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?
In short, it’s because good, ethical clinical research takes time.
Clinical researchers across the globe are all in on trying to respond to one of the biggest challenges of our time. Their work is essential to helping the world reach the other side of the Novel Coronavirus crisis.
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.
ASU's Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation is located in downtown Phoenix, a large city and one that has a significant population of people experiencing homelessness. Seven years ago a collaboration of students from Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona took it on themselves to help address this issue. Their efforts led to the creation of Student Health Outreach for Wellness, or SHOW.
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.
If it wasn’t clear before, it is abundantly clear now, after weeks of uprisings in response to the death of George Floyd and others, and the clear disparities in health and socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on people of color, that gaps in inequality are wide, unacceptable and have existed for far too long.
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.
Systemic racism is a public health crisis. Research supports this and we’ve seen it with our own eyes in our practices and most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionately affected Black Americans.
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.
No one is better positioned to do this.
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.
Everywhere you look people are stepping up for their communities, coming together around a single mission, to get a hold of this pandemic.
At Edson College, our faculty, staff and students are lending their skills, time and health expertise to join this global effort.
Welcome to our guest blogger, Kathy Kenny, Edson College associate dean and clinical professor.
The international 2020 Year of the Nurse and Midwife is a rare opportunity for a sustained conversation about the invaluable role our professions play in health and health care. Let’s give them something to talk about.
Seriously, wherever we are in this world, nurses should take advantage of a moment when our profession will enjoy global priority status. Year of the Nurse is a rare platform for authentic, constructive discussions about who nurses are and what we do.