From the Desk of Dean Shannon

Happy New Year! Join me in welcoming what promises to be an important decade for nursing.

2020 has been designated The Year of the Nurse and Midwife by WHO in honor of Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday. Two questions come to mind: why has Florence Nightingale’s impact endured for two centuries and why is 2020 important for nursing?

The Enduring Legacy of Florence Nightingale

This icon of nursing is popularly known as the “Lady with the Lamp” due to her caring presence at night on the Scutari hospital wards during the Crimean War in the 1850s. While poetic, Florence Nightingale’s 200 years of respect was earned for very different reasons. As a young woman, she received a robust education including Italian, Latin, Greek, philosophy, history and mathematics. She is considered one of the early statisticians pioneering a new way to graphically display data. But Florence Nightingale is most famous as the founder of modern nursing. Her 1859 book, Notes on Nursing, was the cornerstone of the curriculum for her school, now known as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, and became popular with the public for the valuable information on maintaining and restoring health. Two centuries after her birth, Florence Nightingale remains a model of a visionary leader; a person who had a global impact on nursing and health.

2020 and Nursing: A Visionary Year

We start the new year, new decade with optimism. Nurses and midwives account for nearly 50% of the healthcare workforce globally. Yet the world faces a shortage of health workers with nurses and midwives accounting for half of needed workers. States like Montana face shortages in rural areas of nurses, primary care providers and mental health workers. At MSU College of Nursing, we are proud to share the ways we are addressing Montana’s needs. In this newsletter read about:

• Expansion of existing accelerated BSN program to CON Billings campus with an innovative partnership model where students will be partnered with a rural clinical agency in eastern Montana for 6 weeks of intensive learning.
• Our grant-funded Rural Ready Nurse Practitioner Program where students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program are learning additional skills to become better prepared as rural and frontier family or psych-mental health nurse practitioners.
• The Caring for Our Own Program which celebrated its 20th anniversary and 100th Native American BSN graduate in 2019 and is going strong into the next decade helping to meet the need for nurses and nurse practitioners in Tribal communities.
• The NEPQR grant which is helping the College of Nursing to educate nurses for the next decade by expanding clinical opportunities for BSN students to primary and ambulatory settings, particularly in rural areas.

MSU College of Nursing looks forward to partnering with you and others across our beautiful state over the coming decade.

Best wishes for good health in the new year to you, your family, friends and communities,

2019 Alumni Achievement Award

Christine Williams, MSN, RN

2019 Distinguished Faculty Award

Wade Hill, PhD, DNP, PMHNP

2019 Distinguished Staff Award

Kate Hallowell, MFA

2019 Honorary Alumni Award

Honey Newton, CNM, FNP

2019 Valued MSU Partner Award

Tanya Giop

Are we doing enough to protect people who work long hours outside in the heat? That question drives Dr. Sally Moyce’s research passion. Heat-related illness (HRI) is an occupational hazard for outdoor agricultural workers who are four-times more likely than workers in other industries to experience this health condition. HRI affects kidney health and can lead to chronic kidney failure, requiring long term dialysis or kidney transplantation. Three U.S. states have laws that require employers to take measures to prevent HRI. But, do these laws work? Dr. Moyce is examining HRI prevention policies and their enforcement to determine the effects on agricultural worksites. She received a grant from MSU’s Initiative for Regulation and Applied Economic Analysis to determine if employers in states with existing HRI prevention policies are more likely to provide water to their workers. Dr. Moyce also received a grant from the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses to investigate the effect citations for violating HRI prevention laws have on the provision of water for agricultural workers. Dr. Moyce hopes her research findings will provide evidence to support effective federal legislation to increase protection of outdoor workers’ health.

GIVING Back to the Community

Emily Schmitt became interested in MSU after learning about the Caring for Our Own Program (CO-OP) and the opportunity for Indian Health Service Scholarships. She is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of the Chippewa Indians in Michigan. Emily moved to Montana to complete the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program where she proved herself a tenacious student and scholar. For her DNP project, Emily partnered with one of Montana’s tribal communities on a topic chosen by community members – education on head trauma resulting from abuse. Emily applied for and received funding to support this work and presented it nationally. In addition, Emily served as a nurse mentor to American Indian pre-nursing students and worked with BSN nursing students on the Fort Peck reservation. Emily graduated with her DNP degree in May 2019 with a 4.0 GPA. She is now a family nurse practitioner giving back to her community through her work in an Indian Health Service facility.

SUPPORTING Students

The College of Nursing is delighted to introduce Monti Pavatea-Gilham as the new program manager for the Caring for Our Own program (CO-OP). She is Blackfeet and Hopi with an extensive background assisting and supporting Native American students to achieve their educational goals. Ms. Pavatea-Gilham served as department chair and instructor for the office administration department at Blackfeet Community College for eleven years. During this time, she also was an advisor for the Student American Indigenous Business Leaders chapter encouraging students to develop their leadership skills. While attending graduate school, Ms. Pavatea-Gilham worked with the Executive American Indian Business Leaders Association and served as the project coordinator for the MSU American Indian/Alaska Native Student Support Services. “My goal is to help CO-OP nursing students implement their knowledge throughout Native communities.” The CON is lucky that Ms. Pavatea-Gilham has chosen to join its talented team of staff!

Bozeman Campus

Billings Campus

Great Fall Campus

Kalispell Campus

Missoula Campus

Student Athlete Getting it Done on the Volleyball Court

Alyssa Rizzo

Allyssa Rizzo, a Bobcat volleyball standout and senior nursing student, just capped a stellar career in the Blue and Gold. A product of Crestwood, Illinois, she was recently named the Big Sky Conference Libero of the Year. The libero is a defensive specialist who is always on the court. She also serves as the team’s heart and soul. Named first-team all-Big Sky, Allyssa smashed the Montana State all-time digs record! A dig is keeping an attacked ball in play. Allyssa became just one of three players in Big Sky Conference history to go over the 2,000-dig milestone. Congratulations to Allyssa on an outstanding volleyball career! We know those teamwork skills and “saves” will come in handy in her next career as a Bobcat Nurse.

Congratulations to Allyssa on an outstanding career!

Student Athlete Getting it Done on the Basketball Court

Tori Martell

Tori Martell is an MSU junior nursing student on the CON’s Bozeman campus. She grew up in Somerset, Wisconsin and came to MSU to study nursing and play for the MSU women’s basketball team. This season, Tori leads the team in 3-point shooting having connected on seventeen 3-pointers during the early season. Tori is averaging 6.7 points per game and is shooting 45.2% from the field and 37.8% from long distance. As a junior baccalaureate nursing student, Tori is learning new skills off the court. Junior nursing students build on their foundational knowledge through courses in pharmacotherapeutics and psychosocial care while developing nursing care knowledge and skills in theory and clinical courses. Junior nursing students also learn about how research informs knowledge in healthcare and nursing and are introduced to community-based nursing.

Excellent accuracy Tori!