The Fall 2010 Semester was full of wonderful events for the School of Nursing. The Students, Faculty and Staff at the School of Nursing are the future leaders for our profession.
Enjoy!!!!
Enjoy!!!!SON faculty and Janet Leatherwood, Chief Nurse at Methodist Sugar Land, getting ready for commencement.
First Ever - RN-BSN, MSN and Second Degree BSN Pinning ceremony after the Fall Commencement in Katy, Texas.
Pictured: Heather Chimene, Melissa Chaffin, Donovan Bacuyag, Sarita Shestha saying the Florence Nightingale Pledge with their lamps.
Our Guest Speaker was Steven Brockman-Weber, Chief Nurse of Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital. Many of our students spend clinical time at this facility and we were honored to have Steven share his thoughts (with permission):
"Dean Tart, Faculty, Families, and Honored Graduates…
I don’t have words enough to express my gratitude for the chance to speak to with you on your special day. It would be a pleasure and honor at any pinning ceremony, but today marks a milestone for the UHV School of nursing as this is the first pinning ceremony where all nursing graduates are honored, congratulations Dean Tart and faculty!
Nurses are brave. Insightful. Compassionate. Not only do they help people heal, they calm fears, alleviate grief, inspire others. To be a nurse is to answer a calling to tireless service and self-sacrifice.
Every nurse has paid a price for his or her dedication. As rewarding as it is a touch lives on such a profound emotional and spiritual level, it can also be stressful and heartbreaking. It’s a tough, tough, job. And.. that’s why it’s so important to celebrate this day with pride and accomplishment. I want you to celebrate this day. I want you to experience all of the pride, all of the joy that it brings you to have reached this milestone. I also want to challenge you and inspire you because as you leave this ceremony today many of you have prepared yourselves to take on new roles in nursing, some as a new graduate and some into more leadership and roles of education. You see, today you take a big step into power. In return for your hard work, endless papers, care plans, and business plans your dedication to a life of service and your willingness to take the pledge of duty society gives you access and rights that is given to on one else. Society will allow you to hear secrets from frightened human beings that they are too scared to tell anyone else. Society will permit you to use drugs and instruments that can do great harm as well as great good, and that in the hands of others would be weapons. Society will let you build walls and write rules. And in this new role you will meet a new mother afraid to touch her preemie on the ventilator in the incubator. The construction worker too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t hear a word the physician said just after, “It might be cancer.” The alcoholic bottoming out who was the handsome champion of his soccer team and dreamed of being an architect someday. The child over whom you tower. The 90-yeard old grandmother, over whom you tower. You see your world may change dramatically as you walk out of here today, because now you have the choice, you now how the power, the ability to make new rules. You have a choice now to make the difference in someone’s life, the magical opportunity to decide.
Nursing has changed dramatically over the past 28 years I have been practicing. A long way from the staff nurse in a community hospital in Kentucky. I now help to make the rules and so will you. I challenge each of you to create new opportunities for our profession that will help to propel nursing into the respected profesion it is.
There are three things that I challenge each of you to take with you into your roles as nurses:
1. Leadership. Be the forerunner, be the rule maker, and be the one who challenges and questions. Lead with pride, lead with purpose and lead with the desire to make things better for patients and their families.
2. Confidence. At the beside or in the boardroom do your job with confidence and pride. You have been taught the basics, and beyond. Use your knowledge to drive excellence in the care you provide. Be willing to ask and admit when you don’t know. Having confidence can help you to achieve great things.
3. Change. Know that change occurs all the time. Be a forward thinker, a visionary in all that you do, who knows one day students in your seats today maybe learning about your new model of care you have tested. Change can be difficult, but it can also be exciting. Be the one that stands up and says, Let me try that.
Congratulations on your achievement today. Feel proud. You ought to. Those who suffer need you to be something more than a nurse; they need you to be a healer. And to become a healer you must do something even more difficult than using your knowledge. You must recover, embrace, and treasure the memory of your shared, frail humanity-of the dignity in each and every soul.
I am grateful for the lessons that I have learned, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to share them with you today. I am still learning. I have so much yet to learn. I have so very far yet to go, as do you. That’s okay. This is a journey and your journey begins now. I honor you today for choosing to make a difference in the lives of the patients and families you serve. Congratulations!"
I don’t have words enough to express my gratitude for the chance to speak to with you on your special day. It would be a pleasure and honor at any pinning ceremony, but today marks a milestone for the UHV School of nursing as this is the first pinning ceremony where all nursing graduates are honored, congratulations Dean Tart and faculty!
Nurses are brave. Insightful. Compassionate. Not only do they help people heal, they calm fears, alleviate grief, inspire others. To be a nurse is to answer a calling to tireless service and self-sacrifice.
Every nurse has paid a price for his or her dedication. As rewarding as it is a touch lives on such a profound emotional and spiritual level, it can also be stressful and heartbreaking. It’s a tough, tough, job. And.. that’s why it’s so important to celebrate this day with pride and accomplishment. I want you to celebrate this day. I want you to experience all of the pride, all of the joy that it brings you to have reached this milestone. I also want to challenge you and inspire you because as you leave this ceremony today many of you have prepared yourselves to take on new roles in nursing, some as a new graduate and some into more leadership and roles of education. You see, today you take a big step into power. In return for your hard work, endless papers, care plans, and business plans your dedication to a life of service and your willingness to take the pledge of duty society gives you access and rights that is given to on one else. Society will allow you to hear secrets from frightened human beings that they are too scared to tell anyone else. Society will permit you to use drugs and instruments that can do great harm as well as great good, and that in the hands of others would be weapons. Society will let you build walls and write rules. And in this new role you will meet a new mother afraid to touch her preemie on the ventilator in the incubator. The construction worker too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t hear a word the physician said just after, “It might be cancer.” The alcoholic bottoming out who was the handsome champion of his soccer team and dreamed of being an architect someday. The child over whom you tower. The 90-yeard old grandmother, over whom you tower. You see your world may change dramatically as you walk out of here today, because now you have the choice, you now how the power, the ability to make new rules. You have a choice now to make the difference in someone’s life, the magical opportunity to decide.
Nursing has changed dramatically over the past 28 years I have been practicing. A long way from the staff nurse in a community hospital in Kentucky. I now help to make the rules and so will you. I challenge each of you to create new opportunities for our profession that will help to propel nursing into the respected profesion it is.
There are three things that I challenge each of you to take with you into your roles as nurses:
1. Leadership. Be the forerunner, be the rule maker, and be the one who challenges and questions. Lead with pride, lead with purpose and lead with the desire to make things better for patients and their families.
2. Confidence. At the beside or in the boardroom do your job with confidence and pride. You have been taught the basics, and beyond. Use your knowledge to drive excellence in the care you provide. Be willing to ask and admit when you don’t know. Having confidence can help you to achieve great things.
3. Change. Know that change occurs all the time. Be a forward thinker, a visionary in all that you do, who knows one day students in your seats today maybe learning about your new model of care you have tested. Change can be difficult, but it can also be exciting. Be the one that stands up and says, Let me try that.
Congratulations on your achievement today. Feel proud. You ought to. Those who suffer need you to be something more than a nurse; they need you to be a healer. And to become a healer you must do something even more difficult than using your knowledge. You must recover, embrace, and treasure the memory of your shared, frail humanity-of the dignity in each and every soul.
I am grateful for the lessons that I have learned, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to share them with you today. I am still learning. I have so much yet to learn. I have so very far yet to go, as do you. That’s okay. This is a journey and your journey begins now. I honor you today for choosing to make a difference in the lives of the patients and families you serve. Congratulations!"
