The Impact of Personal Health
Sybilla Myers’ DNP Project Focuses on Overall Wellness During the Pandemic at their place of work, involves one term dedicated to identifying the project, collecting data, and recruiting participants. After the term break, the students then begin implementing the project, tracking the data and results which are included in a final paper. Like others in her class, Myers, DNP Class 33, APRN, FNP-C, had planned to do a completely different quality improvement project than the one she ended up doing. Myers was born in Germany and moved to the United States when she was three. Now an American citizen, she lives in Virginia but works in Washington, D.C.,
Sybilla Myers DNP As the COVID-19 Pandemic took hold of the country last spring, the protocols -- particularly in the first several months -- were to stay inside. Gyms were closed. Many parks had limited access or no parking available. Finding ways to exercise regularly became a challenge. Additionally, as businesses closed or reduced hours, more and more time was spent at home and, for many, a sedentary lifestyle became the norm. It didn’t take long for the jokes and memes to begin and soon the “COVID-15” became the term for 15 pounds of weight gain due to the pandemic. Helping people find ways to alter their lifestyle during COVID and develop or renew healthy habits became the centerpiece of then-DNP student Sybilla Myers’ quality improvement project. Students in FNU’s DNP program must complete a quality improvement project. This project, which is generally conducted with their patient population
“It didn’t take long for the jokes and memes to begin and soon the “COVID-15” became the term for 15 pounds of weight gain due to the pandemic. Helping people find ways to alter their lifestyle during COVID and develop or renew healthy habits became the centerpiece of then-DNP student Sybilla Myers’ quality improvement project.”
as an International Health Coordinator for a federal organization. She is also an adjunct professor of nursing at Stratford University and a mother of three children ranging in age from 9 to 15.
16 Frontier Nursing University • Quarterly Bulletin
Myers had intended to do a quality improvement project to implement a case management system at the federal organization for which she works. The arrival of COVID, however, meant all of the organization’s volunteers were evacuated home and she would have no new medivacs to implement her project. “I talked to my advisor, Dr. Chris Kennedy, who served as an incredible faculty mentor,” Myers said. “His recommendation was to do something that might be able to live past this project. Then I started thinking about it and decided on a virtual wellness project which could live past the pandemic and be implemented in primary care environments.” Responding quickly to the pandemic and its impact on FNU’s DNP students, the FNU faculty had developed four quality improvement projects which could be conducted virtually. Since many clinics and organizations were closed, this offered a chance for the students to continue without delaying their academic progress. “I didn’t want to take a hiatus,” Myers said. “My entire experience with FNU had been organized and thoughtful and I didn’t know what, but I knew something would fall into place that would allow me to continue on my DNP journey. I sat back and waited between term breaks. As expected, it didn’t take long for the FNU faculty to make an announcement that we would be given the option of implementing an IRBapproved virtual project..” The project that drew her interest was a wellness project. The project involved ways for the participants to increase their physical activity, their hydration, and their mental well-being in ways that are attainable during the pandemic. To solicit
