SNHCL Newsletter - Winter 2024, Issue 29

Message from the Dean

Greetings UW Tacoma School of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership community -

A belated Happy New Year to everyone! The beginning of a new year often prompts many of us to think about what we’ve accomplished in the past year and our goals for the next. As I reflect upon the past year, I am reminded of the progress that has been made in advancing our school’s vision and mission and of the achievements of faculty, staff and students.

This academic year, we welcomed our newest faculty member Dr. Jingyi Li, PhD, RN, who most recently taught at UW Seattle School of Nursing. In addition, we are pleased to welcome two new staff, Program Coordinator Priscilla Wiltshire-Bland, and Clinical Clearance Coordinator Kate Reinking. We celebrated the promotion with tenure of Dr. Sunny Cheng to Associate Professor, and the recognition of Dr. Sharon Laing who received the Tri-Campus School of Nursing’s 2024 Health Sciences Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award. We are so proud of students within our school who demonstrate advocacy and leadership both within the school and campus-wide. In particular, I’d like to give a shout out to Healthcare Leadership students Kalea Velasco-Cosare currently serving as SNHCL’s Student Senator, and Holly Wetzel serving as President of Associated Students of UW Tacoma.

So, what does the future hold for SNHCL? Well, I see a bright future for our school. This past autumn we welcomed a cohort of 19 students into our new MN program, a program redesigned to meet the needs of professional nurses. The school is also actively engaged in academic planning for new programs. Faculty have been working on developing proposals for both a pre-licensure/entry-level BSN degree and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree program. While these degree offerings are still in the early exploration and planning stages, we are excited at the prospect of expanding access to nursing education in the South Puget Sound and beyond.

In keeping with program development, efforts have begun to develop partnerships with several schools of nursing in China. This past autumn in October, Dr. Weichao Yuwen and myself were invited to give presentations to schools of nursing in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Yangzhou, where we met with both nursing faculty and nurses in practice to explore potential educational opportunities and scholarly exchanges for faculty and students in the future. Certainly, there are many details to be worked out and agreed upon before this becomes a reality but it is exciting for SNHCL to be invited to develop these professional partnerships with our global colleagues.

As you probably surmise, we in SNHCL are striving to meet the future demands for a qualified nursing and healthcare workforce, locally and globally. We could not do this without the dedication of faculty and staff who are committed to our students’ success, nor without your support. I wish you all good health!

In community with you…David

David Reyes, DNP, RN

Dean, UW Tacoma School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership

Seydi Gueye

Giving Back to His Community

Seydi Gueye is from Senegal, a country in West Africa. He came to the U.S. in 2014 as a student and has lived here for nine years. 

A week after he completed his Associate Degree in Nursing from Renton Technical College, he took the NCLEX exam and passed. Two weeks later, he was working as an emergency room (ER) nurse at Virginia Mason Franciscan Hospital where he had done his practicum. He is going into his second year of nursing after working as a patient technician and a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). 

Seydi has always been interested in nursing. However, he fell into it in the U.S. One of his friends had a homecare business and asked him to work there. Seydi was assigned one of the most challenging patients but he ended up developing a friendship with her and fell in love with the work he was doing. The nursing assistant responsibilities were easy and natural for him. Other people saw how well he was doing and encouraged him to pursue nursing.

Seydi chose to work as an emergency room (ER) nurse because nurses get to develop a variety of skills with diverse populations in many different types of situations. He loves dealing with chaos and fast-paced environments. He has been told that he has great bedside manners. Also, from his previous experience, he already knew how to do some of the responsibilities.

He is now working as a trauma nurse in the ER at MultiCare. He looks forward to going into work everyday since he is passionate about what he does.

While working as a full-time ER nurse, he is enrolled in UW Tacoma’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program full-time. It is a challenge since the ER is a stressful environment. However, he does not see it as stressful since he has developed skills and mechanisms to cope with stress. He exercises regularly. Due to his background in literature, he also likes to read and does personal development on his own.

Seydi considers himself an observer and has been learning all his life. He has a vision to diversify the nursing field by getting more people of color into the nursing profession. He has a passion to help increase awareness of the nursing field by promoting diversity, equal opportunity and treatment of nurses of color, and cultural competency taught by BIPOC faculty. Of the two hospitals Seydi has worked in, he has often been the only, or one of the very few black male nurses. He said that it takes commitment and determination to handle being a minority professionally due to stigma and unconscious bias in the nursing field.

After completing his BSN degree, Seydi would like to go to graduate school and earn a Doctor of Nursing Practice in critical care. He is also passionate about mental health and is interested in teaching. He may also pursue that as well in the future.

Seydi would eventually like to go back to Africa and give back to his community. He is from Dagana in the Saint-Louis region of Senegal in West Africa. He is currently working on a micro-project helping out the youth in his hometown. Seydi is trying to motivate the youth. He sends money to his hometown for books, school fees, furniture, and clothing. The people in his community are struggling with basic diseases. He would love to build a clinic or even a hospital in his hometown for people who need basic care. He loves his community and goes back frequently. He still longs for his memories with friends and family. Seydi wants to give back. His town gave him the heart, mind, and determination to do what he is doing today.

Would you like to learn more about our BSN student, Sedyi Gueye? 

Listen to our Podcast:  SNHCL Meet & Greet on January 31, 2024! 

Ryan Mahan

Bring Energy and Authenticity with You

Ryan Mahan is an alum of the UW Tacoma School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership’s (SNHCL) Bachelor of Arts in Healthcare Leadership (BAHCL) program and is on the SNHCL Advisory Board. 

He decided to study the BAHCL program because of his exposure to healthcare in the navy. He was a corpsman for six years and served as an orthopedic technician in the navy so he became familiar with the field and enjoyed working in healthcare but did not want to pursue medicine. Ryan was more interested in strategy related responsibilities. He fell in love with healthcare because he saw that it would allow him to grow and it offered different areas that he could specialize in. At the same time, pursuing a career in healthcare provided job security.

During the program, he took classes like finance, social determinants of health, healthcare analytics and learned how to use excel, manipulate reports, and track trends and data to drive decisions. Ryan shared that his social determinants class helped him understand and open his eyes to barriers of health. He said that students can take these skills and apply them to so many different areas of healthcare. He is applying what he has learned in his current job.

Ryan thinks the fieldwork course that students enroll in during their last quarter is one of the strengths of the BAHCL program. He advises BAHCL students to be intentional about their fieldwork experience to get the most out of it. Since he is a data person, he got exposure to reports and data during his fieldwork experience and learned a lot from his preceptor at Mary Bridge. He also thinks professors like Dr. Christine Stevens makes the program special. Overall, he believes the BAHCL program gives students a good foundation to build upon as they enter the workforce.

Ryan is now Regional Manager at MultiCare for six primary care practices across Tacoma and Kitsap regions. He interviews candidates for leadership positions and even has hired a BAHCL graduate for a managerial role. Ryan is currently finishing a Master in Healthcare Leadership at Western Governors University (WGU). He hopes to become more involved in higher level strategy after he completes the program. 

Ryan recommends the following for BAHCL students:

• Asks lots of questions.
• Network and make connections.
• Collaborate with others since it is key and nothing can be accomplished without it.
• Invest 100% into the program because you get what you put into it.
• Create good working relationships with other students and faculty.
• Bring energy and authenticity with you.

Would you like to learn more about our BAHCL Alum, Ryan Mahan? 

Listen to our Podcast:  SNHCL Meet & Greet on January 31, 2024! 

Dr. Carmen Lewis

Making Space for Diversity in Nursing Education

Dr. Carmen Lewis decided to become a nurse in high school because she loved helping the home care nurse that took care of her grandmother who had cancer and a stroke. She could not believe that people got paid to do this type of work. 

Dr. Lewis earned both her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Science in Nursing at Prairie View A & M University. She also taught there in her first nurse education role. She later obtained her Doctorate in Leadership in Nursing Education at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Her specialization is the maternal-child space. 

Dr. Lewis started her nursing career in the neo-natal intensive care (NICU) unit as a student nurse and then in a skilled nursing care environment because she wanted to learn how to take care of her parents. She also has experience as a school nurse, a mother-baby nurse, and a lactation consultant. Dr. Lewis loved teaching nurses on the floor and precepting students on the mother-baby floor so she decided to go into education. This experience helped her find what it truly meant to care for nurses.

Dr. Lewis’ primary job is as Regional Neonatal Educator for the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health System that covers five special care nurseries and one NICU in western Washington. Although it is challenging doing both clinical and the educator roles, she is knowledgeable about what is happening now and loves the opportunity to bridge textbook with application in nursing. She is going into her second year of teaching as a lecturer with UW Tacoma’s School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership and loves seeing her students’ progression. Dr. Lewis has taught classes on diversity, community health, critical thinking and writing, and policy.

Dr. Lewis recommends the following for students who want to pursue nursing:

• Make sure to choose nursing because it is something that you really want to do and care about.
• Try everything to gain a lot of experience and be open to opportunities and innovation.
• Pursue your goals while you have the energy.
• Work in an area that you are a gift to and make sure you care enough about that area so it is fun.

Dr. Lewis loves the urban serving university that UW Tacoma is and how it helps find solutions for the community. Since it is community focused, UW Tacoma has a unique makeup of people and institutions and the classes are geared toward bettering the community.

Her research centers around professional development for nursing instructors and making space for diversity in the nurse education field. Dr. Lewis has tried to bring her love for maternal-child health into the classroom. In her community health class this past year, the students looked at maternal-child health in the homeless population. Since Dr. Lewis has been inspired by one of her students who is Native American, she would love to explore maternal-child health in native and tribal communities as well as in other populations in her community health classes in the future.

Dr. Lewis’ hopes all mothers get access to home care right after birth. She thinks nurses could do this. She currently volunteers in the public health department and works with homeless mothers in Tacoma.

Would you like to learn more about our faculty, Dr. Carmen Lewis? 

Listen to our Podcast:  SNHCL Meet & Greet on January 31, 2024! 

Sarah Rainville

Focusing her Practicum and Scholarly Inquiry on her Passion:  Nursing Resilience

Sarah Rainville’s interest in nurse resilience came from her experience working in the Pediatric Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. She had been a nurse since 2012, but transitioned from adults to pediatrics in 2016, having always wanted to work with children. Her favorite part about being a nurse is connecting with others. She loved creating little moments of care and joy that hopefully brightened her patient’s day, like brushing their teeth, getting them up for a shower, going for a walk, or coordinating for a parent to hold their baby in the CVICU. After the death of one of her patients, she realized she did not have the tools or the language to cope with the emotional intensity of this patient population. She explored palliative care, participated in Schwartz Rounds and wrote extensively about being a human being and healthcare professional on her blog, Nurse Sarah Writes. 

After taking a break from bedside nursing to travel, she realized that she did not miss the day to day of the CVICU nursing care. However, she kept thinking about her coworkers and ways she could support them and other nurses. That was the moment when Sarah knew she wanted to become a nurse educator. She moved to Seattle to work in the Pediatric Post Pediatric Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) at Seattle Children’s Hospital and applied to the UW Tacoma for her Master’s in Nursing. 

Sarah credits her UW Tacoma’s School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership’s (SNHCL) Master of Nursing degree in opening doors for her and giving her the opportunity to choose from multiple career paths. She specialized in nursing education and it gave her a solid foundation and versatility to branch off into different areas of nursing both in the hospital and university settings.

Her practicum experience was particularly special since she was matched with a preceptor who was a nurse therapist (Dr. Jane Cornman) and specialized in nursing resilience and therapeutic touch. Dr. Cornman introduced Sarah to local resilience leaders, provided relevant scholarly papers, arranged for her to attend community meetings, and shared her expertise.

Sarah appreciated the process, guidance, and support that she received during her scholarly project as well. With the support of Dr. Sunny Chieh Cheng, as her scholarly project chair, she created an online resilience module for the pediatric ICU nurses at Seattle Children’s Hospital that they could access in micro-practices during their own time. Sarah later used this module as a foundation to give a presentation on resilience and evidence-based self-care practices to senior nursing students at Seattle Pacific University (SPU). For the last year, she has been a guest lecturer at SPU each quarter thanks to a PACU coworker who is also a professor there.

At the end of the MN program, Sarah was accepted to a nurse educator fellowship in the PACU at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She worked with fellow Nursing Professional Development practitioners helping orient and onboard new nurses, work through transitions in the unit, educate staff on practice changes, and collaborate with perioperative leaders. The Nurse Educator track at UW Tacoma, especially the nursing professional development expertise shared by Dr. Patsy Maloney, helped guide her experience in this fellowship and offer deeper understanding of the nursing professional development role.

Sarah’s interest in nursing resilience and wellness has only increased thanks to a better understanding of the systemic issues in healthcare learned about during the program. In the coming year, she hopes to apply for a nursing research grant at Seattle Children’s to study nurses’ post shift practices. She wonders what do nurses do when they leave work to decompress? Are they taking their work home with them and how is it affecting them at home? What do they do to leave work at work? This after work transition time is a little studied area. She credits Dr. Yuwen’s research class for giving her the tools to be able to think about research questions and design a potential research study. Sarah’s other future goals include becoming a nurse resilience educator, traveling around and teaching classes to groups of nurses, going back to school for a Master’s in Social Work so she can become a nurse therapist or applying for a Fulbright Scholarship so she can study abroad internationally and see what nurses are doing and what hospitals are doing for their nurses in other countries’ healthcare systems. Sarah thanks SNHCL for the many possibilities.

Would you like to learn more about our Master of Nursing Alum, Sarah Rainville? 

Listen to our Podcast:  SNHCL Meet & Greet on January 31, 2024! 

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