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lower arranging and tea ceremony classes aren’t part of the standard nursing school curricula in the United States. But when Rebecca Wheeler visited a nursing school in coastal Taiwan this summer, she found these two skills among those students were expected to master.
     “They are taught aesthetic appreciation and attention to detail,” says Wheeler, a senior at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing who traveled to Taipei to attend the International Council of Nurses Congress (ICNC).
     As the recently elected president of the National Student Nurses’ Association (NSNA), representing 45,000 students in the United States, Wheeler networked with student nursing organization presidents from more than 50 countries attending the ICNC. She also met U.S. Assistant Surgeon General Mary Pat Couig and attended forums on topics such as the impact of the AIDS crisis on nursing in Africa and the migration and recruitment of nurses from developing to developed countries.
     “I felt like royalty. I was introduced to the Who’s Who of nursing leaders,” says Wheeler.
“It was an incredible circle to move around in.”
     Dean Marla Salmon, who also attended the Taipei convention, recalls that “Rebecca made a great impression on folks from around the world. Lots of people gave wonderful feedback about the faculty and students at Emory, and a few alumni of the nursing school were there as well. Emory was definitely represented in very positive ways.”
     The convention is just one of the international opportunities Wheeler had during her first year at the School of Nursing. During spring break, she accompanied a delegation of students and faculty to Kingston, Jamaica, to explore faith-based nursing with the Missionaries of the Poor. The experience, part of the school’s Hubert Fellowship Program, made a lasting impression on Wheeler.
     “The missionaries take care of people rejected by society, those with HIV, cerebral palsy, psychological problems, and disabilities,” she says. “They treat them with love and respect for as long as they live.”
She remembers helping one of the young missionaries bathe and brush the teeth of a patient who had contractures (shortening of the muscles) and was too stiff to bend.
     “It was very touching,” Wheeler says of the missionary. “This is what he did every day, yet he did it with such care.”
     The seed for her world awareness was planted early. She was born in Peru, where her father, a physician, provided medical care to Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s. Her mother is a nurse, and her sister, Kate, is an endocrinologist for the Laureate Medical Group at Emory Crawford Long Hospital.
     “My parents taught us that your profession is much more than just a way to make money. They believed that your work should mean something to you and that, at the end of the day, you should feel you have accomplished something worthwhile,” she says. “They also demonstrated the importance of broadening your perspective by experiencing other communities and cultures and having a world view.”

   
No work cubicles, please

heeler is a second-career nursing student. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and history from Middlebury College in Vermont and a master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Teacher’s College at Columbia University in New York. She taught Spanish at Pace Academy, a private school in Atlanta, for eight years. But it wasn’t enough.
     “I enjoyed teaching, but I didn’t want to go into administration, and I wasn’t sure how to advance. I wanted a profession that was flexible, with lots of options. Both teaching and nursing involve moving around and dealing with a lot of people,” Wheeler says. “If I had to work in a cubicle, I think I’d die.”
     Last summer, she volunteered at Camp Kudzu, a North Georgia camp for children with diabetes (and led by Emory nursing alumni). “The kids love it. Everybody else is just like they are—they all have to be pricked and measured and have their diets monitored—so the kids finally feel normal.”
     Wheeler has discovered that providing health care uses many skills she already possesses: the abilities to think critically, prioritize, communicate effectively, and assess a student’s (now a patient’s) readiness to learn. “I’ve accidentally been preparing for this my whole life,” Wheeler says.
     After choosing nursing as a career, she quickly decided to attend Emory following her visit to an open house for prospective nursing students. “Emory has broader thinking and more of an international focus than other nursing schools, and there are strong links to the CDC and the Carter Center,” she says. “And I really like Emory’s emphasis on community health and service.”
     Selected as a Fuld Fellow this past spring, Wheeler is surrounded by other multiple-degree students who are pursuing both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing in hopes of making a difference. The fellowship program targets second-career students with a strong desire to lead and a special interest in serving vulnerable populations.
     After entering graduate school next year, Wheeler plans to do just that by working with migrant populations in south Georgia through Emory’s Farm Worker Family Health Program. It will be a prime opportunity to use her Spanish skills. “How scary would it be to be really sick and not have anyone understand you?” she says.
    Her language skills are definitely an asset in her role as president of the NSNA (Wheeler is the group’s first female president in five years). Among her goals: publishing the organization’s newsletter in both English and Spanish, bringing Puerto Rico in as a state organization, and making it easier for student nurses to find out about state and national legislative issues related to nursing.
     “I’m excited about using my Spanish skills to make Imprint [the NSNA newsletter] bilingual and to work closely with students and faculty in Puerto Rico to help them strengthen their chapters,” says Wheeler. “I hope this will be a great year to emphasize the participation of Hispanics in nursing and thus help with the recruitment of Hispanics to nursing.”
     Personally, Wheeler is confident that she has found a career that will never confine her. “I think nursing is, ultimately, a lifestyle choice. You can work in a clinic, a hospital, a field, a rural mountain area, overseas, or in an inner-city emergency room,” says Wheeler, who plans to become a family nurse practitioner. “Doctors are constrained by time, but nurses can often establish personal relationships with patients rather than just clinical ones. My interest is in the patients’ stories.”

Mary Loftus, former Knight Journalism Fellow at the CDC and reporter for The New York Times, is associate editor of Emory Magazine.
 
   
     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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