On Tuesday afternoon fourth-year nursing students at Purdue North Central showcased their semester projects on community healthcare throughout the region. Each year Assistant Professor of Nursing Peggy Rose assigns her Community Health Nursing students to create a community health assessment of a town or city in Lake, Porter or La Porte County. The students compile a vast amount of statistical information on their city in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the healthcare available to the residents, as well as the specific health problems that might be prevalent within each community, such as a lack of transportation, which would limit accessibility to certain members of the population.
This is the first year that the students have presented their projects.
As Professor Rose said, “They would hand it to me at the end of the semester and say, ‘Well, now what are you going to do with that, Professor Rose?’, and I thought, ‘I don’t know,’ and the binders would just collect dust in my office. This year we’ve decided to open this up to our community partners, so they can come see what we’ve done.”
Rose explained that and the Epidemiological Report had been done through United Way in 2005, and this event was a great way to analyze the data that was collected then with relation to the data the students had collected, which is much more recent.
I talked with two students, Julie and Kristen who completed their project on Valparaiso. Julie was surprised to learn about Valpo.
“It’s awesome, if I was living here, I’d live in Valpo,” Julie said. “They have everything a big city has but in a much smaller format, I love it. Their public transportation is really fantastic.”
Kristen pointed out some strengths in the community, such as programs through the public library to help people living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Renee and Rachel, who studied La Porte for their project, spoke of the vast amount of services available to residents of that community, even stating that there are perhaps more services than residents realize. The project, as part of the nursing curriculum at PNC gives students a different way to think about nursing.
As Renee told me, “I actually want to pursue community nursing, so this gives me a chance to see how to assess what resources are available and identify what weaknesses exist within a community to address what those members might need.”
Rose hopes that the event will be mutually beneficial to the students and their partners in the community, and that they will continue to hold this event in the future.
To find out more about the Nursing programs at PNC, click here!
{valpo}For pictures of the presentations click here!{/valpo}{laporte}For pictures of the presentations click here!{/laporte}