UT Faculty of Nursing appoints Eun-Okay Im as new dean

Eun-Okay Im is about to grow to be the subsequent dean of the Faculty of Nursing beginning Sept. 1, following the announcement of her appointment on Monday. 

Im is at the moment the senior affiliate dean for analysis and innovation in addition to the Edith Folsom Honeycutt endowed chair within the Nell Hodgson Woodruff Faculty of Nursing at Emory College in Atlanta, Georgia. Previous to her time at Emory College, Im was an affiliate dean for analysis improvement and regulatory affairs, a College distinguished professor, the Mary T. Champagne professor within the Faculty of Nursing at Duke College and Marjorie O. Rendell endowed chair on the Faculty of Nursing on the College of Pennsylvania. She additionally served because the La Quinta Motor Inns Inc. centennial professor in Nursing at UT from 2007 to 2011. 

Im acquired a bachelor’s diploma in nursing and a grasp’s diploma in public well being from Seoul Nationwide College. She later acquired a grasp’s diploma and Ph.D. in nursing from the College of California, San Francisco. She taught programs in a variety of topics associated to the sector of nursing together with nursing idea, nursing philosophy and international ladies’s well being. 

Im’s personal work tends to concentrate on how technology-based interventions can be utilized to supply new sorts of care and he or she is called a pacesetter in international ladies’s well being analysis. 

“Dr. Im is an exemplary scientist and mentor who will foster continued innovation in nursing science,” Sharon Wooden, the chief vice chairman and provost of UT, stated in an e-mail. “By means of her management, she’s going to construct on the varsity’s successes whereas creating the subsequent technology of nurses and students.”

Im will succeed Alexa Stuifbergen who served as dean for 14 years.

UT nursing college students replicate on trade amid potential nurse strike at Ascension Seton Medical Heart

Ninety-eight % of nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Heart Austin voted on Could 31 and June 1 to go on strike.

The 900 registered nurses at Ascension Seton are represented by the union, The Nationwide Nurse Organizing Committee/Nationwide Nurses United. The union introduced the authorization of a one-day strike in a press launch on June 1. A date for the potential strike has not been set, however the union will present a discover no less than 10 days earlier than the date. The strike could be the biggest nurses’ strike in Texas historical past, in accordance with the press launch.

In line with the press launch, “ASMCA administration’s unacceptable and delayed responses to nurses’ contract proposals” to enhance nurse recruitment, retention and staffing ranges fueled the potential strike. Nationwide Nurses United additionally claimed ASMCA’s possession by Ascension — which is likely one of the largest nonprofit well being methods within the nation — means they’ve the monetary assets to handle the short-staffing challenge.

“We simply want extra well being care staff, particularly nurses, however we’re not getting paid sufficient,” nursing junior Kate Crawford mentioned. “We’re not being incentivized sufficient and we’re really having nurses give up their careers and go do different issues.”

Crawford mentioned she was not shocked by the announcement of a potential strike, as she feels there has all the time been a scarcity of medical staff, particularly in massive cities. She mentioned she wished extra folks would take into account going into nursing to fight this development. Whereas Crawford mentioned she hopes to see extra folks changing into nurses, she mentioned she additionally understands not everybody can or must be a nurse.

“You want someone who’s positively prepared to tackle the workload,” Crawford mentioned. “You’re not simply giving folks medicines on a regular basis. You’re going to be bathing them or strolling them. It may be very mundane typically, however it takes someone with a giant coronary heart who’s compassionate, educated and simply enthusiastic about nursing general.”

Extra universities, together with Baylor, have began providing accelerated nursing packages. The accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Baylor states they put together folks for a nursing profession in a single 12 months with no prior nursing training or expertise required. Given the shorter coaching time, nursing sophomore Barabara Cardoza mentioned this isn’t the proper strategy to deal with the scarcity.

“There are such a lot of tremendous accelerated nurse packages, I really feel like (it’s) unsafe that it’s an accelerated program,” Cardoza mentioned. “It simply throws you out within the wind. I feel that’s harmful, and I don’t actually agree with that, however that’s how unhealthy the difficulty is.”

As for affected person care persevering with throughout the potential in the future strike, nurses from the union defined that the strike is to enhance affected person care in the long term and isn’t an act of negligence.

“I do know that there’s a concern of ‘Will sufferers nonetheless be supplied with care?’” nursing sophomore Trinity Schroeder mentioned. “However I feel long run the purpose is to lift consciousness that nurses must be handled higher and if they’re then long run affected person care will enhance from the strike.”