Students at ASU’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation say the Phoenix Veterans Affairs program at the school has provided them with valuable practical skills.
This semester, the college received an award allowing nursing students to work at the Phoenix VA as part of their required clinical assignments.
Dean Teri Pipe called it a great opportunity for the nursing students.
“We are able to educate more students because they (the VA) will be opening up clinical placement slots,” she said.
Two of the students involved, juniors Victoria Tank and Shaina Welch, both said the experience has been wonderful and they have learned many new things.
“It has been very rewarding,” Welch said. “It was really challenging at first. … I have been learning a lot.
“I have been able to experience an array of different clients,” she added.
Welch said that because the students are working with veterans, they have to be aware of their specific challenges.
“Any kind of health history or anything that’s particular to them which is their health,” she said. “There’s a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder and being able to recognize the most appropriate treatment for the veteran’s population.”
Welch said she has been able to work directly with veterans during her time in the clinical study.
Tank called the experience “really awesome.”
“The patients that I have been able to work with, I say, I have been somewhat life changing,” she said. “Not only am I getting to practice the skills I am learning in the lab and in the classroom, but I am learning from these veterans who have bravely gone out and sacrificed their lives for myself.”
Tank said working at the Phoenix VA has been a learning experience.
“The staff there has been extremely helpful,” she said. “They give us tasks to do all the time, and we’re constantly being taught things along with our own teachers that are there.”
“We’re being shown things that we would call ‘cool things’ like a pressure ulcer or getting to see someone being (catheterized).”
Tank said that in order to learn all the skills she using, she has had to put in a lot of lab work and class work.
“I have put in a ton of study time to be prepared and confident enough to come into an actual hospital setting with real patients,” she said.
Welch and Tank both said that the nursing program is only for upperclassmen and that in order to get into the VA program, students have to be high up on the waiting list to get into the competitive program.
“When this program was official, back in July, all the people that were the highest up on the waiting list were able to get spots,” Welch said. “It was still a competitive process because you had to have the certain GPA and certain testing scores.”
Brenda Morris, a co-author of the program’s proposal and implementation-team leader with the nursing school, said she is very excited for the program.
“It really benefits the college as well as the Phoenix Veterans (Affairs) healthcare system, and it will allow us to work together to form new types of ways to improve veterans care for the veterans administration,” she said.
Judith Brooks, the Phoenix program director for the VA partnership, said the program will help increase the number of students working at the VA.
”We have 20 students who are coming in for four years for a total of 80 students during this project,” she said.
“The students will be allowed to be a part of the VA for the student technician program, and once they have graduated, they will be allowed to come in and work at the VA, and they will already have all the knowledge about the VA,” she said.
Contact the reporter at joshua.delauder@asu.edu
