Nurs­ing De­part­ment Prac­tices Pa­tience, Flex­i­bil­ity, and Grace Amidst Pan­demic

MISHAWAKA—As COVID-19 cases in St. Joseph County con­tinue to rise and keep the county in the state’s or­ange risk level, cases at Bethel have gone down since the uni­ver­sity im­ple­mented its own or­ange-level mod­i­fi­ca­tions on Nov. 6. To main­tain this down­ward trend, Stu­dent Life an­nounced on Nov. 13 that Bethel will con­tinue op­er­at­ing with these mod­i­fi­ca­tions through the end of the se­mes­ter. 

One area of ed­u­ca­tion that has been es­pe­cially af­fected by the pan­demic is the Nurs­ing De­part­ment. Dean of Nurs­ing Deb­o­rah Gillum, Ph.D., said they have had some dif­fi­cul­ties with clin­i­cals. 

“We have had them in the hos­pi­tal and the clin­i­cal set­tings as much as pos­si­ble, but some clin­i­cal lo­ca­tions that we are us­ing have had some is­sues with [COVID-19],” Gillum said. “There have been some sit­u­a­tions where we’ve had to pull stu­dents out in or­der to keep them safe.” 

Gillum said that while the stu­dents are not car­ing for COVID-19 pa­tients, it has been dif­fi­cult for stu­dents and fac­ulty alike to ad­just to the con­stantly chang­ing land­scape. 

“Three of our words that we started the se­mes­ter with was pa­tience, flex­i­bil­ity and grace,” Gillum said. “As we have con­stantly had to make ad­just­ments and changes in or­der to help the stu­dents meet their stu­dent learn­ing out­comes, the fac­ulty and the stu­dents are con­stantly re­minded of those three words.” 

Gillum also tries to look on the bright side, and she said that these stu­dents have the unique ad­van­tage of liv­ing through an ex­pe­ri­ence that, for pre­vi­ous grad­u­ates and even the nurs­ing fac­ulty, was only the­o­ret­i­cal.  

“The op­por­tu­nity that they are ac­tu­ally learn­ing real-time what com­mu­nity and pop­u­la­tion health look like dur­ing the time of a pan­demic is phe­nom­e­nal,” Gillum said.  

Gillum en­cour­aged stu­dents cur­rently en­rolled to come to­gether and sup­port each other as a com­mu­nity. 

“We are all in this to­gether,” Gillum said. “Us­ing pa­tience, grace, and flex­i­bil­ity, we will get them through the nurs­ing pro­gram and do our very best to keep them safe and to turn them into great Bethel grads.” 

Gillum also said that, for non-nurs­ing stu­dents, one of the most help­ful things they can do to en­cour­age their nurs­ing ma­jor peers is to fol­low the cur­rent COVID-19 guide­lines. 

“The hos­pi­tals right now are full, they are over ca­pac­ity, there aren’t enough nurses to take care of every­body,” Gillum said. “What­ever we can do to slow the spread so there aren’t as many pa­tients that have to go to the hos­pi­tal is go­ing to help every­one.” 

Gillum en­cour­aged stu­dents to re­al­ize that every­one plays an ac­tive role in slow­ing the spread of COVID-19 and said she hopes they will take their roles se­ri­ously.