October is Nearly Here!

The semester is underway and it started off with a bang.  We are taking a nursing education class as well as a community health class.  I never thought I would have  much interest in that because I didn't see it as "my cup of tea".  I am not sure why I felt that way exactly, I have done a lot of community health type nursing in my nearly 25 years in this profession.  I have done home health and hospice, even starting and being part owner of a home health agency.  I worked for a  time as a rehab case management nurse, a DON at a long term care facility that had a lot of old psych patients that got out of the state hospital in the 70's and had no where to go after deinstituionalization. I was a  prior approval and concurrent review nurse for an HMO for a very short time.  I did Community Based Alternatives for the Department of Human Services.  My favorite was being the nurse for a day program for chronically mentally ill clients.  I also did school nursing for a year out at La Joya ISD, that is really the front line of community health with kids that have no other possible way to get any health care because they can't afford it.  So as I was looking into what community health nursing is all about I realized that we really do not train our students nearly enough in that area.  Maybe they do in a BSN program but many of our vocational nursing students will work in either home health, adult day care, schools or for the health department  or a clinic at some point.  All of those are community based and they will approach that with very little introduction and even less hands on from clinical experiences.  So that made me see a need where I could make a difference.I might be able to improve our program, our students preparation and ultimately that would benefit patient care of our area.  So now what I thought was going to be a class I might not be too "into" has made me realize that it could be a really good thing to have to take after all.  I feel like it has opened me to something new that may not be my first passion but is very much related to the whole.
It's all good!