Volume 12, Number 3, 2004
College of Health and Nursing Sciences graduate students have taken their classroom knowledge to Delaware elementary schools to help students with asthma.
Students from the College's nurse practitioner graduate program visited Frederick Douglass Stubbs Intermediate School in Wilmington and Joseph M. McVey Elementary School in Newark six times during the fall semester. During those visits, the CHNS students presented the Open Airways program from the American Lung Association to three groups of youngsters.
The program teaches children ages 8-11 how to detect the warning signs of asthma, including how to recognize such environmental factors as air quality and tobacco smoke that can trigger attacks.
The five graduate students--Keith Breasure, Elizabeth Dunst, Holly Kalish, Terry Sybrant and Nicole Scott, all registered nurses--gave about 25 asthma patients peak-flow meters and taught them how to use the meters to measure their own lung capacities.
Barbara L. Sheer, associate professor of nursing, who arranged the visits to the two schools, says the goal is to combine forces with a community agency and work on one of the top health problems in Delaware.
"Asthma is a growing problem and a significant problem in Delaware," she says. "One of the triggers is environmental exposure to tobacco smoke. It [asthma] can't be cured, but it can be controlled, and what we are trying to do is to have the children have a better understanding of asthma, what their triggers are, what to do about it, when it's time to take their medication, when it's time to go to the hospital or when it's time to go to their primary care office."
This is the second year that CHNS nursing students have presented the program in Delaware schools.
The College's nurse practitioner program is part of a post-master's degree certificate focusing on advanced practice nursing, in which students can choose the family nurse practitioner concentration or the adult nurse practitioner concentration. Nurse practitioners are principal providers of primary health care and assume responsibility for promoting, maintaining and restoring the health of individuals and families.