It is super important to see people that look like you or maybe live in your neighborhood or just have your lived experience in order for you to sometimes believe it's possible for you. Let them see who we are. Let them see that nurses are young nurses are older nurses are men, nurses are women. You know, nurses come in a variety of colors.
Nursing is one of the most in demand professions in the US today. But how do we inspire more people to go into health care and nursing, and how our nurse educators meeting the challenges to help train more healthcare specialists. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're talking with a nurse educator who's reaching out to help inspire some overlooked populations of students, and using some innovative technology to train the nurses of tomorrow.
My name is Dameron Beverly, and I am a member of the nursing faculty here at Heartland Community College. I've been teaching full time with the college for three years now. So I primarily teach with the first year nursing students, but I do some skills activity with our second year students. And I love students of all ages, and I love nursing. I love education. I love mentoring. So I also kind of combine all those things together with some activities I do in the community with young kids. Well, nursing is such an in demand profession right now. And I think from what you were alluding to, maybe you can't start too young and trying to plant the seeds for some nurses of the future. Talk a little bit about what that's like to try to engage young people and how you do that in the community. And how young Do you start trying to get people interested in health care? Sure. So yes, absolutely. Right, we are in a situation where we do not have enough nurses. And that problem is only going to be compounded if we are not proactive. So we're trying to be proactive here from an academic setting, you know, where we're teaching nurses at the college level. But we're trying to have some very pointed strategies to introduce young kids to nursing. So when I first started doing mentoring, honestly, it was with high schoolers, and students who were in maybe like a CNA program, or expressed an interest in nursing. So they were more like your young 20s or higher teens. But then we started thinking about it. And it's like, you know, a lot of the young kids, you know, third, fourth, fifth sixth grade, they need to have exposure so that they prepare themselves. What do I mean by prepare themselves, you know, getting into high school, and you've not taken enough science courses, or not taking enough math courses, and kind of set that foundation because nursing is based in science. And so you need to have certain prerequisites. So from that standpoint, myself, and some of my colleagues and some of my community partners recognized, we need to tap into the kids younger. And so one way we do that is we have a mini nurse Academy. So if I can back up, I'm part of a nursing organization, the National Black Nurses Association, and we started an initiative called the mini nurse Academy, to introduce the younger kids, and expose them so that they develop an interest so that they are prepared should they decide to enter, maybe not even nursing, but healthcare at some level, you know, they're prepared if they know those prerequisites, and things like that, that they need to meet first. So the important for kids have a young age to really see examples of how when you're a very young kid, you might think about a job but you don't really think about the skills that are related to the job. So as you go out into schools into organizations, do you see that a lot of these kids aren't seeing other examples of people that might be either a future mentor or just somebody that can inspire them to do that job in the future? Absolutely. So I'll answer that a couple of different ways here. So one, yes. It is super important to see people you know that look like you are maybe live in your neighborhood or just have your lived experience in order for you to sometimes believe it's possible for you and so that is that is one of the key things, let them see who we are. Let them see what nurses do. Let them see that nurses are young nurses are older. Nurses are men. Nurses are women. You know, nurses come in a variety of colors and ages and things like that.
As far as the skills, you know, so one of the fantastic things about the mini nurse Academy is, we received a wonderful grant that allowed us to buy just an amazing amount of equipment, so that the kids could have hands on practice with things like learning CPR, taking a blood sugar, taking a blood pressure, how to check your heart rate, and all of those kinds of things. Again, it's one thing if we read, oh, this is what nurses do. But it sets the bar a little higher and makes it more palatable and desirable, once they are doing it. And I'm telling you, we've been doing this for the past three weeks, and the kids are on fire. And they are so excited and super proud of themselves. And they're also taking home those lessons, we are weaving in there about health education and health promotion. So what can we do to have better health? Before it's a problem? Now, we know that we're all going to have illness at some point at some degree. So the thing at that point is then to talk about why is it important to have regular doctor visits? Why is it important to recognize these symptoms and not ignore them. So we are weaving all of this into the mini nurse Academy. Another way that I mentor in the community is with one of the alternative high schools here in the community YouthBuild. I've done what I call a skill stay. And we'll have a set number of those students come in. And I bring them to the lab here at Heartland, you know, I usually don't have a class or lab on Friday, so the lab is free. And we can bring them in and kind of do that same thing. Let them have some hands on practice with all the things there. But another layer that I've done with those students is talk about not just nursing, because not everybody is going to be a nurse. But because I am a faculty member here at Heartland, and I'm super proud of all the different things we offer for students. So maybe somebody would be a great vet tech, maybe somebody would be a great dental technician, or maybe they want to go into radiography. So when I've done that a couple times, I've made it more health science fields. And we talk about this is what these folks do here at Heartland, you can get through this program and maybe eight weeks, you can get through this program in 12 weeks, or maybe you can get through the MA program, medical assistant and a year. Or perhaps you do want to get the registered nurse degree. So you you go for the two years. So that's kind of how I've done that because again, not everybody is going to become a registered nurse. But just get try to plant that seed that maybe there is something for you, that will allow you to have a livable wage, because we then also talk about, okay, if you finish the CNA program at Heartland, you can expect to make here McClain County, this amount of money per hour. And that kind of a thing. And the kids eyes are always just like, really, you know, they're seeing moving out of mom and dad's house. I love I love working with all of them, you know, kids are our future. And, you know, we need to pour into them. And, and again, plant the seeds and cultivate them. So once we plant the seed, we can't just let them go, you know, we plant the seeds, the plants, we got to continue to water them. So that might mean you know, an email here and there. How are you doing? It might mean, hey, you want to meet me at Chili's for lunch? It might mean Hey, you want to meet me at Subway if you got a few minutes on campus. So you gotta kind of still touch base and keep hands on him to help cultivate and get them to their goal.
It seems like you really do take to the mentorship. You know, you're all in on that I am. Did anything like that. Did you have a mentor as you entered into the profession or in your life that made a big difference on you.
So in the nursing profession, I would say I had unofficial mentors. So nursing is a second career for me. I didn't become a nurse until I was in my early 30s. I had a whole nother career before that. I was introduced to nurses When I gave birth to premature twins 25 years ago, and they were in the NICU for all the months and things and I watched day in and day out for months. nurses take care of us. And it was us. It wasn't just the babies. It was our family. And then as they got a little bit older, and I was thinking about returning back to the workforce. I thought well I think I want to do that nursing thing. I think I can do that. And I want to have a job or a career that's meaningful that I want to go to air Every day when I'm helping other people, and you know, as it was given to us. So that's how I became a nurse, I went back to school as a non traditional student, and became a nurse. So those were my mentors, the nurses that took care of my babies and our family. Well, now a lot
of people say I want to completely change gears and start a new career at 30. I think fewer people think I really want to start a new career after I've just had twins. That sounds like a lot of energy. Yes,
this is true. And then there again, so I became a nurse in 2007. And I love being a nurse. It's a true passion. It is a work of art. It's a true passion. But in one of my nursing jobs, I was a clinical educator. So that's kind of where I got bitten by the Education bug. And then I decided, you know, I think I want to teach in academia, I want to help cultivate more nurses, and Steve that require, you know, what that required, right? Yeah, that required another level of going back to school. But it was worth every bit because it allows me to do what I do now on an even higher level. And so
how education and nursing education is evolving is kind of surprising to me. And some of the things I've seen with tools. You mentioned earlier on that when you go into the classrooms with the younger kids, what really engages them is the opportunity to do some of the stuff instead of saying, you're going to have to be better at understanding science, you understand X or Y, which they will have to do eventually. But you have demonstrations of how to take blood pressure, how to do some simple nursing tasks, either with props or right or something like that. But some of the things that I know that you've been involved with lately, extend all the way into our students here at Heartland. And that is with using some digital technology, can you talk a little bit about that, and how we're seeing some of these demos really be very different. And they came in handy, I guess during a pandemic?
Yes, they did. So you're speaking of virtual reality, but not just virtual reality, I will say simulation in general, because in health education, we are seeing more and more use of simulation, because it puts the student whether it's the nursing student, or the resident, doctor, student, or the surgeon, even, you know, reading articles about it puts them in a safe environment to practice the skills that will be needed to take care of a live patient. So with virtual reality, it's just that you know, requires that you put on a headset, and you find yourself immersed in a patient room, we just did this yesterday with my students, and we did an asthma case, and the one student has the headset on, then we can project it so that everybody else in the classroom is seeing what's happening. And you can simulate nearly everything you need to do to take care of that patient, whether it's dressed them, set them up in the bed, give them a medication, talk to them, you know, so even with that, with the simulation, whether it's hands on whether it's virtual, there's that communication piece they get to practice, how would you respond to a patient if they said this? Or what would you do if you walked into the room and the patient looked like this. So the key idea with simulation is safe space for learning. And so we stress with students, yes, you may be nervous, because you feel like you're on the spot. That's not the point of simulation, the simulation is not graded, it is actually an opportunity for you to practice in a safe space. And so they're really, really coming around to that. Now how it came in handy here for us here at Heartland. About a year ago, we needed a clinical replacement for one of our pediatric rotations, clinical sites, there just are not enough of um, you know, we have kind of a good problem here in central Illinois, we have several nursing programs, you know, between Springfield, Peoria, three here locally implement a normal, and so we're we're all fighting for space, in addition to nurse educators. And so that is where simulation also has been very nice to have. Because even the Board of Nursing recognizes that yes, simulation is valuable. So yes, it is totally fine to use in your lab in your classroom, but to a certain degree for clinical replacement as well.
Does that allow more scenarios? I know that sometimes you'll have volunteers for certain kinds of exercises where you'll have somebody volunteer to pretend to be right. But with the virtual reality that would allow I guess, more variable than that because there are probably certain scenarios that can be worked into the program.
That is exactly right. So again, like with the volunteers are what we call standardized patients. And we do that every year with our first year students But what's nice about the other simulations, whether it's with our high fidelity mannequins, or whether it's virtual or VR, we can acquire cases and expose students to those scenarios that we may not encounter in our in our four week or a clinical rotation. So we can pick and choose, you know, there's a price for those scenarios. But we've been very fortunate to have amazing support from Heartland and the foundation to help us acquire that equipment and those supplies and be able to buy those cases. But yes, we can expose them to things that like I just had clinical this morning, I can only give the students you know, the type of patients that are there today. But if I'm teaching about how to know chronic kidney disease, and I just haven't had that on clinical the past two weeks, I've got one in virtual reality that I can put that student through, very, very helpful that way. And again, it just gives students more opportunity to practice and hone their skills. But again, safe space is the key, it's way better to figure out there that you gave the wrong man than in the real rural land. So
how new is this technology? Is it just in the last couple of years that we've been able to use it here at Heartland?
From a nursing standpoint, nursing department standpoint? Yes, I didn't even become aware of VR in nursing education until 2021. So what we're doing with the now blows my mind. So in the summer of 2021, I just went to visit a friend who teaches at ISU, she's telling me about all this cool stuff they have in their Sim Lab. Not that well, let me come see. And I went and saw and then I came back. And I went to my dean's office and said, there are some things out there that we can use to supplement and our program that I think will be beneficial for our students. And I don't know about a couple months later school started back and I learned about some tech grants that okay, I'm gonna apply for that tech grant to get this innovation in our nursing program. And we got that, and Steve, we thought we would just kind of ease into it, we might play with it here, we might try it here. Within three months later, we needed it, because we didn't have one of our usual expected clinical sites for our students. And if we had not had that, you know, that would have you know, pushed back, you know, the their progression in the program and things like that. But we moved at lightning speed and hit the ground running. And, again, we there was so many people here at Heartland from Dr. Anna Caterson. It the Dean of Health Science, just the foundation, just so many people that supported that, that we were able to do it. And so we now have it in all of our nursing courses. And that's how it happened. So it's been less than two years, two years ago, it was not a thing. And now we're doing it
was pretty amazing, too. I mean, maybe it was sort of because of an unfortunate circumstance, sort of the right solution at the right time, but it is going to be a lasting thing. It sounds like how far do you think you would be away from taking those tools and using them even for younger kids to kind of show them some of the like the types of things you do with them any nurse Academy? Is that an eventuality that you would see?
I would love that. I would love that. So this many nurse Academy, we're just finishing our first cohort next week, they will graduate. And again, VR is very new. But yes, I absolutely see partnering those two things together. So we have the things here. Again, Heartland has been very supportive of all the things I do in the community in terms of mentoring. So I absolutely can see yes, let's bring them in and let's split the heads that Sonam and let's further you know, excite them and get them on fire about health care and as a as a really viable career option for them when I just career option, but to know that there are people that are here that want to support them, and help them as they work through you know, the education because it's it's hard nursing program is is a difficult curriculum, it's a difficult program it needs to be we have people's lives in our hands. But yeah, I will I can just picture it, I can picture those, those kids in here with the headsets and you know, taking care of patients and how that can change their life. But also see this is multi layered Steve, because if we get more nurses or people in health care to that translate to better stability for our community, because then we have more worker bees that can take care of, you know, our growing community, our community is aging, our community that is sicker, because you know, you know, we have bad habits, but we can also have some nurses out there doing some health promotion, but but we need more. So I think planting the seeds with the young ones, I think The benefits will be boundless. I think we probably don't even know how how beneficial some of the things we're doing now will be for them and for our community.
Well, Darren, thanks so much for taking some time to come in and talk about this stuff is very exciting. You have so much energy towards these things. I'm really impressed by what you've been able to do both inside and outside of Heartland so thanks for taking a little time out of your busy day to do this.
Well, thank you for inviting me. Like I said, I love I love to do it. It's it's a true joy to enjoy what you do for a living.
Dameron Beverley is a nurse educator at Heartland Community College. She also serves as a volunteer community educator with the mini nurse Academy. If you are interested in other interviews about health education or other topics, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
