Category Archives: The Valley Foundation School of Nursing

Applied Sciences and Arts recognized for community engagement

On May 2, San José State University’s Community Engagement Collaborative, Office of the Provost and Undergraduate Studies held the 13th Annual Service-Learning and Community Engagement Awards to recognize students and faculty who are making a difference in the community.

Students, faculty and community members were all recognized for their collaborative efforts to give students hands-on learning experience while also making a difference in the community. For the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, Tamara McKinnon and Suzy Ross received Awards for Excellence as faculty lecturers while Lynne Andonian received the Award for Excellence for faculty professors.

Ross, from the Health Science and Recreation department, was recognized because she has “commitment to strengthening community at the forefront of her teaching content and course requirements,” according to the event program. Ross has requirements in her classes that engage students in service in hopes that they will continue to be engaged throughout their lifetimes.

McKinnon, who teaches Community Health Nursing, was recognized for developing study abroad programs and Global Service Learning Programs that allow students to use their skills overseas. She has served as the interim director for International Health Programs, working with the Director of Health and Human Services. She continues to work with the Nurse Managed Center in Santa Cruz.

Andonian teaches the Psychosocial Occupational Therapy Clinic which provides services to adults with mental health issues in the community. Her graduate level OT students provide group and individual treatment twice a week, which provides the clients with opportunities for goal setting, skill development and diverse occupational experiences.

Faculty from other colleges as well as students and community partners were all recognized at the event.

SJSU to honor 3,500+ at Honors Convocation

On April 25, 2014, more than 3,500 San José State University students will be recognized for high academic performance at the 2014 Honors Convocation. Students who have maintained a 3.65 GPA or higher for two contiguous semesters of the last three semesters will be recognized as Dean’s Scholars while students with a 4.0 GPA will be recognized as President’s Scholars.

In the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, more than 900 students will receive certificates of recognition for their achievement, including students in Health Science and Recreation, Hospitality Management, Journalism and Mass communications, Justice Studies, Kinesiology, Nursing, Nutrition, Food Science and Packaging, Occupational Therapy and Social Work. The keynote speaker at the event this year will be Dr. Winifred Schultz-Krohn, an occupational therapy professor, who received the Outstanding Professor Award this year.

The Provost office collected stories from some of this year’s honorees including three students from the Valley Foundation School of Nursing and the kinesiology department. To read the featured stories from College of Applied Sciences and Arts students, along with others, visit http://www.sjsu.edu/provost/events/honors/featured/index.html.

Nursing DNP students present research

On April 4, 16 students enrolled in the California State University Northern California Consortium Doctor of Nursing Practice program took to a podium in a conference room in Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at San José State University with each student presenting the results of nearly two years of research.

The students, who are enrolled in the joint program between the College of Applied Sciences and Arts’ Valley Foundation School of Nursing and Fresno State University’s nursing program, presented a summary of their research and fielded questions from those who were present in the audience.

Mercy Egbujor said her faculty advisers along with her project chair Tamara McKinnon helped her to narrow the focus of her research project that looked at what knowledge, attitudes and skills are necessary to make a backpack homeless healthcare program successful.

Egbujor works with Santa Clara Valley Homeless Healthcare, a program that goes directly to homeless residents in Santa Clara County to treat them with the medical supplies team members can carry in a backpack. During her presentation, Egbujor gave a summary of the teams work and explained the methods she used to survey members of the multidisciplinary team on what knowledge, skills and attitudes are important to make the program successful. Some of the attitudes included being respectful, compassionate, open minded and non-judgmental. Egbujor said more research is needed to see if programs such as this are effective through measures such as lowering the number of emergency room trips in the population.

Susan Herman, with her advisers and project chair Mary Gish, completed an analysis of nursing transformational leadership practices. To conduct her research, Herman sent a survey to members of the Association of California Nurse Leaders to gather their ideas of what principles are most important in leadership. She based her survey questions on The Leadership Challenge, created by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner that highlights five practices of exemplary leadership. Her results from the self-reporting survey were in line with previous research. Some of the key practices nurse leaders identified as important were enabling others to act, modeling the way to do things, inspiring a shared vision and challenging standard practices.

Other DNP students presented throughout the day, with a second set of students from the cohort presenting their research at Fresno State University on April 11.

The cohort includes 31 students from across Northern California in a legislatively mandated pilot program that offers online education to post-master’s prepared nurses who have extensive work experience in healthcare. For the first cohort, 31 students will graduate on May 24. At least 90 percent of the students reported they have been working 30 or more hours since enrolling in the full-time program. Their average age is 49 years old and average time in practice is 20 years.

For more information on the CSU Northern California Consortium Doctor of Nursing Practice, visit http://www.sjsu.edu/nursing/students/dnp/ or visit www.csufresno.edu/jointdnp.

CHAMP sets schedule for Health and Aging conference

The Center for Healthy Aging in Multicultural Populations is hosting a multidisciplinary conference on health and aging Friday, April 18, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Spartan Complex at San José State University.

The focus this year is on “Opportunities and Challenges: Evidence-Based Practice in Multicultural Communities.

The morning will include a poster session, with three faculty judges from the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, followed by two sessions in which participants can choose from three topics in each session.

From 10 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., the topics will include long-term care; daily activities and engagement and training future professionals. From 11 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., topics will include LGBT elders; bone health and wellness in senior housing.

The afternoon will include a lunch for those who RSVP’ed in advance and a student poster awards. There will also be a professional development session from 1-2:50 p.m. for faculty, professionals and student presenters only on making evidence-based practices work in community settings along with a Q&A with Amy D’Andrade, the College of Applied Sciences associate dean of Research and director of the Center for Applied Research on Human Services (CARHS website: http://www.sjsu.edu/carhs/.)

Faculty members and students from the following departments are involved in the conference:

  • Occupational Therapy
  • Nutrition, Food Science and Packaging
  • Social Work
  • Health Science
  • Nursing
  • Anthropology
  • Biomedical Engineering

The event is co-sponsored by the College of Applied Sciences and Arts and MidPen Resident Services Corp with the Stanford Geriatric

For more information, visit http://www.sjsu.edu/champ/ and click on the 3rd Annual Conference on Health and Aging to download a PDF of the full conference schedule.

UPDATED: Nursing students to showcase 2013-14 research

Written by Tracy Lobramonte Santos

 Editor’s Note: The topic of guest speaker Susan Herman’s speech has been updated.

The Valley Foundation School of Nursing Class of Spring 2014 will showcase the extensive research they have conducted in a specific area or field of specialty in their assigned hospital unit or department on May 9, in Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, in room 225-229, from 2:30-5:30 p.m.

The showcase will emphasize the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s Quality and Safety Education for Nurses Competencies with a variety of activities, and light refreshments served. The school is part of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts at San José State University

Student research will be presented through audiovisual means with the BSN graduating students in attendance to provide additional information in regards to the research they have conducted. A variety of health care issues are being examined, from “Infection Control” to “Improving Patient Care Quality and Satisfaction,” to more specific topics such as “Nitrous Oxide Use in Labor” and “Medical Grade Honey Usage in Wound Management.” Each topic is analyzed and nursing implications are recommended for the improvement of Patient-Centered Care and Safety, the promotion of Quality Improvement and Teamwork and Collaboration, and the use of Informatics and Evidence-Based Practice.

The event will also showcase the importance of simulation in the nursing curriculum in preparing student nurses and enhancing their critical thinking and nursing skills for real-life scenarios in a controlled setting. Dr. Colleen O’Leary-Kelley, a professor at SJSU, Director of the Clinical Simulation Program in the School of Nursing since 2004, and Operating Committee Chair of the Bay Area Simulation Collaborative from 2006 to 2009, will be the keynote speaker. Dr. O’Leary-Kelley will be discussing the progression and success of the School of Nursing’s Simulation Program as it is integrated and mandated in each semester of the nursing curriculum. She will discuss goals for the future of Nursing, in regards to the collaborative technological advancement and involvement in the success of building a more solid foundation for future nurses. Guests will be invited to tour parts of the simulation lab.

The second speaker at the event will be a student from the Northern California CSU DNP Consortium, Susan Herman, MSN, RN. Susan Herman is the Magnet Program Director at Lucile Packard, co-founder of the Association of California Nurse Leaders South Bay Chapter, Liaison for the California Nursing Students’ Association, and Patient Care Director of the Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. She will speak on her DNP project entitled “An Analysis of Nursing Transformational Leadership Practices. ”

For more information, contact Ruth Rosenblum via email at ruth.rosenblum@sjsu.edu or Tracy Lobramonte Santos at trcysnts@gmail.com.