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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.”
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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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