Page 17 - Healthcare News May/June 2022

If you love health teaching and want to make a difference, community nursing
is the place to be!
“WMEC makes you feel welcome — everyone helps each other to succeed.
Community nursing is flexible allowing visits outside on beautiful days, 9-5 hours, and no weekends, so yo”u have time to care for
your own family.
Julie Fazzina RN, Adult Fam
ily Care
WHY ARE WMEC’S NURSES SO HAPPY?
Our caring, skilled, diverse staff are the heart and soul of our operation. Our nursing team gets the time to get to know their clients deeply, leading to a more fulfilling work experience for themselves, and better outcomes for our consumers.
Help contribute to WMEC’s mission of preserving the dignity, independence, and quality of life of elders, persons with disabilities, and caregivers in our community.
Contact us to learn more today!
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MAY/JUNE 2022 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 17
SALUTE TO NURSES CONT’D
about their own resilience and ability to respond to adversity. And they also learned some different, and in some cases better, ways of doing things, es- pecially when it comes to remote learning and providing nursing students, many of whom are juggling school, jobs, family, and more, with much- needed levels of flexibility.
“We incorporated some new kinds of virtual learning platforms that, at the time, were helping us build a type of clinical experience for students,” she noted. “But now, we’ll use them to augment and add to clinical experi- ences and enrich those experiences. So, there were lessons learned that will come away as beneficial.”
For this Salute to Nurses, HCN talks with recent graduates and nursing program administrators about what the past few years have been like, and how they will shape things moving forward.
Learning Experiences
As he talked about his four years in nursing school, Konderwicz said it was an intriguing time, to be sure, one marked by transitions — in the plural. And it was a time when ‘normal’ was both a moving target and a relative term.
“It was actually more strange to go back into the classroom after this whole thing had happened than it was to be online,” he explained. “I think everyone really got used to it (online), and the school very graciously ac- commodated all of us, along with all of their partnerships, either with the state of licensure or the local government; even though we were online and even though we weren’t getting a traditional education, we were still able to do clinicals. And even though most of it was virtual, we still got credit for it.
“What they could have done is just put a kibosh to it and say ‘sorry, you’re not going to get that experience and clinical education,’” he went on. “But they kept going because they wanted to really get nurses out there and have us ready.”
“Most of them looked on it
as a challenge and said,
essentially, ‘I want to go help —thisiswhyIwantedtobea
nurse, to work in those areas
w h e r e p e o p l e a r e a c u t e l y i l l . ” KAREN ROUSSEAU
With that, Konderwicz effectively summed up what the past few years has been like for all those involved in nursing education, be it students, nursing school administrators and educators, and the hospitals providing clinical experience.
The goal was to push through the crisis that was and is COVID, provide learning experiences both in-person (to the extent possible) and online, and keep a flow of nurse graduates moving through a pipeline and into a market where they would be desperately needed (see related story, page 18).
Summing up that time, Konderwicz said it was a learning experience on many levels and, in some ways, a rewarding test of his mettle because of the changes and the adversity.
“There were advantages and disadvantages to working remotely,” he said, adding that becoming a nurse was “in the plans,” as he put it, and something he wanted to pursue at 30 rather than 40. But COVID certainly wasn’t in the plan, and, looking back, he said he was able to make the best of it, if that’s the right phrase, and get that reality check, which came in several forms, from contracting COVID to getting a hard look at what the nursing profession is like under the most demanding of circumstances.
All nursing students experienced a similar reality check, said Rousseau, noting that as students saw nurses retire or step away from the profession due to the stress, strain, and, yes, dangers of COVID, some were asking
Please see Students, page 42