On Call Spring 2023

School of Nursing

a publication of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing

THIS ISSUE OF ON+CALL finds us three years after the beginning of COVID-19. We have moved more or less back to normalcy in the School of Nursing, but health care in general still faces some daunting challenges with staffing of facilities. Unlike other schools and colleges of nursing, our enrollment remains strong, and we still have more applicants than places in undergraduate program.

To address this need for BSN-prepared nurses, we are adding a new concentration to our BSN offerings. We have had the Gateway RN-BSN program for 15 years now. This concentration allows associate degree RNs to return to school and earn a BSN in 14 months. For several years, we have been tracking the number of contacts who wish to earn a BSN as a second degree. The timing seemed right. All three of our local acute-care facilities are asking us to educate more students to become BSN-prepared nurses.

In Fall 2023, we plan to offer an accelerated BSN (ABSN) program in which students who already have a degree may enroll in our three-semester program. In 12 months, a graduate of this ABSN will be able to take the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX).

Upon licensure, the graduate will then be qualified to work as a licensed RN. This program will be challenging. We will require 59 credit hours and more than 900 clinical hours all completed in 12 months. We will start with a smaller cohort but see that this has the potential to grow quickly. While we alone will not solve the shortage of nurses, we can offer this program that will educate more students in a shorter period of time but retain the rigor.

The courses in this concentration will follow a similar program of study as our traditional BSN. We will be implementing our new BSN curriculum this Spring which will incorporate the new American Association of Colleges in Nursing Essentials. Nursing education is focusing on competency-based education and the Essentials are the road map for all programs – BSN to DNP.

Our MSN with the advanced practice foci will be totally phased out when the last Nurse Anesthesia Concentration graduates in August 2023. Our APRN concentrations are now all offered through the Doctor of Nursing Practice. Plans for the UTC Health Sciences Building, to be the home of the School of Nursing, are progressing as architectural renderings are in development. Please mark April 21, 2023 for our 4th annual NightinGala. Our focus will be to reengage our alumni, so we hope to see you there.

We are proud of our students, our faculty and our staff. We have come through the last three years retaining our high pass rates and graduating practice-ready nurses at all levels. Come by the Metro Building on campus for a visit and to reconnect. We are starting on a very exciting time and will make sure our alumni, friends and families know the wonderful things that are happening here.

Director,

director

UTC is a comprehensive, community-engaged campus of the University of Tennessee System. UTC is an EEO/AA/Titles VI & IX/ Section 504/ADA/ADEA institution. E040950-001-23

Christine Benz Smith, Ph.D., APRN, FNP-BC

School of Nursing Chief Health Affairs Officer

Christine Benz Smith

editor Gina Stafford writers Shawn Ryan Chuck Wasserstrom

layout Stephen Rumbaugh photographer Angela Foster contact Chris-Smith@utc.edu

More Help, Less Fear

Statewide project offers info on dealing with dementia

The man is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He doesn’t want anyone except his family to know.

The disease is in its early stages and there are no obvious symptoms, so the family isn’t facing immediate problems, but the future is clouded with fear. What are they going to do when symptoms are unmistakable? Even more frightening, what will they do when he is totally incapable of caring for himself?

“There’s so much fear wrapped up in it. The fear of the unknown, of not understanding the course of the disease, not knowing where to get assistance and help,” says Kristi Wick, Vicki B. Gregg Chair of Gerontology and assistant professor

in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing.

Giving hope to people in those situations is one of the main goals of engAGING Communities, a statewide program started in 2019 by Wick and Jessica Freeman, assistant professor in the UTC Department of Communication.

Funded by a $1.5-million grant from the Tennessee Department of Health, the program collaborates with faithbased and religious communities as well as advocates for aging adults to build an Intrastate Network to Deliver Equity and Eliminate Disparities (INDEED) system.

“We know that religious and faithbased communities look to those

leaders for trusted information and resources,” says Wick, recently presented with the Community Hero Award at a Southeast Tennessee Area Agency on Aging and Disability.

“Being able to tap into that leadership and earn their trust and explain the need, they are able to learn how to serve not only their congregation, but eventually their neighborhoods and communities as well.”

The grant money is being used to create a network of volunteers who can offer informational resources, training materials and emotional support to those dealing with dementia.

To extend its reach and spread the word, engAGING Communities has partnered with seven organizations around the Southeast: the Tennessee Department of Health, Tennessee Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services, Honoring Choices Tennessee, Chattanooga’s CIT Connect, Atlanta’s Alter and Heart Tones in Raleigh, North Carolina, both of which focus on African Americans.

In 2022, workshops have been held in Chattanooga, Kingsport, Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis. Visits to more rural regions in the state are on the schedule.

“We will be going back to the major cities/regions again, but we will also go to Northwest, Upper Cumberland and South Central (Tennessee), where rates are high,” Wick says.

In Tennessee, Clay and Overton counties in the Upper Cumberland, Hancock County in Northeast Tennessee and Lauderdale, Crockett, Gibson and Carroll counties in West Tennessee, at least 12% or more of residents have some form of dementia or Alzheimer’s, according to data from the state Department of Health.

Faith-based institutions such as churches are a trusted source for information on many subjects, says Dr. Fayron Epps, founder of Alter in Atlanta.

“A lot of our members are in the Bible Belt and are disproportionately impacted by cardiovascular disease, and that leads to vascular dementia,” Epps says. “That's why it was very interesting to me, knowing about this program for the state of Tennessee, and how great this would be if I can become a partner and bring resources, in particular to the Black communities.

Bringing faith leaders into engAGING Communities “just seemed like a nice fit,” says Sally Pitts, director of the Tennessee Department of Health.

“What we saw were the faith leaders and faith communities were often leading the COVID-19 response. They were the ones identifying and supporting the most-vulnerable populations within their communities,” she says.

Since receiving the INDEED grant in February, Wick and Freeman have traveled across Tennessee, presenting five-hour workshops attended by 382 people, to date.

In each case, the information they present has resulted in wide-eyed amazement from “one hundred percent” of the participants, Wick says. Questions are non-stop.

“The ‘What ifs?’ or ‘What does this mean?’ Even just explaining what the word ‘dementia’ means. Understanding the difference between Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and that there are different types of dementia.

“We have this five-hour workshop and probably could have gone 12 hours,” she says.

Pitts describes the situation succinctly: “They don’t know what they don’t know.”

The program’s next steps are returning to the regions where workshops were held to help new programs get up and running to address dementia issues in their communities, Wick says. Connecting advocacy groups with information and resources is key, she says.

“We're basically taking everyone that's attended the open houses and saying, ‘OK, what is it that you're interested in?’ then plugging them into those things,” Wick says. “The idea being that, after we're gone, people are able to meet those resources that are there in their local community.”

JESSICA FREEMAN

education

Recognizing the Best School of

Nursing

building honors program for students

KELLI HAND, LEFT, AND BROOKE EPPERSON ARE ASSEMBLING THE PIECES OF THE BRAND-NEW PROGRAM.

THE UNIVERSITY of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing is starting its own honors program.

There’s no deadline for the program’s launch, but preparations are well under way, says Assistant Professor Brooke Epperson and Senior Lecturer Kelli Hand, who are working together to build the program.

“We're in the planning stages. No one has ever done this before, so it’s trying to figure out: What does it look like? What are the right processes,” Hand says. “We have a good plan, but we’re refining all of it to make it viable.”

The pair says they’re working with UTC Honors College Dean Linda Frost to make sure the College and the School of Nursing program follow similar guidelines and mesh without complications.

“Linda Frost has been an absolute champion for our program” as has School of Nursing Director Chris Smith, Hand says.

The School of Nursing Honors program is being designed for students earning bachelor’s degrees and who want to take an extra academic step, Epperson says.

“What we would like is to offer the students who may want an extra challenge or want to dive deeper into research or work more closely with nursing faculty,” she says. “Maybe they're already thinking, ‘I want to go to grad school. Maybe I want to explore this further.’”

Nursing students won’t be required to take an extra course to be in the Honors program, Epperson says.

“There will be a little higher expectation within a course,” she explains. “Let's just take nursing research, for instance. All 40 of my School of Nursing students are going to take this course. To make it an Honors course for particular students, there's going to be an additional component.

“It's not a brand-new course or a new program of study. It's taking the existing courses that we have and upping the ante.”

Right now, each nursing student has a senior project, but they’re not always able to see it through to its ultimate conclusion.

“These students have such amazing ideas,” Epperson says. “I've had students in my research class who really wanted to see their project through to the end and there just wasn't enough time.”

Nursing students already have a heavy load with classes, clinicals and research, Hand and Epperson say. Adding an Honors component will be tough, but it could impact the student’s future.

“It's the distinction of saying that you are an Honors program. It would look very good on an application to grad school,” Hand says. “If grad school is something that they're looking for—which is the majority of them—it will give them a leg up.”

Even if a student is in the Honors program, the School of Nursing’s focus will be on its overarching goal.

“Their end goal is to be a nurse, so we want to make sure that's still at the forefront,” Epperson says.

in the lab

Piggin’ Out

Pork ribs help students learn proper surgical procedures

The guy standing next to Christi Denton at the counter gave her a look that was a bit shocked, a bit confused and maybe a bit frightened.

“I went to Main Street Meats, and I'm talking to the guy behind the counter,” says Denton, assistant professor in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing. “He said, ‘Are you looking for beef or pork ribs?’ and I said, ‘I don't know. I'm a vegetarian. What's more like human?’”

What the man standing next to her didn’t know is that Denton, who’s also coordinator of the adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner program in the School of Nursing, needed pork ribs to teach students how to properly insert a tube between human ribs to drain fluid or air from the chest cavity. It’s a precarious procedure done in emergency situations when a chest tube is the only thing standing between life and death.

Denton is a critical care nurse who has worked night shifts for 17 years at Erlanger Hospital and an adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner, herself. She has dealt with dozens of chest-tube emergencies. Pork ribs are the most similar to humans’ when it comes to the “feel” of inserting the tube, she says.

“It's the most realistic one that I think can mimic humans. There are a lot of sensations that students won't have until they do it,” Denton says.

During a recent lab in the School of Nursing, students worked on slabs of ribs attached to an artificial human torso, learning the “feel” of using a scalpel to cut through layers of skin, muscle and fat between ribs, then using their fingers to recognize that they’ve reached the chest cavity and are ready to insert the tube.

When the lesson began, the fake torso was inserted into a “patient” with a “medical

misadventure,” Denton explains. After four students practiced their skills in different places on the ribs, the patient became a “multiple gunshot victim,” she told the students.

Artificial torsos with plastic skin and foam muscle cost several thousand dollars compared to about $2 to $4 per pound for a slab of pork spare ribs, Denton says. Artificial torsos aren’t as effective as the ribs for teaching students, she adds.

“When they simulate this with plastic-synthetic you don't get the same multilayer feel because on people you have a tough, membranous layer and you feel that ‘pop!’ to go through. Then you have to dissect out muscle,” Denton says. “All of that has a very different feel that they just can't replicate, but you certainly can on a piece of meat.”

A pig’s trachea—also available at meat stores— can be used for teaching students how to access the airway when going through the ribs won’t work. Intubation or using the trachea to open an airway to the lungs is required to keep a person breathing, Denton says.

Using pork products not only teaches students how it feels to insert a tube between human ribs or into the trachea, but this method also can take away some of the fear when dealing with a real medical emergency.

In these instances, Denton says, “it’s very nervewracking. Someone's very sick in front of you and the person is dying until you get this done. Simulation, especially with chest tubes or what we do on the pig trachea, gives the student some “real life” experience in a safe space. When they experience this in the hospital, they will have the skills needed to successfully support the patient’s most important function – breathing”. All thanks to pigs.

THIS PAGE: PIG RIBS ARE SIMILAR TO HUMANS’, SO STUDENTS IN THE ACUTE CARE NURSE PRACTITIONER LAB USE THEM TO LEARN HOW TO INSERT A CHEST TUBE.

Jennifer Isaacson’s 13-year-old daughter Emma has Down Syndrome, loves acting and “High School Musical.”

Isaacson’s 12-year-old son Josh is into robotics and plays trombone in the Signal Mountain Middle School band.

Her 8-year-old son Jake loves soccer and Pokemon. Five-year-old Lincoln just started kindergarten.

And Isaacson was enrolled in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing for the last five semesters and received a bachelor’s degree in nursing in December.

“There's no normal day,” she says with a laugh. She’ll stay busy after graduation. She has a fulltime job as a nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit lined up at Erlanger Hospital. The job relates back to her family.

“Emma required open-heart surgery when she was 1, and cardiac ICU nurses saved our lives and saved Emma’s. That's where I was introduced to cardiac and have loved it ever since,” says Isaacson, who graduated from Soddy Daisy High School in 2001.

Rachel Nall, clinical assistant professor in the UTC School of Nursing, describes Isaacson as “an example of motivation and perseverance.”

“Throughout her time in her nursing program, she has been focused on learning all that she can about the nursing profession and the opportunities nursing offers to people of all ages,” Nall says.

“She truly wants to be the best nurse she can be and care for patients.”

Jason Peter, Mary B. Jackson assistant professor in the School of Nursing, says Isaacson is “one of the most determined and motivated individuals I have come across in my nursing education career.”

“Patients and peers alike are overwhelmed by her fantastic capabilities and personality,” he says.

Isaacson attended Brigham Young University in

Provo, Utah, graduating with a bachelor's degree in audiology and speech pathology in 2005. At BYU, she met her Seattle-native husband, Jason.

In 2005, the couple moved to Knoxville for graduate work at the University of Tennessee. She earned a master’s degree in speech-language pathology, while Jason earned a law degree in 2007. He is now an attorney with Chattanooga law firm Spears, Moore, Rebman & Williams.

Getting the family up and out the door each weekday morning is a team effort, she says.

“We have a good system where I do food and backpacks, and he does clothes and shoes and hair,” she says. “Then we get them out and, yeah, it's just different depending on the day. We work together for medical appointments, for robotics club, for soccer clubs. We just go back and forth.”

For the last 10-plus years, she has worked fulltime as a licensed speech therapist, but her tightly packed schedule has forced her to cut back.

“I really loved it, and there's such a great need for the area, but now I'm more consulting and helping parents move in the right direction because, obviously, I have a big heart for families with special needs,” she says.

Isaacson hopes to return to UTC’s School of Nursing once she’s settled into her work in the Erlanger cardiac ICU. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to be a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) in general surgery operating rooms.

“I love the complex thinking that comes along with CRNA. It's a lot of calculations and problem-solving and deep cognitive thinking,” Isaacson says.

Nall, faculty in the Nurse Anesthesia Program at UTC, has no doubt Isaacson will succeed.

“I'm proud of her for wanting to continue furthering her nursing education after she earns her BSN,” she says, “and I have no doubt whatever she dedicates herself to, she will accomplish.”

Jason Peter was 4 when he rode his first rollercoaster — Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Walt Disney World in Florida.

“I remember screaming, and I remember we had to go on it several times,” he recalls.

Several times because he wanted to ride it again and again.

The again-and-again love has never dimmed and, in fact, has become one of the bright lights in Peter’s life. At this point, 40 years after that first thrill, he has ridden 751 different rollercoasters, a number that includes rides in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Mexico and Guatemala.

The Mary B. Jackson assistant professor in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing, Peter says his two sisters, nieces and nephews sometimes will meet him at theme parks for a rollercoaster ride or two, “but they're not my level.”

“I'm the only one that's a proclaimed rollercoaster enthusiast where I actually travel around,” says Peter, who’s also a family nurse practitioner and studying for a doctorate.

“I don't go primarily for the rollercoasters, but that's definitely something I plan the trips around. Mexico and Guatemala were strictly a rollercoaster trip, then other activities were planned around it.”

He hasn’t been on a coaster “in a while,” he says, but admits that a month is “a while” to him.

“I'll usually go to Six Flags over Georgia or Dollywood every couple of weeks,” he explains.

Whether a rollercoaster is top-notch depends on a series of factors, he says. Speed is one. Uniqueness of the ride another. What does it have that makes it stand out? Is it multiple inversions — upsidedown rollovers? Is it height? Do you plunge into tunnels then zoom back out?

Another consideration is “airtime,” a coaster enthusiast’s term for how long your body is lifted from the seat.

“I guess it’s all just the surprise of how the elements feel,” Peter says.

“The surprise of how they feel will really kind of get me laughing or giggling. The happiness, the freedom. Your hands up or whatever. To kind of have a release.”

His favorite rollercoasters are in Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Kings Dominion, both in Virginia; Busch Gardens Tampa in Florida; Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, and Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Although his 700-plus coaster rides might

seem to make it impossible to choose his favorite, Peter comes up with one instantly: The Intimidator 305 at King’s Dominion just north of Richmond, Virginia.

It starts with a climb up 305-foot hill then plunges into a series of this-way-then-thatway curves that whip riders at 90-degree angles to the ground. At 90 mph, Intimidator is all over in a little more than one minute.

It’s so fierce, it has rules about who can ride. It prohibits those with: Recent surgery, heart trouble/high blood pressure, neck trouble, back trouble, pregnant and any physical conditions that may be aggravated by the ride.

After it was first built, Peter says, the ride had to modified because it changed direction so quickly, some riders were “graying out,” as in losing consciousness for a few seconds.

Like athletes, rollercoaster enthusiasts know that you need to drink a lot of fluids before riding, especially if it’s an especially rough ride, Peter says.

As for his bucket-list parks, his No. 1 is England’s Alton Park, which is surrounded by green landscapes and stone-built castles.

“It's just such a beautiful area,” he says, “and they cannot build anything higher than the tree line.”

To meet those building codes, the rollercoasters have tunnels and gullies cut into the ground, he says. Alton Park also has what some considered one of the best coasters in the world—The Smiler —which has 14 inversions and hits speeds up to 53 mph.

on campus

Community of future caregivers

Nursing students support each other in freshman year

For Caiylea Gold, it was “a semester-long icebreaker.”

A freshman pre-nursing major at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, she lived, studied and spent free time with five other students in the Mocs Aspiring to Health and Science (MASH) Residential Learning Community.

“It was an icebreaker in meeting other members of our RLC.” They not only met each other, they became familiar with the campus says Gold, a native of Clarksville, Tennessee, and now a sophomore.

Starting fall semester 2021, the six-member group loaded their belongings into West Campus Housing. Like the 11 other on-campus learning communities the goal was to help freshmen ease into college life, face the same ups and downs and offer support to each other.

“It can drive students to open up and experience the campus and all it offers during their time here,” says Gold, who graduated from Rossview High School in Clarksville. “These offerings, in my mind, are only advantageous. Regardless of major, it can be nice to have a familiar group that you can reflect back on your semester with.”

Atlantic Coast High School.

This academic year, the number of students in the nursing RLC has increased to 15, says Tessa Mullinax-Baker, coordinator of the learning community and Mary B. Jackson clinical assistant professor in the School of Nursing.

RLC nursing students are from Tennessee cities such as Memphis, Jackson, Clarksville, Knoxville, Murfreesboro, Smyrna and Hendersonville, she says, although one is from Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens in New York City.

Several building blocks lay a foundation for student connection, Mullinax-Baker says.

“We have our core components—living, academics, mentoring, the social aspect, community and collaboration.”

In the 2022-2023 academic year, all RLC nursing students must take a first-year chemistry course, which encompasses both the academic and the living directives, Mullinax-Baker says.

“They're all in there together. Fifteen familiar faces. Someone in a major that's doing similar things and you're able to really study with and connect with,” she says.

To help them navigate the sometimes-frightening waters of freshman year, the students are assigned a peer mentor—usually an upper-class student in the School of Nursing who lives in West Campus— as well as a faculty mentor.

The mentors are beneficial, Gold says.

“The frequent updates from the professors and mentors associated with my major pushed me to keep up with my assignments,” she says.

Payne says he and his peer mentor have remained friends.

To maintain a social connection between the students, a family-style dinner open only to students and faculty is held each month, MullinaxBaker says.

“I learned how to use office hours to benefit myself. I learned the different types of resources that UTC offers, and I even branched out in the community of Chattanooga,” says Payne, who grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and graduated from

Students also visited the Tennessee Aquarium, went out for ice cream and attended the Southern Conference basketball tournament in Asheville, North Carolina last spring.

“The students got to stay overnight in a hotel, and we went up on a bus together,” Mullinax-Baker says.

Social events gave her “a reason to come out of

Sophomore Dustin Payne was a member of the initial nursing RLC—the only male—and says it “was truly an amazing experience.”

my dorm on days where I didn't necessarily have plans for myself,” Gold says.

To create community connections, the students volunteer at local nonprofits both on campus and off, including Scrappy’s Cupboard, MullinaxBaker says.

“One of the things that we've been doing this year is at the Hamilton County Snack Pack program for underserved students in the county school system. We go to pack those bags once a month,” she says.

The RLC nursing students often work with students in the UTC Department of Health and Human Performance and the School of Education,

which, like the School of Nursing, fall under the College of Health, Education and Professional Studies.

“This is where the collaboration comes in. They're able to talk to both faculty and students from other majors,” says Mullinax-Baker.

With all that the School of Nursing Residential Learning Community has to offer, Payne says he “would recommend the RLC to any and everyone."

“This is a place to thrive and make sure you are on track and gives you a one-on-one with teachers and students. There are many RLCs out there, and you can find one that fits your style, and it will truly change you for the better.”

DOUBLE DUTY: A WINNER

Maggie Shaw smiles broadly as she shares the story.

Shaw, a defender on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga soccer team, was sitting in her School of Nursing class the day after the Mocs won the program’s first-ever regular-season conference title.

Suddenly, Mary B. Jackson Clinical Assistant Professor Tessa Mullinax-Baker ran into the room.

“She comes to all my soccer games and she’s very supportive,” Shaw explains, “and after we won the SoCon, she and my other teachers ran in with pompoms and cupcakes.

“She’s really good. She understands what I go through.”

Shaw, who received a bachelor’s degree in nursing in December, was equal parts nursing and soccer during her time at UTC. On the soccer pitch, the native of Columbia, South Carolina, was a threetime all-conference first-team selection and a two-time SoCon Defensive Player of the Year—playing in a program-record 85 matches for the Mocs.

Nursing students have to complete an academically rigorous, demanding major. Student-athletes have to practice, train, lift weights and, of course, participate in actual games—not to mention out-of-town travel.

When you blend everything together, says Mullinax-Baker—who joined the UTC faculty in 2012—it’s a full-time job.

“We’ve had a couple of student-athletes in the School of Nursing since I’ve been here,” she says, “but not many. It’s important to learn and understand the work they put in outside the School of Nursing.

“Once I started to understand more about their time commitment, I definitely wanted to take that extra time to support them.”

Says Shaw, “The staff showed so much support—which is really nice—and it made me feel like this was worth it. The people here were invested in me, and I invested so much into this program.”

During her final semester, Thursdays were particularly grueling. “I had class from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” she says, “and I would leave practice 30 minutes early and run to the nursing building. It was just a lot of juggling with really no wiggle room.

“You definitely have to have a good relationship with your teachers and your coaches, but if I didn’t love both of the things that I was doing, I wouldn’t be doing them.”

The key to making it all work, she says, has been time management.

“When I wake up in the morning, I always have a schedule in my head,” Shaw says. “My time was so limited as a student-athlete and a nursing student that I didn’t really have any time to waste. It’s just prioritizing my schedule and setting myself up so I don’t forget anything.

“And,” she laughs, “I love my agenda book.”

IN SOCCER AND STUDIES

Mullinax-Baker mentored former UTC volleyball player Megan Kaufman, a December 2021 graduate, and says going through these journeys with studentathletes has been interesting to watch.

“There’s something different about them, their drive and their grit,” she says.

“We really have to connect with them in the class and in clinical because they don’t have a lot of extra time to hang around. They’re gone after class because they have a practice to get to or something to make up.”

After taking the NCLEX exam in early 2023 and exploring her career options, Shaw figures to be where the action is, which shouldn’t come as any surprise based on her final semester as an undergraduate student.

Along with the demands of soccer and school—which included doing her preceptorship in the emergency department at Parkridge Hospital—she worked in the neuro ICU at Erlanger Hospital.

“I want to be in on all the good stuff,” she says of her future plans. “I don’t want to sit back. I see myself working critical care in the ICU. I definitely want to work at a (Level I trauma) hospital.”

Mullinax-Baker says, “With the leadership role she played with the soccer team, I can definitely see her being a trauma nurse and taking a leadership role in that area because of her drive, her commitment and her time management.

“Whatever avenue she plans to take, Maggie has a super bright future.”

Martha Butterfield’s Front-row Seat to the Evolution of Nursing

What was the nursing profession like when Martha Butterfield arrived in Chattanooga in 1967?

Butterfield, the first faculty member in the history of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga nursing program, recalls a time when the nursing position “was to do what you’re told; you know, kowtow to the physicians.”

It was expected that nurses would stand up when a doctor entered the nursing station, she says, “and the physician was ‘be all’ and ‘do all’ and nurses were there to push bedpans.”

Perhaps no one in the region has had a more incredible front-row seat to the profession’s evolution than Butterfield, a retired Mary B. Jackson associate professor who taught at UTC from 1974 to 1998.

When she and her late husband, Bill—a longtime UTC professor of education—first came to Chattanooga, only two baccalaureate programs existed in Tennessee. In fact, the city didn’t even have ambulance service at the time; funeral homes sent their vehicles to accident scenes.

Butterfield, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Ohio State University, didn’t find employment opportunities easy to come by, saying, “They didn’t know what to do with somebody with a master’s degree.”

After landing at Baroness Erlanger Hospital School of Nursing, she and two other local nurses began a crusade to bring a nursing program to UTC to serve the state’s Southeast region.

They found that there was interest in a program, “but they weren’t interested in driving more than 30 miles to get that degree,” Butterfield recalls, “so the three of us got together and started to work on getting a bachelor’s program.”

They worked with professional nursing organizations, University officials, legislators and colleagues in Knoxville. “We kept pushing,” she says, “and we had some local senators and representatives who supported us. It took us several years.

“Knoxville finally said, ‘If you support us, we’ll support you,’ and that’s how we came into being.”

Butterfield laughs as she recalls the initial days

of the Department of Nursing—as it was first known when it officially started in 1974.

“We were the stepchildren of the University,” she says. “We started out with a couple of rooms in Race Hall, then we moved to Brock Hall— and we were kicked out because the people in power didn’t want nursing in that building. Then we went to one of the houses up on the hill next to the dorms.”

The program later moved to Guerry Center before settling into the Metro Building.

After the program’s growing pains came growing stature, and Butterfield talks with pride about being a member of the UTC faculty for the beginning of the master’s program, the birth of the nurse anesthesia program and the initial doctoral program discussions.

Beyond just new programs, she was there for the increasing status of nurses within the medical profession.

“I’ve seen a great change in the whole health care scene,” she says. “Nurses have ideas and good thoughts, are bright and can ask good questions. We can have input into the care that patients receive. That was not around before.”

Her involvement with the nursing program continues to this day as a donor. She is the benefactor of several gifts, including the Martha Butterfield Graduate Nursing Scholarship Fund.

“It’s important to give to the University and the School of Nursing so that we can get more students, have better programs and do what we can to enhance our programs,” she says.

Butterfield’s eyes sparkle as she reminisces about the program’s beginnings and what it has become today.

“The first few years, our students thought we were just terrible because we were so tough,” she says, “but we said, ‘We want you to be the best nurses possible.’ We were pretty strict—and that has held up.

“We are at an absolutely spectacular point and we have come so far. Words can’t express how proud I am of the work that Chris (Smith) and the faculty have done.”

ACCOLADES

RACHEL NALL AND ROSEBELLE PETERS have earned Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees. Dr. Nall’s translational project focus was “The Implementation of a Second Victim Education and Resource Program in Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.” Dr. Peters’ project focus was “Evidence-Based Simulation Training Program: Developing Facilitator Competence.”

LINDA HILL , program coordinator for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Nurse Anesthesia Concentration was named a Fellow in the American Academy of Nurse Anesthetists in August.

The UTC SCHOOL OF NURSING (SON) has been named the Best Nursing School in Tennessee which prepares students for licensure as a Registered Nurse by registerednursing. org. UTC-SON also has been honored with a top ten ranking, best-in-class nursing schools in Tennessee for its online programs, having been named one of today’s best programs for online higher education in health care by EduMed.org, earning top honors for overall quality, affordability and commitment to student success.

ROSEBELLE PETERS

LINDA HILL

RACHEL NALL

School of Nursing Dept 1051 615 McCallie Avenue Chattanooga,TN 37403