(L to R) Dawn Goldstein, Ph.D.; Debbie Shockey, D.N.P; Dean Jean Giddens, Ph.D; Barbie Dunn, Ph.D.; Joe Teefey; Ginger Edwards; Judy Collins; Mimi Bennett; MCV Foundation board chair Harry Thalhimer; and Carla Nye, D.N.P., at the MCV Foundation’s December board meeting reception, where the foundation honored and raised funds for the VCU School of Nursing Clinical Scholars Program.
Dean Giddens with MCV Foundation board member Joe Teefey as he announces an impromptu fundraising challenge to benefit the Clinical Scholars Program at the foundation’s December board meeting reception.
Debbie Shockey (left), D.N.P., former recipient of a Ginger Edwards Clinical Scholars Award, and Carla Nye, D.N.P., former recipient of a Mimi Bennet Clinical Scholars Award.
Ginger Edwards, who has been the namesake of two Clinical Scholars awards.
Dawn Goldstein, Ph.D., former recipient of a Ginger Edwards Clinical Scholars Award, with MCV Foundation board member Kit Sullivan, D.D.S.
MCVF Helps School of Nursing Recruit and Retain Faculty
At a time when the need for nurses continues to grow across the nation, faculty shortages at U.S. nursing schools are limiting the number of new nurses who can be trained.
Jean Giddens, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Nursing, told us recently that fortunately, at the VCU School of Nursing, “we have a program to help facilitate recruitment and retention of qualified nursing faculty.”
The VCU School of Nursing Clinical Scholars Program, which the MCV Foundation honored and raised funding for at its December board meeting reception, provides grants and other resources to support clinical faculty projects and recruitment at the school.
In 2012, Judy Collins; Barbara (Barbie) Dunn, Ph.D.; JoAnne Henry, Ed.D.; and Joe Teefey — all MCV Foundation board members at the time — began mobilizing alumni, foundations and individuals in the Richmond community to establish the program.
Judy, who is founding director of the VCU Women’s Health Center and associate professor emeritus at the VCU schools of nursing and medicine, said she and the other early program leaders saw a need to support applied nursing projects because that type of scholarship generally receives less funding and fewer resources than traditional research.
“Those of us that had more of a clinical path had a desire to elevate clinical projects,” she said. “We were looking to give clinical faculty the ability to focus on clinical approaches.”
“We hoped that the Clinical Scholars Fund would help attract clinically excellent faculty members by offering incentives for their scholarship, teaching goals or clinical practice,” Dr. Dunn said.
Since it was established in 2012, the Clinical Scholars Program has raised more than $550,000 and supported five scholarly or educational clinical projects and three faculty recruitments.
Early program awards were named for Mimi Bennet, who worked as a nurse at VCU Health for 36 years, specializing in women’s health research projects. Recipients of the Mimi Bennet Clinical Scholars Awards include:
- Kathleen Martin Bell and Sue Lindner, who completed a project to train student nurses to serve as doulas for underserved women in the Richmond area.
- Daphne Terrell, who worked with Susan Lindner on a project introducing a simulated electronic health record into the clinical education of nursing students during their first semester in order to create a more seamless transition into the clinical environment.
- Carla Nye, D.N.P, who explored video recording in the simulation lab to improve student learning outcomes.
More recent Clinical Scholars Program awards have been named for Ginger Edwards, who maintained a strong clinical practice and was a pioneer at VCU Health in applying the use of advanced practice to specialty areas. Recipients of the Ginger Edwards Clinical Scholars Awards include:
- Debbie Shockey, D.N.P, who completed a project called Reach Out, which examined ways to reduce anxiety in children undergoing medical procedures.
- Dawn Goldstein, Ph.D., who is currently exploring telehealth simulation at the school to improve learning outcomes.
“The availability of these awards has helped the school with retention because I have a group of faculty members who now have access to funds to do their scholarly work,” Dean Giddens said. “Their success in getting the funds, carrying out the projects and publishing leads to professional satisfaction because they are able to make a difference professionally.
In terms of recruitment, Dean Giddens said the Clinical Scholars Program has been helpful in bridging the pay gap — through bonuses and incentives — that exists between what certain nurses can make in clinical practice and what they can make in academia.
“It’s been amazing and inspiring to experience this support for clinical nursing,” Judy Collins said. “And it has been so gratifying to see these resources applied to recruiting and retaining incredible nurses who are doing amazing work.”
Those resources have come from individual gifts and from foundations, including the Jenkins Foundation, which provided $50,000; the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation, which provided $100,000 in critical bridge funding as the program’s endowment funds were raised; and the MCV Foundation, which gave $50,000 in early 2016.
To help bolster individual gifts for the program throughout the years, Joe Teefey, a former vice president of MCV Hospitals and former president and CEO of Virginia Premier Health Plan at VCU, has often announced matching challenges at events. At the MCV Foundation’s December board meeting, he announced another impromptu matching challenge, which helped raise more than $30,000 from MCV Foundation board members and friends.
To learn how you can make one-time gifts to funds like the Clinical Scholars Program, or about creating brand new named endowed funds, visit our giving page.
