited to grow the group’s membership and impact in the months to come.

As part of its ongoing efforts to enrich diversity and inclusion initiatives, MUSC College of Nursing is committed to promoting a culture of belonging for all community members.

“Developing inclusive and welcoming environments where there is a collective sense of belonging and all individuals thrive and do their best work is critical to achieving academic nursing’s goals related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

When students are respected and valued by their classmates and peers, they experience a stronger bond with the greater campus community. In this environment, students feel safe to share experiences, engage in thoughtful discussions, and offer support to others.” —AACN president and CEO Deborah Trautman, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN

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Chronic Disease Through the Lens of COVID-��

By Kimberly McGhee, Director, Science Communications Initiatives, College of Graduate Studies Gayenell S. Magwood, Ph.D., R.N., Class of 1993 and 2006, and a professor in the MUSC College of Nursing, has received more than $3.4 million in funding from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) to investigate how COVID-19 has affected the health and quality of life of Black South Carolinians with preexisting chronic conditions and their caregivers. The funded research also explores whether stressors related to structural inequities and racial discrimination affect COVID-19 and chronic disease outcomes.

“We want to explore what happens in a pandemic with people of color and their chronic conditions and what role economic and societal stressors and structural racial inequities play.”

—Dr. Gayenell Magwood Photo by Josh Goodwin.

COVID-19 and chronic disease It has long been known that chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, increase the risk of stroke, heart disease and cancer. But fear of a consequence in the distant future often did not bring about needed behavior and lifestyle changes. COVID-19 changed that time frame.

It preyed preferentially on people with some of these chronic diseases, increasing their risks of developing and/or dying from severe COVID-19.

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According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than a half million patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 between March of 2020 and March of 2021. Of those patients, 95% had at least one underlying medical condition, roughly half had either high blood pressure or disorders of lipid metabolism and a third were obese. The study found a strong association between obesity and diabetes, both of which are widespread in the U.S., and severe COVID-19 disease. The study also found that having more than one underlying condition increased the likelihood of developing severe COVID-19.

Chronic disease in South Carolina South Carolina is certainly no stranger to chronic disease.

The South Carolina Department of Public Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) estimates that six in 10 South Carolinians have a chronic illness and four in ten have two or more. According to the CDC, more than one in three South Carolinians (36%) identified as obese in 2020, and the state ranked sixth for highest percentage of adults with diabetes in 2019.

Although South Carolinians of every race are affected by chronic disease, Black communities are hit particularly hard.

Non-Hispanic Black adults have twice the death rate and higher rates of obesity than non-Hispanic white adults (43.9% versus 32.4%), according to 2018-2020 SCDHEC data. This higher burden of chronic disease was one factor that caused Black people to be more vulnerable to developing severe COVID-19.

Engaging the community But were other factors also responsible for the toll COVID-19 took on Black communities? Did structural inequities in access to information and care and chronic stress due to racial discrimination also play a role? And how did the pandemic affect the management of existing chronic disease in underserved communities?

With the funding from NINR, Magwood is engaging underserved communities in answering these questions using a community-engaged approach. She and her team previously used a community-based participatory approach to encourage diverse participation in an earlier WISSDOM (Wide Spectrum Investigation of Stroke Outcome Disparities on Multiple Levels) stroke trial. In a recent article in Contemporary Clinical Trial Communications, she outlined this high-tech, high-touch approach to recruiting diverse clinical trial participants.

While technology, whether in the form of the electronic health record or a stroke registry, helped to identify potential clinical

trial participants, it was the human touch that mattered in the end. Stroke patients were more likely to participate in trials or adhere to stroke management guidelines when the study team took the time to listen to them and learn about their concerns through focus groups and interviews.

For the NINR project, Magwood is using focus groups and interviews to learn whether societal inequities and racial discrimination have affected chronic disease and COVID-19 outcomes in Black adults in South Carolina. “It’s important that we show cultural humility, that we take the time to understand what a community’s priorities may be instead of coming in as if we already know what is best for them,” said Magwood.

Armed with the information gained from focus groups, Magwood’s team will tailor strategies to address the concerns of underserved communities to ensure that they are better prepared to weather future pandemics.

Taking a family approach Magwood believes that too many interventions meant to improve chronic disease management have focused too narrowly on the individual patient and ignored the role played by, and the pressures put upon, the family.

“Over the years of experience that I’ve had working with chronic disease prevention and management and with communities, I’ve been told over and over again by caregivers, ‘I wish I could help my brother,’ or ‘I wish I could help my husband/wife more, but I have my own health problems,’” said Magwood. “So we’re bringing people—the patients and their care partners—together to help them to co-manage their chronic illnesses.”

Her team intends to find the best approach for improving quality-of-life and health outcomes for both patients and their care partners. They are examining whether coaching alone, using the tailored educational models, or coaching plus nurse guidance in navigating the health care system results in the best outcomes.

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GLOBAL INITIATIVES

No Longer a World Away: CON’s Innovative Virtual Global Health Training Program

By Kelsi Schagunn MUSC Communications Program Coordinator MUSC Center for Global Health During the COVID-19 pandemic, ingenuity and creativity have been critical in evolving strong student-centered research and education programs—especially in the field of global health education. During this year’s MUSC Innovation Week (April 25-29), a group of College of Nursing students and Associate Professor Suparna Qanungo, Ph.D. presented their successful global health pilot program, “Innovative Virtual Global Health Program for Nursing Students.” This pilot program, funded through the College of Nursing Falks-Griffin Endowment funds, highlights how an academic program overcame the barriers of international travel restrictions on global health education and opened new opportunities for the future.

The college offers in-person global health experiences through the Foundation for International Medical Relief for Children (FIMRC). However, travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic prevented nursing students from participating in global health educational trips. In response, faculty and administrators developed a customized virtual global health program for nursing students to gain valuable global health experience during and beyond pandemic times. Piloted in November 2021 with six students in the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program, the program contained tailored, online modules on diverse health care topics like prevalent diseases, social determinants of health, global health care systems/policies, maternal-child health, mental health, pediatric disabilities, global health ethics and leadership in cultural competency.

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Pilot program nursing students participated virtually in a real-time clinical observation of a telehealth primary care consult in Costa Rica and Ecuador. Provided.

Qanungo and ABSN student Kate Ague-Kneeland present during the Shark Tank competition. Photo by Sarah Pack.

clinical observation and telehealth consults for primary care and mental health in Costa Rica and Ecuador. To demonstrate acquired knowledge, they also completed a program information poster and a Spanish-language nutritional brochure for South American site initiatives. “This virtual global health experience was humbling and has taught me to be appreciative of the opportunities I have been given,” said ABSN student Saddie Sofia. “It has opened my eyes to what others are going through around the world and how I can help from a distance.”

CON-FIMRC’s Virtual Global Health Program ignited a passion to give back to underserved communities in need of basic health care resources. I hope to one day volunteer for FIMRC at one of their Central American sites as a registered nurse and apply the education I received from this virtual program.

—ABSN student Courtney Soll Travel restrictions are not the only barrier for students to pursue global health experiences abroad. Prior to the pandemic, few nursing students had the time or financial resources for global travel. The time constraints of the ABSN program make inperson participation especially difficult for nursing students.

The pandemic has accelerated the use of remote technology and highlighted how educators can use virtual programming to strive toward greater equity in access to global knowledge.

While not a replacement for the benefits gained from an in-person experience, a virtual global health program is a unique mode of international participation that can expand access to those who may not otherwise be able to participate.

The College of Nursing’s goal will be to accommodate 8-12 students per year in this virtual program.

Global education can be both personally and professionally enriching for students in all disciplines. A vast majority of nursing students who participated (96.6%) expressed satisfaction with the experience and felt they obtained a greater competence in nursing across borders, inspiration to serve those underserved and a better understanding of the unique role of nurses in mentorship and clinical care for communities.

“CON- FIMRC’s Virtual Global Health Program opened my eyes to the current state of global health inequality and inspired me to strive toward sustainable and meaningful change in my own community and beyond,” shared ABSN student Rachel Nichols. Reflecting on their experience, students also expressed awareness and respect for cultural beliefs and the impact of those beliefs on health and care.

SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS! After being named a finalist during the Innovation Week research showcase for their poster “Innovative Virtual Global Health Program for Nursing Students,” Qanungo and her students advanced to the MUSC Charleston Shark Tank competition and won first place in the Education division! This fun-filled annual event features teams pitching their idea to a panel of MUSC’s executive leaders for an opportunity to win funding to support the development of their concept.

Poster contributors Dean Linda S. Weglicki, Dr. Sharon Kozachik and Qanungo view the Virtual Global Health Program display during Innovation Week. Photo by Jennifer A. Turner.

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AROUND THE COLLEGE

Celebrating Nurses Week!

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Held on campus for the first time in three years, Nurses Week was a time of celebration and connection.

Opposite: students enjoy the Sweets and Swag party hosted by Dean Linda S. Weglicki. Above: The Nurses Honor Guard of SC join (from left) Dr. Teresa Kelechi, Dean Weglicki, MUSC First Lady Kathy Cole and Dr. Sharon Kozachik at the Celebrating Wisdom Reception, which paid tribute to nurses with 25+ years of MUSC-Health service. Below: Dr. Diana Layne presents during the Nursing Grand Rounds, which addressed incivility in the profession. From left, Dr. Berry Anderson, Dr. Matt Engelhardt and Dr. Chris Hairfield pose for the Nurses Week photo booth. Photos by Josh Goodwin, Dr. Chris Hairfield and Jennifer A. Turner.

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Careers of Excellence

Clockwise from center: Weglicki, Dr. Ken Ruggiero (mentor), Davidson, Newman, and Dr. Teresa Kelechi (mentor). Photo by Josh Goodwin.

The MUSC Board of Trustees approved tenure for associate professors Tatiana Davidson, Ph.D., and Susan Newman, Ph.D., R.N., in October following support from the College of Nursing Appointment, Promotion and Tenure (APT) Committee, Dean Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., Provost Lisa K. Saladin, PT, Ph.D., and the University APT. Both Davidson and Newman were recognized for their leadership and the impact that they have made professionally on the college and MUSC. Tenure is among the highest recognitions a faculty member may receive and signifies sustained excellence in scholarship, teaching and service. We honor their years of hard work at MUSC and commitment to changing what’s possible.

Durham Inducted as Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing This past fall, faculty member Catherine Durham, DNP, FNP, was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) during the annual American Academy of Nursing Health Policy Conference. CON’s Assistant Dean for Graduate Practice Programs, Durham is an ANCC certified Family Nurse Practitioner and maintains active practice in primary care for the underserved. She is the primary investigator for Choose Well, a grant project focused on increasing education content and clinical experiences regarding contraceptive options for advanced practice nurses across the pediatric, family and adult geriatric tracks.

Durham is also an active drilling Reservist in the U.S. Navy and holds the present rank of captain. She served as the Chief Nursing Officer for OHSU Jacksonville and the Officer-in-Charge of NR OCS Quantico and completed a mobilization to New York City at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From left: Dr. Kathleen Lindell, Dean Linda S. Weglicki, Durham, Dr. Sharon Kozachik, and Dr. Gayenell Magwood. Provided.

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College of Nursing Awards & Recognitions New Faculty & Staff, April 2021-April 2022

From left: Dr. Michelle Nichols and Dean Linda S. Weglicki at the May 2022 MUSC Commencement. Nichols served as 2022 Commencement Presidential Marshal in recognition of her Teaching Excellence Award: Educator Mentor. Provided.

Excellence in Faculty Teaching Award Dr. Simone Chinnis and Dr. Sarah Miller, 2022 Dr. Berry Anderson, 2021

Staff Team Members of the Year Kathy Franks, fall 2021 Jessica Williams, spring 2021

Daisy Award Winners Faculty Dr. Kathryn Kinyon, 2022 Amy Smith, 2021 Students Katherine Kollegger, May 2022 Anne-Davis Shaw, December 2021 Anna Leff, May 2021

MUSC 2021 Teaching Excellence Award Dr. Michelle Nichols, Educator Mentor: Academic-Scholarship

“I am an MUSC Innovator” Award Winners

Mandy Adams, Administrative Coordinator Mary Evelyn Armstrong, Assistant Dean of Finance and Administration Emily Cardillo, Program Coordinator Jessica Cash, Fiscal Analyst Lilia Correa, Director of Development Michelle Edwards, Program Coordinator Dr. Matthew Engelhardt, Instructor Leona Frazier, Procurement Specialist Sara German, Program Assistant Brian Getsinger, Technology Center Director Dr. Chris Hairfield, Clinical Instructor Kristen Higgins, Program Coordinator Daniel Humphrey, Research Associate Katie Hyman, Development Coordinator Kaitlyn Landry, Student Research Assistant Mary Mulvey, HR Services Business Manager Harshal Patel, Educational Technology Specialist Shane Petry, Information Systems/Business Analyst Jennifer Turner, Director of Communications and Marketing Laquasia Tyson, Web Developer Dr. Nicole Walters, Instructor Mary Catherine Williams, Finance Business Manager

Appointments Dr. Sharon Kozachik, Associate Dean for Academic Programs Dr. Joy Lauerer, Associate Professor Amy Smith, Instructor Dr. Dawn Terzulli, Instructor

Promotions & Tenure Dr. Tatiana Davidson, Associate Professor, Tenure Kathy Franks, Accountant Fiscal Analyst Dr. Kathryn Kinyon, Assistant Professor Dr. Susan Newman, Associate Professor & Assistant Dean for Ph.D. Studies, Tenure

Dr. Tatiana Davidson Amy Smith

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How Would You Describe Your Team?

Dedicated, Hardworking, Personable Meredith Kerr Procurement Specialist

Caring, Helpful, Diverse Kathy Franks Fiscal Analyst

Diligent, Focused, Determined Jessica Cash Fiscal Analyst

Dependable, Innovative Kathy Williams Fiscal Analyst

Dedicated, Inspiring, Hilarious Mary-Evelyn Armstrong Assistant Dean of Finance and Administration

Dependable, Honest, Intelligent Mary Catherine Williams Finance Business Manager

A Smart Investment: Office of Finance & Administration The College of Nursing’s Finance and Administration (F&A) team is responsible for the college’s finance, post-award grants administration and human resource activities. This dedicated team has undergone significant change and growth over the past year with six out of the nine members being new to their roles, and two of these positions being added as an investment from the Dean to keep pace with the growth of the college; to meet the increasing demands and accountability from university leadership and central offices; to support strategic initiatives for financial growth; and to elevate and maintain high levels of customer service to internal and external stakeholders.

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In addition to daily operations, over the past year the F&A team has also implemented transformative changes in financial tracking and reporting, such as customized monthly budget to actual reports and regular reviews with budget owners; refinement of funds flow within the college; and a robust annual budgeting process that ensures collaboration, financial transparency for leadership and informed decision making. All of these changes have cultivated important partnerships with college leaders and revenue centers by providing decision support that will lead to growth and long-term success for the college.

As a point of pride, several team members have participated as subject matter experts in the MUSC enterprise resource planning (OurDay) design and build sessions since June of 2021 and will continue playing key roles in system testing, training and go-live in October.

The F&A team has accomplished a tremendous amount over the past year, but we still have big goals in the coming year! The most important factors in our shared success are the amazing team dynamic and the strong spirit of collaboration. We are excited to play a part in the college’s current and future success!

Photo by Josh Goodwin.

Knowledgeable, Helpful, Outstanding Leona Frazier Procurement Specialist

Talented, Detail-oriented, Service-minded Mary Mulvey HR Services Business Manager

Professional, Knowledgeable, Team Players Carlos Lopez Grants Finance Business Manager

Fun Fact: Mulvey is raising Promise for the

Southeastern Guide Dog Organization and is responsible for teaching basic obedience and skills and introducing as many exposures as possible during the 12-16 months that they are together. After that time, he will go to college to learn specific skills.

Each day the F&A team manages a broad range of activities across research and non-research domains to include: • Procurement • Accounting (reconciliations, transfers, year-end close) • Annual budgeting • Financial reporting and projections • Clinical practice agreements and invoicing • University funds flow • Personnel recruitment (job posting, interviewing assistance, hiring, onboarding) • Employee relations • Timekeeping and payroll • Faculty contracts • Various required reports to the Dean, university leadership and central offices (Provost, Controller, Grants and Contracts, Accounting and HR)

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AROUND THE COLLEGE

A Passion for Advocacy: 2022 AACN Policy Summit

By Jennifer A. Turner, Director of Communications and Marketing In March, Accelerated BSN student Dylan Butler attended the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Student Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. Joined by Dean Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., he had the opportunity to engage in program sessions focused on the federal policy process and nursing’s role in professional advocacy. He shared his thoughts about the experience and his plans after graduation in May.

How did you first learn about the AACN Policy Summit and what motivated you to become involved?

What is the value of nursing advocacy work?

Do you hope to pursue it in the future?

I think the value of nurse advocacy work is highly needed and appreciated on all levels. It is something that even now in my current studies and as I work at MUSC MUHA as a PCT and transition to an RN role that I hope to continue and build a foundational knowledge and skill set in. It is my hope to one day be an elected official, and this was even more solidified by attending the AACN 2022 SPS. I touched on this goal briefly alongside previous AACN Government Affairs and Policy Interns in our Open Panel Discussion of the internship and what it has done for us.

I first learned about the AACN Student Policy Summit back in spring ’21. I attended the virtual session that was held as at the time COVID Weglicki and Butler at the 2022 AACN What are your plans after was too rampant to safely attend a Student Policy Summit. Provided. graduation? conference. I was then inspired to apply for AACN’s Government Affairs and Policy Internship, After I graduate in May, I will be transitioning into a new to which I was offered and accepted a position back in fall ’21. graduate role here at MUSC at the Abdominal Organ Failure ICU (AICU). June 2022 will mark a year since I have What did you enjoy most about the experience? worked in this unit. I want to be able to gain the skill set and Was a specific session especially helpful? experience necessary to take on Capitol Hill and hopefully champion legislation as an advocate for nurses alongside I enjoyed getting to hear and speak with former Congressman other honorable members, such as Representative Lauren Alan Wheat. While all the guest speakers were phenomenal, Underwood. hearing his story and getting to speak with him, I noticed similar patterns in both of our stories of life to where he made a personal impact on me. I got to briefly meet with him, where I thanked him for speaking to us and that he almost brought tears to my eyes, to which he responded “Almost? I guess I need to practice more” which showed how personable he was. It was even better to hear from my former mentors, who were the ones to plan the summit, that he told them I made an impression upon him.

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I’ve had a passion for legislation and advocacy ever since my time at my previous institution where I was involved in Student Government and was one of many key figures within the organization. Here I was involved in key Health and Wellness initiatives for over 35,000 students.

A tail-wagging good time!

In December, six beautiful MUSC pet therapy dogs and their amazing owners visited the college to help students de-stress just before exams. It was wonderful meeting these hardworking teams and learning more about their passion for therapy work and supporting MUSC. Thank you for sharing your joy with us!

Photo by Josh Goodwin.

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Wood received her DNP degree in May. Photo by Josh Goodwin. Opposite: Wood and her son Mitchell. Provided.

COMING FULL CIRCLE: Nursing school graduate has gone from foster child to foster child advocate The 37-year-old single mother, who graduated from the MUSC College of Nursing’s Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program in May 2022 with a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, thinks that everyone we intersect with in life is there to teach us something. Many teach us the good things. A grandmother who instills compassion. A sibling who forces greater patience. But sometimes we cross paths with those who bring nothing but adversity to the lives they touch. For some, that adversity can permanently destroy their lives. But for others, it’s that adversity – and coming out on the other side stronger for the hardships – that gives them the drive to overcome. Through all the ups and downs in her life, deep down, Wood always knew which kind of person she was. And that has everything to do with how she ended up here, at the zenith of her field.

“Crystal Wood doesn’t believe in “what ifs.”

By Bryce Donovan, Public Information Coordinator Office of Public Affairs and Media Relations

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THE TRUTH HURTS

Crystal Wood was 10 years old, hanging out with some friends at her elementary school when she made a comment that stopped her classmates in their tracks. “I just casually said, ‘I mean, you know how it is, when your dad hits you,’” she said.

“But they just looked at me like they couldn’t believe what I just said.” Most of them stared with their mouths open. Some looked away. That was the moment she knew she was different.

For years—many before that illuminating day in fifth grade, and sadly a few years after—she endured her father’s many forms of abuse. At first, she took it because she didn’t know any better.

Toward the end, she suffered through it so her older siblings didn’t have to. “If he was hurting me,” she said, “I knew he couldn’t be hurting them.”

Finally, at 12 years old, Wood told a school counselor what was going on at home. She was immediately placed in foster care. Though it wasn’t perfect, it was a far cry from what she was used to. For the next couple of years, she bounced around foster homes until eventually, at 17, she moved out and began life on her own. Things seemed to be turning around for Wood. She finished high school. Enrolled in a technical college.

Got straight As. That led to her going for and becoming a registered nurse. Sadly, the adversity in her life would return in an all-too-familiar form.

FAMILIAR CHAOS

After graduating from nursing school, she reconnected with her biological mother – now that her father was in prison – who encouraged Wood to further her education in the south to be closer to family and move from her home of Vermont down to Georgia where she now lived. Wood was accepted at Georgia Southern University. Again, things were going well academically for Wood, her life on an upward trajectory. And then she met a guy. At first, he seemed really sweet. Wood got pregnant, and quickly, he morphed into her father. He was mean, disrespectful, abusive. It was all-too-familiar for Wood.

And for years she stayed with him, keeping the abuse and pain private. All the while, she worked at a small Georgia hospital, barely keeping the young family afloat. Many months, they lived without electricity or running water. As soon as Wood

would come home with a paycheck, her husband would take it and blow it. “I tried to leave him so many times, but I just couldn’t do it,” she said. “Everything was so crazy and chaotic, but it was familiar to me.” But to know Crystal Wood is to know that she refuses to give up on anything. So she dug deep and made a concerted effort to salvage her marriage. And for a few months, she did. But then his abusive behavior returned.

Finally, she did what she knew needed to be done, and she left him. “I stayed in this emotionally bankrupt place for so long.

And I had finally just had enough,” she said. After leaving her husband, Wood moved into her own place. Got sole custody of her son. Found a new job in a geriatric behavioral health psychiatric unit, working with patients with mental health needs.

On the side, she began to volunteer as a court-appointed special agent (CASA), advocating for local foster kids. It was a natural match. “It’s one thing to tell somebody you know how hard it must be to go through something,” she said. “But to be able to speak from a place where you can say, ‘I’ve been where you are,’ I think that makes all the difference.”

EMBRACING HER LIFE

Her first case as a CASA was two young brothers. “I’m not going to lie, when I first met them, I was so nervous. But that melted away so quickly,” she said. When someone becomes a CASA, the agency asks that advocate to stay committed for at least a year. The boys she would be advocating for, both under 10 years old at the time, had already had 14 case workers since entering foster care. Continued >

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“I’m so glad I grew up the way I did because now I can help people and maybe change the trajectory of their life. It gives me purpose to help these kids find some

permanency, whatever that looks like.” —Crystal Wood Yes, 14. “I mean, who walks away from these kids?” she asked. In her role as a CASA, Wood’s role is to serve as a “big sister.” To advocate for the children. She meets with parents – foster and biological – doctors, teachers, you name it – all in the name of getting the full picture. Sometimes that means spending hours in court, listening to all sorts of people talk about the kids and their situations.

“It really upsets me because a lot of time, the people in the courtroom talk about the kids like they’re pieces of furniture. I constantly have to remind them that these are human beings with feelings, not objects.” And sometimes – this is the most important part, she’ll tell you – she spends quality time with the kids. Once, sometimes twice a month, Wood will visit the kids at school, maybe play some cards with them, draw pictures.

Out of that time comes trust. “These kids are used to grownups saying things and not following through,” Wood said. “So when I say I’ll be there, I’m going to be there.”

Around the same time Wood began working as a CASA, at the urging of friends and colleagues who believed in her, she applied to MUSC to get her doctoral degree. “I hung all my laundry out there,” she said. “I owned every little detail of my life. Some people thought I was crazy to do that, but honestly, I think it helped my chances because who better to talk to people about something than someone who has been through it?” Joy Lauerer, DNP, an advanced practice psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and associate professor in the College of Nursing, was one of the people who reviewed Wood’s application. “I read her essay and was blown away,” Lauerer said. “GPA and references are important, but they’re not the only thing we look at. I just looked at what this woman had gone through, and I knew she was resilient.”

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IN THEIR SHOES

In May, three years after taking the leap of faith and applying to MUSC, Wood graduated, capping her phoenix-like rise from the depths of despair to someone with the necessary skills and compassion to help kids just like her. Kids going through trauma, abuse, neglect, depression. Foster kids who need someone who understands them. Who can speak for them. “I don’t know anybody that has a great foster care experience,” she said. “The system is no place to raise a child. They need someone to talk to, someone who will advocate for them.” And who better than a person who has been there herself ? Who through it all never lost hope. Who despite the cruelty of others remains kindhearted, striving to make things better for others.

“Sometimes having difficult life experiences can make for a more compassionate practitioner,” Lauerer said. “So much of what we do isn’t about the medicine, it’s about the relationships, and I think she’ll be so good at that. Her empathy is going to serve her well.” College of Nursing instructor Angie Powers, DNP, wholeheartedly agreed. “Crystal personally understands the difference a mental health provider can make in the lives of a patient,” she said. “I have no doubt she’ll make a huge impact in the mental health community.” Wood hopes that impact comes in the form of shaping a better foster system in Hazlehurst, Georgia, where she now lives. To start, she wants to create a mentorship program for kids coming from tough backgrounds. In turn, she hopes that leads to higher standards of care for these kids.

But on a more personal note, she hopes to make life better for a child who could use a second chance by adopting a foster child of her own. “It’s not my fault I was in foster care,” she said. “And it’s not theirs either. We all deserve better. And I’m going to make sure that happens.”

Scholarship Announcements

Fall 2021- Spring 2022

Thank you for Being the Difference!

Our donors help ease the financial burden of our students so that they can attend nursing school without undue financial hardship.

Scholarships also help us recruit and educate nurses at the doctoral level to offset the national shortage of nurse educators. To learn more about establishing a scholarship and being the difference in a nurse’s life, contact Lilia Correa, Director of Development, at 843-792-8421 and correal@musc.edu College of Nursing 1883 Christine Bradshaw Chanse Cauley Stephanie Gilmour College of Nursing Scholarship Zalak Patel Kenadee Tanney-Cadieux College of Nursing Scholarship Fund (Class of 1969 Scholarship) Kenadee Tanney-Cadieux Dean’s Advisory Board 125th Anniversary Scholarship Kate Wolff Dr. Nicole Sartor became the first graduate of the Advanced Practice Palliative Care program in May. She was a recipient of several scholarships, including the Corinne V. Sade Fund for Palliative Care Education and the Captain Robert Wilkens Care Scholarship. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

Undergraduate 125th Anniversary Endowed Scholarship Fund Brandi Freeman Andell Endowed Scholarship Fund Tiffany Connor Austin Hamby

Betty C. Kelchner Endowed Scholarship Samira Rahbar Bev and Wally Seinsheimer Scholarship Taylor Wait

Annie K. Norton Endowed Scholarship Keely Pearson

Caroline W. Davis RN Scholarship Fund Erika Clark Olivia Forrest Kate Wolff

Barbara Sutton Pace Endowed Nursing Scholarship Tylor Willoughby

Charleston County Medical Society Alliance Emily Kozma

Dorothy Halsey Endowed Scholarship Phyllis Connor-Richey Dorothy Johnson Crews Endowed Scholarship Eva Derrick Dr. Heidar A. Modaresi Nursing Scholarship Chloe Reynolds Dr. J.W. Thurmond Endowed Scholarship Ashley Burns Helene Fuld Health Trust Endowment Patrick Hurley Farahnaz Pourmoussavian Henry T. Finch Jr. Nursing Scholarship Mary-Grace Davis

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Jean P. Wilson College of Nursing Endowed Scholarship Brenda Atchoe Montana Detyens Kelly Kesterson Kirstin Rogers Vaida Shelley

Marianne T. Chitty Endowed Nursing Scholarship Abigail DelGiorno

Joan K. Rigter Nursing Scholarship Ajia Gamble

Martha Halliday Wrobleski Memorial Scholarship Jenny Nankoua

Joseph H. and Terese T. Williams Endowed Nursing Scholarship Sanny Le Julie & Anthony Lanzone Scholarship Fund Emily Kozma Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation Scholarship Ezinne Agim Christine Bradshaw Allison Bucknam Ashley Burns Moriah Creasman Olivia Forrest Alison Garner Hannah Rose Harrison Megan Henson Noa Hubara Mhalia Jones Sarah Lipp Elizabeth Mathis Ashley Moore Zalak Patel Diamanto Plagakis Karen Puello Vaida Shelley Shelby Thode Mary Timmons Marianna Stuart Mason Endowed Memorial Scholarship Lucy Downs

Marie LePrince Farmer Nursing Scholarship Andrea Skoog

MUSC Provost Scholarship Leeda Aghazadah Brenda Atchoe Brionna Bright Allison Bucknam Diana Casarrubias Chanse Cauley Oakley Cole Lucy Downs Lorena Garcia Stephanie Gilmour Sean Grund Marissa Henry Kendall Hormel Noa Hubara Rachel Kimbrough Maria Kulchytsky Kenzie McDuffie Lauren Mullinax Sarah Pallanck Keely Pearson Jesse Printz Karen Puello Alexis Skipper Candace Thompson Mary Timmons

Pursuing a psychiatric mental health track, CON alumna and DNP student Onyiyechi Peace Ajukwa is the recipient of the Elsie Morgan Endowed Nursing Scholarship. Photo by Josh Goodwin.

Roper St. Francis Healthcare Patron Nursing Scholarship Brionna Bright Jordan Houston Emma Renfro Ruth Chamberlin Scholarship Brandi Freeman Ruth Jaqui Skudlarek Nursing Scholarship Samira Rahbar Samuel Steinberg Endowed Scholarship Sarah Mireles Sandra Hayes Poulnot Nursing Scholarship Sean Grund Hannah Rose Harrison Ted and Joan Halkyard Nursing Endowed Scholarship Ezinne Agim Tamia Heyward Morgan Washington

Olivette Garr Smith Scholarship Fund Anne Scully

Ursula Caton Endowed Memorial Scholarship Leeda Aghazadah

Patrick and Maureen Marr Endowed Scholarship Emma Renfro

Veterans in Nursing Scholarship Brenda Atchoe Michelle Groot Virginia Lawton Harper Scholarship Fund Megan Henson

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SCHOLARSHIPS

Graduate 125th Anniversary Endowed Scholarship Fund Kesha Levesque Andell Endowed Scholarship Fund Shannon D’Alton Betty Murray Brundage Kinard Endowed Scholarship Suzanne Hakeos Captain Robert Wilkens Palliative Care Scholarship Nicole Sartor College of Nursing 1883 Hilary Puzak CVS Health Foundation Scholarship Lauren Gill Haley Jones Cierra Sorrells Amber Spivey

Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation Scholarship Shaylin Alley Katherine Chike-Harris Danielle Edmonds Kelsey Elrod Elizabeth Juma Rika Kemp Lauren Leasure Samantha Lisek Essence McClary Stephanie Neary Kylie Newsome De’Edda Powell Hilary Puzak Kayla Trevillian Kyrsten Urff Crystal Wood

Amy McEvoy Alexandra Oakes Ifeoma Onyeike Tracy Pennycuff Caroline Powell Tiffany Price Mary Prybylo Zoie Reviere Jessica Rodriguez-West Meera Shah Teresa Skojec Michelle Tesser Lillian Tribble Kyrsten Urff Marie Vestal

Margaret Ann Kerr Endowed Scholarship Zoie Reviere

Olivette Garr Smith Scholarship Fund Heather Hall

Marianne T. Chitty Endowed Nursing Scholarship Lianne Cole

Olympia “Bia” Vallis Nursing Scholarship Samantha Lauren Bernstein

Dr. Deborah C. Williamson Nursing Scholarship Savannah Silvers

Marvin and Cleo T. McAlhany CON Endowed Scholarship Karissa Capparell

Dr. James B. Edwards Nursing Scholarship Bernadette Gaffney Lillian Turnage

Maude Callen Endowed Memorial Scholarship Jennifer Stintzi

Elsie Morgan Endowed Nursing Scholarship Onyiyechi Ajukwa Gail W. Stuart Scholarship Amy McEvoy Colin Rhoney Lauren Santacroce Izant Family Foundation Scholarship Fund Tammy Halladay

MUSC Provost Scholarship Karlie Albach Christopher Brown Kelsey Conway Travis Feagin Bethany Ghent Suzanne Hakeos Tammy Halladay Rika Kemp Shenae Long Jessica Madiraca Haley McClure

Nina Smith Nursing Scholarship Crystal Wood

Reba Carter O’Keeffe Endowed Scholarship Yulia Lopez Ruth P. and Stephen Stewart Endowed Scholarship Theresa Skojec Imani Sumpter Sara Piechnik Endowed Scholarship Emily Strano Ted and Joan Halkyard Nursing Endowed Scholarship Latrevet Thomas Thomas J. Wiscarz Memorial Nursing Endowed Scholarship Matthew Reeves

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Diversify, Engage, Commit: A Path to Supporting Our Nurses

By Patrick W. Marr, MUSC College of Nursing Development Board Chair Three years ago, I decided to get more involved with the College of Nursing since my daughter was a graduate of the ABSN program and I was intrigued.

Provided.

As a board member, I soon became aware of the challenges facing the nursing profession and especially how the pandemic exacerbated those issues.

Learning all of this, I felt I might be able to give more, beyond monetary contributions, and thus when asked to serve as the Development Board Chair, I enthusiastically agreed. While MUSC has many excellent departments and endeavors, the College of Nursing and the nursing profession overall are facing unprecedented challenges, and I wanted to tackle them head on to make a difference. All of us will eventually be helped by a nurse or come to rely on nurses for our loved ones.

As board chair, I have three goals that I would like to achieve. First, I want to diversify the board to include professionals from Charleston’s business community. By establishing a more rounded board, we will increase outreach to a wider range of prospective patrons. It is critical that we educate, as I was, the public about the challenges facing the nursing profession and how they directly affect the Lowcountry health care system. Our board members are invaluable advocates who can spread the word in their areas of influence.

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Second, I want us to directly engage our community to increase awareness of the current state of nursing, including its changes and challenges. This will be done through the outreach of board members and other dedicated volunteers. I am a firm believer that if people are made aware of these nursing issues, they will gladly want to get involved, not only through contributions but also by offering their time and expertise to tackle these challenges head-on.

Third, I want to create an environment where giving to the College of Nursing is a ongoing commitment and not a one-time event. We have seen this approach with other MUSC departments, including Hollings Cancer Center and Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital, and I think it is imperative to support the profession that will impact us and our loved ones the most on a dayby-day basis during a hospital stay. Our efforts must be recurring and long term.

The next five years will be critical as nursing confronts many challenges, including issues that affect the number of people who enter and remain in the profession. At the College of Nursing, Dean Weglicki and her team are at the forefront of educating future nurses, who in turn will dramatically affect each of our lives. I ask that each of you consider pledging your time, talent, and/or resources to work with me and the College of Nursing Board to meet the goals above. We are fortunate to have a top tier program for nursing at MUSC, and we must build on its foundation to foster the high quality of health care our community needs. I look forward to working in partnership with you.

College of Nursing Development Board, 2020-2021 The board is committed to raising the margin of excellence of the MUSC College of Nursing and is uniquely positioned to make a significant impact on the future of nursing and health care. Board members support and advance the work of the college through advocacy, education, philanthropy, community engagement and fundraising. Thank you to our board members for their service! n Patrick Marr College of Nursing Board Chair, WRS Inc. Real Estate Investments n Dr. Linda Weglicki Dean and Professor MUSC College of Nursing n

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Valerie Assey MUSC Health Lilia Correa MUSC College of Nursing Dr. Nancy Finch Community Volunteer Catherine Meehan Steinberg Law Firm Victor Rivera Bank of America Corinne Sade Community Volunteer

REALITY CHECK

Generous donation prepares students to care for their tiniest patients

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing For MUSC’s accelerated BSN students experiencing pediatrics for the first time, the need for hands-on practice gains new meaning when their patients could be as small as palm size. In August, the Marianne Chitty Endowment provided a generous donation which enabled the College of Nursing to purchase four state-of-the-art simulation baby mannequins, which have made an immediate impact in helping students feel confident during their clinical experiences when caring for infants and children.

Photos by Josh Goodwin.

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C E L E B R A T I N G

O U R

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing

In October, the College of Nursing honored its Golden Graduates from the Classes of 1970 and 1971 with a special virtual celebration. With heartfelt messages from Dean Linda S. Weglicki, Ph.D., R.N., as well as MUSC President David Cole, M.D., FACS, and first lady Kathy Cole, the session was a time of connection, reminiscence and laughter, especially during an enthusiastic discussion of early 1970s popular culture.

Brian Fors, Ph.D., Curator of the Waring Historical Library, also prepared a fascinating historical review of the group’s student experiences and broader events during that time period. We are so proud to be part of the journeys of these phenomenal alumni and pay tribute to all they have accomplished since passing through the College of Nursing’s doors.

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Golden Grads: It is important to record and preserve the historical record of your experience, both while a student and during your career. We welcome your written remembrances or participation in a formal oral history.

For more information, please contact Dr. Brian Fors at fors@musc.edu

Billboard's Top 10 songs of 1971 1.

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“Joy to the World,” Three Dog Night “Maggie May”/“Reason to Believe,” Rod Stewart “It's Too Late”/“I Feel the Earth Move,” Carole King “One Bad Apple,” The Osmonds “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Bee Gees “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian),” Raiders “Go Away Little Girl,” Donny Osmond “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” John Denver “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me),” The Temptations “Knock Three Times,” Tony Orlando and Dawn

Billboard's Top 10 songs of 1970 1.

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“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon & Garfunkel “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” The Carpenters “American Woman,” The Guess Who “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head,” B.J. Thomas “War,” Edwin Starr Ain't No Mountain High Enough,” Diana Ross “I'll Be There,” The Jackson 5 “Get Ready,” Rare Earth “Let It Be,” The Beatles “Band of Gold,” Freda Payne

1970 and 1971 yearbook photos courtesy the MUSC Waring Historical Library.

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A Legacy of Love ANITA GAM BLE BAKER , CL A SS OF 1970

By Jennifer A. Turner, Director of Communications and Marketing

With a natural affinity for nursing, Anita Baker ’70 spent a lifetime compassionately caring for others. Now her legacy lives on through her alma mater’s training of the next generation of nurses in palliative care.

As Laurin Baker loves to recall, when his wife Anita Baker smiled, her entire face lit up, and her eyes—they simply sparkled. As the saying goes, the eyes are the windows into the soul, and for Laurin, Anita’s kindness was what always shone through. That was her hallmark; naturally compassionate, she enjoyed caring for others and looking to meet their needs.

It surprised no one that, from a young age, she wanted to become a nurse.

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Although Laurin and Anita had grown up in the same social circles near Turbeville, South Carolina, it wasn’t until a fateful birthday party when they were both 14 that he shared a spark with the beautiful green-eyed girl across the room. Dating throughout high school, they parted in 1966 when she followed her dream and was accepted into the first BSN class at MUSC’s College of Nursing. Undeterred, Laurin traveled—first from the University of South Carolina where he was a student and

then as a U.S. Army soldier from Fort Bragg—to compete for her time amid her full load of courses and clinical rotations.

That was a tall order, as Laurin was fully aware that Anita loved everything about becoming a nurse and had immersed herself in her studies.

Opposite, from left: Baker in her nurse’s uniform during her MUSC sophomore year; Baker after creating AGB and Associates.

Above: Anita and Laurin Baker’s wedding day. Provided.

The couple eventually became engaged at their favorite spot on Colonial Lake and squeezed in a wedding the fall of her senior year, just before Laurin had to return to base. After Anita’s graduation in May 1970, she joined Laurin in Germany, where he was stationed with the U.S. Army. Despite having no experience, she quickly found her first job as a nurse at the Army hospital in Nuremberg. Anita had scored so well on the Nursing Boards that she was automatically eligible for a nursing license in any state, an offer that extended to U.S. military bases. A year later, they settled in Columbia, S.C. Working at the city’s Veterans Affairs (VA) Hospital, Anita was tasked with setting up the first dialysis program in the state, a daunting task that she tackled head-on by undertaking additional training and coordinating with the VA to purchase the right equipment.

This pattern would repeat itself many times during her fiftyplus years in the nursing profession, as Anita’s drive to support her patients led her to launch new programs or services and

innovatively adapt her training and experiences to best meet their needs.

For the Bakers, married life was filled with love and adventure as they moved throughout the United States with their two children, Jennifer and William. At each subsequent location, Anita grew in her abilities as a director and embraced serving at what was often the forefront of nursing. In addition to directing the Georgetown County Mental Health Center in South Carolina, she started and managed a Baton Rouge skilled nursing care facility within St. James Place, one of the first continuing care retirement communities in the South.

Afterward, she excelled as director of nursing at a full-service retirement community in Illinois and developed and managed caregiver education programs for the Alzheimer's Association in Illinois and Virginia. Through these meaningful experiences of working with seniors suffering from declining health, Anita discovered a deep love for their care and advocacy.

Moved by the medical struggles seniors inevitably encounter, especially when seriously ill, Anita came to view directing their care and well-being as her calling. When she and Laurin relocated to Virginia, she worked to become a nationally certified Aging Life Care Professional® also known as a geriatric care manager, and began consulting with seniors and their families. With her innate empathy and intuition, she was the perfect person to oversee their coordination of care.

In 2014, the Bakers returned to their home state and settled on Pawleys Island. With no interest in retiring, Anita started AGB and Associates, the area’s first professional geriatric care management company, which continues to serve clients in Georgetown and Horry counties. Fulfilling her calling by helping seniors in their time of need, Anita took great joy in her work, which she remained involved in until her passing last year after a brief but courageous battle with pancreatic cancer.

To honor his beloved wife and her lifetime of service as a nurse, particularly her work with seniors and in palliative care, Laurin dedicated a gift in Anita’s name to the College of Nursing, the place where he witnessed her career first take shape.

Designated to enrich the college’s palliative care initiative, his gesture is a fitting legacy for a woman whose innovation and compassion will continue to inspire many.

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CREATING IMPACT

By Jennifer A. Turner Director of Communications and Marketing CON alumna Susan K. Flavin, Ph.D., R.N., Class of 2015, is a Director, Clinical Scientist, within the Immunology Pediatric Development Team at Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson and Johnson). Every day, she and her team strive to develop treatments to improve the lives of children worldwide. She recently shared what she loves most about her career and how MUSC’s College of Nursing helped her grow as a researcher and nurse scientist.

What’s your typical day like?

I am a member of the Pediatric Development Team, situated within the Immunology Therapeutic Area at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, one of the Johnson and Johnson family of companies. Our team is comprised of physicians, nurse scientists, and clinicians with a vision to enable children across the globe to access safe and effective treatments from Janssen Immunology at the same time as adults. Our overarching mission is to drive a strategic approach to pediatric development through early planning and implementation of programs, to accelerate pediatric development by innovative strategies, to shape the external environment and provide consistent global interactions with Health Authorities, and to create efficiencies by leveraging expertise. In years past, pediatric commitments within drug development were often thought of as “secondary,” and few possessed the skill set that is necessary to develop these programs. Our team is focused not only on development of these programs, but also developing our own internal expertise.

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planning a future clinical trial, working with my colleagues from biostatistics, data management, clinical operations, pharmacology and the like.

Another day may consist of clinical data review, interspersed with authoring clinical contributions for various regulatory documents. In our group, we assume responsibility for one or more studies, in addition to collaborating on others. Crossfunctional collaboration is a high priority within my group, and I am fortunate to work with other like-minded individuals.

know that we can impact others’ quality of life and health by what we do on a daily basis.

How did the College of Nursing’s Ph.D. in Nursing Science Program prepare you for this role?

I was in a very similar role when I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the College of Nursing. I wasn’t aspiring to have a different role; I wanted to be better at what I did. I had a wonderful manager at the time, Dr. Elliot Barnathan, who as a mentor and friend encouraged me and supported my aspirations.

I had a working knowledge of statistics when I enrolled in the program; I was able to further refine that skill set and contribute even more broadly within my teams at Janssen.

Did the COVID-19 pandemic impact your team's mission or research focus?

How did CON help you grow as a researcher and nurse scientist?

The pandemic certainly affected the way that we do research, in a number of ways. First – subjects were unable to travel to the sites. We had to pivot and devise ways that subjects and investigators could meet the protocol requirements. Actions such as home visits, allowing subjects to miss visits and still remain in the study, and adapting our protocol language to allow for the vaccine are some ways in which we had to remain nimble. We remained committed to our Credo, which states that “We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services,” and worked with our investigators and ultimately, the patients, to allow them to continue to remain in our trials to the best of our ability.

I have a passion for rare diseases and patient advocacy. At the time that I enrolled, we had done some studies in various rare diseases at Janssen.

Under the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Susan Newman, I was able to expand on much of my quantitative experience and execute a mixedmethods study in two rare disease populations, enrolling subjects from all over the world, and conduct much of that research in a virtual manner.

Although I had done similar work at my job, I had not done so academically. At the time, it was relatively innovative; we are doing that more frequently at my workplace now, and I still reflect on my experiences during my dissertation and bring that to the table.

Conducting my dissertation was truly one of the highlights of both my personal and professional life.

What’s the best thing about your job?

“It is humbling to know that we can impact others’ quality of life and health by what we do on a daily basis.”

Along with my colleagues, we have the opportunity to impact thousands of patients’ and families lives. As a nurse, I still visualize (in my mind) the faces of the patients and families behind those subject numbers. It is humbling to

The Next Chapter

From left: Zeigler, Lynn. Provided.

By Jennifer A. Turner

Shakira Lynn DNP, APRN, FNP-C

Director of Communications and Marketing

“In my most recent book, If You Give a Girl a Passport, I wrote about Journi, a young African American girl traveling on adventures to every continent in the world. Sharing our travel experiences not only inspires creativity but also sparks the imagination in others and how they view the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the book encouraged children to use their imaginations to go on a worldwide adventure. Most importantly, writing this book helped me to show representation of young African American children in story because representation truly matters.

Two 2015 CON alumni have recently published children’s books inspired by their professional pursuits!

Andrena Johnson Zeigler, DNP, APRN, CPNP-PC, PMHS “My book, But I’m Not Sick!, is about a mother who takes her child for a well visit, and the child protests that she is not sick. The wise mother and kind doctor explain the entire process, and the child enjoys the visit. She even looks forward to the next well child checkup. I’ve always had a love for children’s books. I had a mini library when I was young and created one for my children as they grew up as well. The clinical practice for which I work participates in the Reach Out and Read program, providing books to children from birth through age 5 at their well child checks. It brings me joy to see both the parents and children get excited when receiving a book. So, when my then 7-year-old niece challenged me to write a book, I accepted. I did nothing with it for over a year, but my children would not let it go unpublished and encouraged me to pursue it.

I am used to being busy and can sometimes find myself accepting one project after the other. Writing provides balance in that it clears my mind of work in the traditional sense. I enjoy being creative. For me, it is challenging, but also relaxing. It is an outlet of sorts. Finding the right combination of words is not always easy. However, there is no better feeling than when you are pleased with what you feel is the finished work. Creating children’s books also require knowledge of the subject matter. Writing children’s books about health is a nice way to combine my experiences as a pediatric health care provider and educator.

My work in the clinic gives me valuable experience. My patients unknowingly provide cute ‘titles’ for books during our encounters. I hope to continue to write more children’s books in the near future.”

I began writing when I was in middle school, and in 2013 I began traveling on mission trips throughout the world. My first few trips were to Olancho, Honduras, where I worked alongside other health care students to provide care to patients from disadvantaged backgrounds. It was during these trips that I was charged with journaling as an assignment for class. I didn’t want to complete the assignment at first; I just wanted to provide care and enjoy the trip. I had no idea how this assignment would shape my career as an author. I decided to publish my first book about my world travels in 2019. My book Follow my Journey became popular among my family and friends as it gave them a glimpse into the passionate care I had provided throughout the world. I have since published the sequel to this book, Follow my Journey: Volume 2, and If you Give a Girl a Passport.

Writing has truly become an amazing outlet for me to express my own thoughts and opinions of different situations in life. I can reflect on my life experiences and how I encountered them with both confidence and fear. Writing allows me to be vulnerable and share my story, but most importantly it allows me to share my story without interruption. Being able to write allows me to be creative and touch others with my words. I enjoy sharing my testimony and allowing a glimpse into my life. I love writing because it allows me to reach people outside of my own social network and throughout the world.”

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Every Gift Matters The MUSC College of Nursing is grateful for every gift, large and small. We deeply appreciate our generous supporters who keep our beloved nursing school fiscally healthy and strong. From individuals and families, to students and employees, to corporations and foundations, the vision and generosity of these donors propel our institution forward and provide us with countless opportunities to change what’s possible in nursing. Every gift to the College of Nursing matters, and we are proud of our extensive donor family. The MUSC College of Nursing thanks the following individuals for their contributions to the MUSC College of Nursing from July 1, 2021 through June 15, 2022. We apologize for any inadvertent errors of omission. $50,000 and Above Dr. Kay K. Chitty and Mr. Charles B. Chitty David R. Clare and Margaret C. Clare Foundation Dr. Lewis M. Davis, Jr. The Duke Endowment Mrs. Edith D. Lucas Mrs. Esten B. Mason MUSC Alumni Association Dr. William M. Simpson, Jr. and Mrs. Elaine B. Simpson Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation, Inc. Ms. Ann Wrobleski and Mr. Phillip N. Truluck Zero to Three Foundation ..............................................................................................................

$25,000 - $49,999 Dr. Sekou T. Dakarai

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$500 - $999

$10,000 - $24,999 Ms. Renee M. Black Mrs. Ann D. Edwards Mrs. Joan S. Halkyard and Mr. Edwin Halkyard Mrs. Elizabeth F. St. John and Mr. Mike St. John Mr. Spiro C. Vallis ..............................................................................................................

$1,000 - $9,999 Mr. Laurin M. Baker Charleston County Medical Society Alliance Coastal Community Foundation of SC CVS Health Foundation Mrs. Jill R. Ewell and Mr. Gregory S. Ewell

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Mrs. Sheralyn S. Heyse and Mr. Frederick H. Heyse Dr. Carolyn M. Jenkins Mr. James J. Kerr and Mrs. Harriette F. Kerr Dr. Sharon L. Kozachik Mrs. Juliann H. S. Lanzone Ms. Jo A. Lee Mr. Theodore E. Levin and Mrs. Rose Levin Dr. Gayenell S. Magwood and Mr. Robert L. Magwood, Jr. Ms. Nancy W. McClelland Mrs. Catherine D. Meehan and Mr. Jerry Meehan Mr. James R. Oakley Mrs. Lillian B. Pittroff and Mr. Peter C. Pittroff Mr. Robert S. Reitman and Mrs. Sylvia K. Reitman Mrs. Linda H. Wilkens Women Inspired Through Stories

MUSC COLLEGE OF NURSING

Ms. Jean E. Alexander Dr. Diane J. Angelini Mr. Kevin Bowden Dr. Catherine O. Durham Mrs. Jean B. Fell and Mr. Bert H. Fell, Jr. Dr. Robert E. Fowler Dr. Daniel P. Gracie Mrs. Mervyn F. Juchartz Dr. Leslie R. Justice and Mr. David A. Justice Dr. Teresa J. Kelechi and Mr. James R. Kelechi Kendra Scott, LLC Dr. Jerry A. Mansfield and Mrs. Jane Mansfield Mrs. Elizabeth G. Maree and Mr. F. Kenyon Maree Dr. Heidar A. Modaresi and Mrs. Ingrid Modaresi Mrs. Jessie D. Atkinson and Mr. Harry E. Atkinson Mrs. Jane E. Biggs and Mr. Robert H. Biggs Dr. Walter M. Bonner, Jr. and Mrs. Beverly S. Bonner

Dr. Deborah C. Bryant Dr. James T. Christmas and Mrs. Brenda D. Christmas Dr. Charles M. Collins, Jr. and Mrs. Audrey B. Collins Mrs. Maureen V. Decker and Mr. Allen D. Decker Mrs. Sylvia E. Friedner and Mr. Jerry F. Friedner Mrs. Mary B. Gwyn and Mr. J. Richard Gwyn Mrs. Frances S. Jones and Dr. Barry N. Jones Mrs. Elizabeth B. Khan Mrs. Barbara S. Laidlaw and Dr. James C. Laidlaw Dr. Christina L. McDaniel and Mr. Dennie M. McDaniel Dr. Martina Mueller Mr. David Poitras Mrs. Laura V. Schaefer and Mr. Eric C. Schaefer Mrs. Sharon P. Schuler and Mr. Milan R. Schuler Dr. Roy H. Smith Dr. David S Stephens Mrs. Suzanne C. Yarborough and Mr. Edwin T. Yarborough Mrs. Peggy H. Alexander and Mr. Robert N. Alexander Mr. John V. Boyne and Mrs. Nancy P. Boyne Mrs. Marie C. Bridges and Mr. Jimmie R. Bridges Mrs. Deborah H. Brooks and Mr. Jack J. Brooks Mrs. Margaret C. Burwell and Col. Jack O. Burwell, Jr. Mrs. Deborah C. Carter and Dr. James F. Carter Dr. Elizabeth Connor Dr. William R. Cook, Jr. and Mrs. Sharon W. Cook Mrs. Lilia B. Correa and Mr. Michael Correa Mrs. Joe Ann E. Cox and Dr. Ralph E. Cox, Jr. Mrs. Joan L. Daniels and Mr. William L. Daniels Ms. Margaret R. Danko Mrs. K. P. Derajtys and Mr. Robert J. Derajtys Ms. Tara M. Dorundo Ms. Michele D. Drake Mrs. Gloria H. Dunlap and Mr. Robert L. Dunlap Ms. Cheril P. Everton Dr. Nancy J. Finch Ms. Patricia L. Fisher Mrs. Darlene W. Fludd Ms. Pamela J. Fogle Mrs. Jewell G. Gibbons and Mr. George T. Gibbons Lt. Col. (Ret) Sandra Green Mrs. Carolyn J. Grimball and Mr. John B. Grimball Mrs. Margaret D. Hass and Col. Paul H. Hass Dr. Cameron W. Hogg and Rev. John Hogg Lt. Gen. Dorothy A. Hogg and Mr. Jeffrey L. Hogg Dr. Ann D. Hollerbach and Mr. Don M. Hollerbach Mrs. Ruth N. Hopkins and Mr. Matthew G. Hopkins Ms. Catherine M. Hudak Mrs. Andrea P. Jackson and Mr. Stanley A. Jackson

Ms. Marilyn D. James Mrs. Shirley S. Keyes and Mr. Abbie V. Keyes Dr. Larry E. Kibler and Mrs. Dale L. Kibler Mr. Robert King Mr. Wayne K. Korn and Mrs. Lydia A. Korn Mrs. Sidney B. Lancaster and Mr. Fred L. Lancaster Dr. Kathleen O. Lindell Dr. Bethany A. Long and Mr. Dana A. Long Major Patricia A. Mack Dr. Sylvia A. Mallory and Dr. James Mallory Mrs. Martha Sue D. Maloney and Mr. Charles S. Maloney Mrs. Patricia B. Marks Mrs. Marilyn M. Mattice and Mr. Wray W. Mattice Metto Coffee & Tea Dr. Meredith W. Michel Mrs. Anahita M. Modaresi and Mr. Daniel Perlmutter Mrs. Susan S. Momeier and Mr. Charles C. Momeier Mr. Lee H. Moultrie II Dr. Nathan S. Newton, Jr. and Mrs. Janis M. Newton Mrs. Sandra A. Noonan Dr. H. Biemann Othersen, Jr. and Mrs. Janelle L. Othersen Mrs. Vivian O. Parker Dr. Michelle F. Pembroke Mrs. Mary C. Perano and Mr. Alan M. Perano Mrs. Christel G. Platt Ms. Deborah A. Robertson Mrs. Catherine T. Rodenberg and Mr. John S. Rodenberg Mrs. Anne W. Salomone and Mr. Joseph Salomone Ms. Debra C. Schweitzer Dr. Mitchell J. Seal and Mrs. Helen P. Seal Mrs. Jane L. Siedlarz and Mr. Raymond T. Siedlarz Mrs. Constance B. Simons Mr. Robert R. Smith II and Mrs. Lauren B. Smith Dr. Valeria D. Smith Mrs. Alice F. Summers Mrs. Nancy F. Tassin and Mr. Kenneth M. Tassin Mrs. Ginny D. Thaxton Ms. Brenda B. Toohey Dr. Kathryn A. Van Ravenstein and Mr. David Van Ravenstein Mr. William S. Vick and Dr. Lori L. Vick Ms. Tarsha L. Walker Mrs. Aubrey M. Wanser Mrs. Evelyn O. Wear Ms. Kimberly L. Witte Mrs. Denise T. Wood and Mr. Paul L. Wood Ms. Sandra E. Wylie

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

$1 - $99 Mrs. Amelia B. Alderman and Mr. Robert L. Alderman Dr. Stephanie C. Armstrong Mrs. Rhoda M. Ascanio Mrs. Lennie M. Austin and Mr. Robert S. Austin Mrs. Jane E. Barton and Mr. Donald B. Barton Ms. Dene R. Bellamy Ms. Lorri A. Bennett Mrs. Marian K. Bennett and Mr. Jack Bennett Mrs. Lucille F. Bishop and Mr. James A. Bishop, Jr. Dr. Billy R. Blackwell and Mrs. Eileen W. Blackwell Mrs. Ellen C. Branham Mrs. Loretta R. Brockenfelt and Mr. William P. Brockenfelt Captain Gloria H. Caffrey and Captain John F. Caffrey Mrs. Carol C. Casella and Dr. Thomas V. Casella Dr. Melanie H. Cason Dr. Jessica L. Chandler Ms. Jennifer L. Ciccone Mrs. Debra S. Cohen and Mr. Elliott C. Cohen Mrs. Mary E. Cotterill Mrs. Eleanor L. Currin and The Reverend B.M. Currin, Ph.D. Mrs. Monica C. Dainer and Dr. Paul M. Dainer Mrs. Mary O. Davis and Captain William A. Davis Mrs. Lynn M. Dryzer and Dr. Scott R. Dryzer Mr. Billie M. Durham and Mrs. Carey M. Durham Mrs. Deborah A. Fogleman and Mr. Roy L. Fogleman Mrs. Mildred L. Fueyo Mrs. Patricia H. Furr Ms. Beverly L. Grooms Mrs. Susan W. Hanckel and Mr. William H. Hanckel Mrs. Elizabeth C. Hassen and Mr. David R. Hassen Ms. Jennifer A. Host Dr. Mary R. Jacob and The Reverend Melvin R. Jacob Mrs. Mary L. Jones Mrs. Hilary K. Joseph and Mr. Elijah R. Joseph Mrs. Helen A. Joy and Mr. Bill Joy Mrs. Lynn F. Kelley* and Mr. Jack T. Kelley Ms. Kathleen M. Kiesel Mrs. Janie D Langheim Mr. Carlos A. Lopez Mrs. Elizabeth T. Lowry and Mr. T. Britton Lowry Ms. Elizabeth Lucas Mr. Steven M. Mackin

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MUSC COLLEGE OF NURSING

Ms. Laura O. Maffeo Mrs. Carolyn C. Matthews Mrs. Marcella P. McCall Mr. Donald C. Mitchum Mrs. Winona P. Mocherman and Mr. Orvill Mocherman The Montgomery Family Trust DTD Mrs. Louisa M. Montgomery Mr. Todd Munn and Mrs. Bonnie Munn Mrs. Cynthia J. Norris and Mr. Richard H. Norris, Jr. Dr. Njideka L. Osuala Ms. Kathleen A. Peterson Mrs. Candy E. Purcell and Mr. William J. Purcell Mrs. Betty S. Quiat Dr. John F. Rhodes, Jr. and Mrs. Julianna P. Rhodes Ms. Carlotta S. Rivers Mrs. Ashley P. Salvo and Mr. Robert C. Salvo Mrs. Martha Schwartz Senior Citizens Association in Florence County Mr. Richard Simpson Ms. Faith M. Singleton Mrs. Burnie H. Skinner and Mr. John C. Skinner Ms. Amy M. Smith Dr. Nancee V. B. Sneed and Mr. John W. Sneed Mrs. Mary W. Spackman and Mr. Elwood H. Spackman, Jr. Mrs. Karin B. Stewart and Mr. Ralph E. Stewart, Jr. Dr. Katherine Stuckey Dr. Shannon M. Swette and Mr. Josh Swette Mrs. Allison H. Swingle Dr. Martha L. Sylvia Ms. Diane I. Taylor Mrs. Norma D. Truesdale and Mr. Alton E. Truesdale Mrs. Donice C. Tucker Ms. Jennifer A. Turner Mrs. Lucy W. Turner Ms. Lawanda P. Walker Mrs. Patricia A. Weathers and Mr. Donald F. Weathers Mrs. Barbara O. Westerfield Mrs. Sydney E. White and Mr. William J. White Mrs. Diane C. Wilbourne and Mr. Frank Wilbourne Mrs. Donna Windham Ms. Josephine M. Worrell Mrs. Angeline D. Zervos

MUSC College of Nursing Legacy Society Members of the Legacy Society have chosen to include a planned gift from their estate to the MUSC Foundation for the College of Nursing.

Ms. Jeanne S. Allyn Ms. Marguerite A. Assey Dr. Elizabeth M. Bear Ms. Renee M. Black Mrs. M. Azalee P. Blitch* Mrs. Mary S. Cash* Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Chitty Dr. Kay K. Chitty and Mr. Charles B. Chitty Dr. and Mrs. Richard and Jean Day Mrs. Nettie D. Dickerson* Mr.* and Mrs.* Ira M. Estridge Dr. Nancy J. Finch Dr.* Cotesworth P. Fishburne IV and Dr. Shirley H. Fishburne Mr. and Mrs. Jacob J. Fountain Ms. Ellen L. Gaillard* Mrs. Dolores E. Grimes* Lt. Col. (Ret) and Mrs.* Maurice E. Halsey Mrs. Maureen S. Hamilton Mrs. Borghild M. Helgesen* Ms. Florence V. Illing* Ms. Rudeane (Rudie) Barfield Ivester Dr. Carolyn M. Jenkins Mrs. Charlotte M. Knapp* Mrs. Nancy S. Lynn Mrs. Anahita M. Modaresi and Mr. Daniel Perlmutter

Dr. and Mrs. Heidar A. Modaresi Ms. Mary J. Neff Ms. Annie K. Norton* Dr. and Mrs. H. Biemann Othersen, Jr. Mr. and Mrs.* Capers H. Poulnot Mrs. Corinne Vincent Sade Mr. and Mrs. Walter G. Seinsheimer, Jr. Mr. Harry O. Shaw III Mrs. Marion P. Shearer* Dr. William M. Simpson, Jr. and Mrs. Elaine B. Simpson Mrs. Nina A. Smith* Mr. Stephen Stewart* Mrs. Elizabeth H. Stringfellow* Mrs. Frances J. Thomas Mr. Spiro C. Vallis Mrs. Jean P. Wilson* * Deceased

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For more information about giving to the College of Nursing, please contact Lilia Correa, Director of Development, at correal@musc.edu or 843-792-8421 or visit web.musc.edu/about/giving/nursing.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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CONStrong The CONStrong campaign and accompanying portraits were launched in fall 2021 to celebrate the MUSC College of Nursing and share personal glimpses into the lives of the incredible people who enrich the tapestry of our college community. Being CONStrong means feeling empowered, supported and appreciated as a member of the CON family. To view the entire series and read the accompanying interviews, visit our Instagram @MUSCnursing and Facebook @MUSCcollegeofnursing pages.

Photos by Josh Goodwin.

Table of Contents

Front Matter Dean’s Welcome Message

Academics n Transforming Approaches to Nursing n New AACN Essentials n Power of Play n Feature: Shaping the Future of Palliative Care

03

The Next Horizon n Preserving the Personal Connection n Innovating Excellence n Blazing New Trails n Travelin’ Man n Boosting Engagement n Addressing the Nursing Shortage

04

12

Research n Envisioning the Next Horizon of Patient Care n Feature: Exploring New Realms with TACHL n Funded Federal Grants n Scholarship: Publications

24

Practice n Partners in Healthcare n Opening Vistas n Stepping into the Spotlight n A Meeting of Minds

42

Join us in lighting the way for the next generation of the nursing profession.

MUSC College of Nursing is inspiring nurses to become the leaders of tomorrow through transformative education, practice and research. To learn how you can make a lasting impact on our students and support our vital mission, please contact Lilia Correa, Director of Development, at correal@musc.edu or 843-792-8421.

MUSC COLLEGE OF NURSING

99 Jonathan Lucas Street MSC 160 Charleston, SC 29425-1600

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INSIDE:

Looking to the Next Horizon