Sync Your Calendars

Welcome to the spring semester! It is hardly warm outside, but the intellectual energy inside Fagin Hall more than compensates. We start the term with the return of our students and we are ready to dive into a semester of inquiry and engagement.

Next month we will welcome the esteemed Dr. Angela Barron McBride, whose new book “The Growth and Development of Nurse Leaders” stands to become as seminal in our field as her 1973 book “The Growth and Development of Mothers.” She will present a Dean’s Lecture on February 28.

Each year we look forward to granting the unique honor of the Claire M. Fagin Distinguished Researcher Lecture and Award. With great pride, we honor Dr. Barbara Riegel, an expert in chronic illness and self-care, who will present the 2012 Fagin Lecture on April 5.

This academic year is significant in the history of nursing at Penn. Our 125th anniversary is in tandem with the quarter-century mark of our Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, which will honor the work of nurse historian Dr. Joan Lynaugh with a symposium on April 14.

We will take interprofessionalism to another level with the April 17 symposium “Partners in Education and Practice: Stronger Teams, Better Health,” co-hosted with the Association of Academic Health Centers, Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and the Institute of Medicine.  The concept of interprofessionalism – bringing seemingly divergent healthcare professions together to respond to need – is more important than ever in our global 21st century.

On April 21, our LIFE practice will host the second annual “Sounds of West Philadelphia” Wellness Day. In the fall, our LIFE practice recognized internationally as being unique by Lancet editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Horton. Wellness Day is a wonderful opportunity to see why.

And, before we know it, we will close the semester with Commencement and Alumni Weekend, which will open on May 11 with the inaugural symposium for our new Center for Global Women’s Health, a most exciting endeavor and one that is close to my heart.

As always, there is much happening. As always, I hope to see you here, taking part in all that Penn Nursing has to offer.

New Window on Nursing

During his visit to Penn Nursing earlier this month, Lancet editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Horton left us with a promise to write about the work we are doing here. A man of his word, he devoted his November 19th editor’s column to “Nursing, but not as you know it.” Dr. Horton called Penn Nursing: “. . . the country’s leading research-intensive nursing school that stands as an equal with its biomedical counterpart.” He lauded our LIFE (Living Independently For Elders) program, calling it proof of “the social value of academically led practice . . . Rarely will one witness such a successful juxtaposition of practice and research, care and inquiry.” These are extraordinary statements, particularly from the editor-in-chief of one of the world’s most esteemed medical journals.

Although nurses have historically been at the forefront of science and health, it is always particularly potent to see how the accomplishments of nurse scientists are viewed by our esteemed colleagues in medicine. What Dr. Horton saw in our programs are examples of how nursing makes a difference and how keen our faculty are to translate knowledge into care, action, and policy.

The Next Revolution

This week I was thrilled to have as a guest at Penn Nursing Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the internationally renowned medical journal The Lancet. He spent three days meeting with nursing and medical faculty, students, and University leadership. One of the main topics everywhere was how the healthcare professions can come together to respond justly and equitably to global health needs and, to achieve that, how they need to be educated together. On Wednesday Dr. Horton gave an inspiring presentation to a crowded auditorium here in Fagin Hall titled “A Bonfire of the Professions: Prospects for Global Health.”

The dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and I jointly hosted the lecture, which is indicative of how nursing and medicine are connected in a deep partnership, opening up opportunities for advances in health that cross continents and span seas.

Dr. Horton speaks passionately about the need for a patient-centered “revolution” in healthcare. “We are living through a healthcare crisis in the world today,” he said this week. He urged the healthcare professions to take heed that child survival, maternal health, and the infectious diseases malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS are still rampant in the parts of the world that are the poorest and have the fewest healthcare resources. He emphasized: “The current status quo simply cannot continue.”

I had the distinct pleasure to work with Dr. Horton and international colleagues on the 2010 report “Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World” from The Lancet and the Institute of Medicine.

In it, we advocated that “all health professionals in all countries should be educated to mobilize knowledge and to engage in critical reasoning and ethical conduct so that they are competent to participate in patient- and population-centered health systems as members of locally responsive and globally connected teams.”

To reach this vision, Dr. Horton is once again turning to Penn Nursing and to the University. He has proposed that Penn join The Lancet in a commission that would lead to “transprofessionalism,” uniting nurses, midwives, community health workers, and doctors to address global needs and inequities in healthcare.

That is a fantastic approach to global health today. We look forward to partnering with The Lancet in realizing some of the pioneering recommendations proposed in “Health Professionals for a New Century.”