Dean's Blog

Before COVID-19, there was robust thinking and conversation about social isolation and loneliness being the next public health crisis. Research provided ominous warnings about the broad impact of the pandemic, including a finding that isolation among older adults is associated with a 50 percent increased risk of dementia.

A new year is upon us and while many of us are ready to turn the page on an incredibly tough and tragic 2020 there is much work to be done. One clear reminder of this is the need for an entire month dedicated to the prevention of slavery and human trafficking.

What a year, eh? There are so many things that I could say about these past 11 months and I’ll get into that in a minute.

When will we have a COVID-19 vaccine? The answer to that question is what everyone around the world wants to know. Surely once we have a vaccine, we can get back to our regular lives. So why not rush one out today?

Health care, you would think, would be the place where the old adage about never letting a serious crisis go to waste would never apply. It’s an appalling thought on its face. But here we are, six months into the worst public health crisis of our generation, and we are seizing opportunities wherever we can in nursing education. We must.

Today, more than 200 students, across multiple majors and the three state universities, volunteer with SHOW each semester.

We’ve got a pandemic on our hands and we need to collectively wage the fight against it! I’m not talking about COVID-19. I’m talking about the pandemic of inequality.

Our role as health educators, researchers and practitioners is to teach, investigate and care for people. It is also our role to call out injustices and disparities and actively work on solutions that benefit the overall health of all communities.

We’re still unraveling the mysteries of COVID-19, but there’s no doubt about the impact of nurses in the global fight against the pandemic. Health care workers are on the front lines and nurses are the far-forward troops. Although masked and, hopefully, covered in essential PPE, nurses are the human faces of health care for COVID-19 patients and their families. As premier patient educators, nurses also are helping to counter rampant misinformation about an unprecedented public health threat.

In my over 40 years of nursing education, this spring’s graduation and convocation are going to be, by far, the most unusual I’ve ever been a part of. When the semester started and we were all just coming back from the holidays, none of us could have imagined that in just a couple of months our world would be completely turned upside down.