Last month, first semester Moraine Park nursing students helped residents get ready for their annual prom at the Fond du Lac St. Francis Home.
The students used their clinical time to provide hair and nail care, and dress the residents for their big event! The students enjoyed the one-on-one time to pamper the residents and give personalized care.
St. Francis Home hosts the resident prom each spring with a live music from a local high school band and invites family members to participate. So much fun!
Nursing students in Instructor Michele Mengert’s Mental Health and Community Concepts course recently completed their community advocacy projects as part of our Spring, 2019 service learning opportunities. Michele said, “students are purposefully working to learn community oriented nursing. We want to target prevention as a priority. Nurses need to understand how to advocate for specific populations of people and have knowledge of the resource programs in your community that you can partner with to help your patients.”
This semester 17 students spent over 80 hours researching and collaborating with community partners to learn more about planned parenthood, poverty, women & infants, suicide, domestic violence, opioid abuse, water quality, and more. Students formulated detailed advocacy plans to address how a nurse could help a community identify and address these issues, providing education, awareness, advocacy and resources. Students gathered data to help determine strengths and weaknesses in their own communities. Project presentations were held on May 17.
Congratulations on all of this great work on important community issues!
On May 16, Moraine Park Technical College nursing students assisted St. Agnes Hospital with their tornado evacuation drill. The 14 first- year nursing students helped by acting as patients for the staff to evacuate from various inpatient units across the hospital. Through this experience, the students were able to represent Moraine Park in the community and provide feedback during a debriefing reviewing the policies and procedures for hospital evacuation situations. They will also be able to apply the knowledge they gained to their third-semester mental health course when they further discuss emergency situations!
For more information Moraine Park Technical College, visit morainepark.edu.
Local elementary students will be given the opportunity to interact with professionals from a variety of careers during the Junior Achievement (JA) Jump into Your Future Day at their school. Business and community professionals will be invited to serve as guest presenters in the classrooms to discuss and demonstrate aspects of their careers and their journey towards that career.
Through the JA Jump into Your Future Day, Kelly Shafaie, associate dean of nursing at Moraine Park, had the opportunity to present on the nursing career to Jackson Elementary School K5 and 1st graders on March 8.
The presentations included: An explanation of the career path; personal stories of interest to elementary students. Hands on activities that reinforce information about the career path. Educational decisions; the joys and frustrations of the career field. A discussion of how to apply skills learned to the workplace. The relevance of their classroom learning to the world of work.
The JA Jump into Your Future event is intended to empower elementary students to make a connection between what they learn in school and how it can be applied in the real world – enhancing the relevance of their classroom learning and increasing their understanding of the value of staying in school and studying hard.
Moraine Park is proud to be a part of local initiatives such as the JA Jump into Your Future event.
For more information on Moraine Park, visit morainepark.edu.
Many of us can identify life-changing moments as a result of being in the right place at the right time. For Danairis (Deedee) Melendez, that is exactly how her Moraine Park journey began.
Deedee is a mother of six children and originally came to Wisconsin from Puerto Rico. Her family settled in Milwaukee, and she found employment at a local Optometrist office. To the outside world she led a normal life, but behind closed doors, she was in a vicious cycle of abuse, both mentally and physically. It is apparent that Deedee has a strength that is rare to come by. However, she said that even her strong, independent personality was no match to her abuser.
“I never thought that I would be a victim of abuse,” Deedee said. “I knew my family deserved more. So, I packed up and fled the situation.”
She relocated her family to the West Bend area and welcomed this as an opportunity to have a fresh start.
Deedee started working at Advanced Focus Eyecare in West Bend. On a typical workday, she was helping a woman find glasses when they began to talk about career goals. Deedee mentioned her desire to become a nurse, and her customer just happened to be Kathy Vandemark, a counselor at Moraine Park Technical College in West Bend.
“We hit it off, I liked her immediately,” Deedee said. “Kathy helped walk me through the enrollment process, and ultimately helped me get into my program.”
Deedee not only wants to be a nurse, but she also has aspirations to be a neonatal nurse.
“My oldest son was born at 23-weeks,” she said. “He had a one-percent survival rate, and he just turned 17!”
Her experience in the neonatal unit as a parent is what motivates her to want to serve the parents and babies in need of care.
“Moraine Park has been wonderful,” she said. “My teachers are helpful, and this experience has helped to put me on the path towards my dream career.”
Both Deedee and Kathy were in the right place at the right time. The result? Deedee will petition to begin her nursing clinical this March and is expected to graduate in December of 2020.
She is also writing a book documenting her journey as a victim of abuse. Her goal is to help others in similar situations find the help that they need to redefine their life.
We look forward to following Deedee’s journey and wish her the best of luck as she continues to pursue her degree.
**A fun side note**
Deedee’s daughter Jayanie age 12, sat in on our interview. I couldn’t help but strike up a conversation with her also. Jayanie is quite possibly the most polite 12-year old I’ve ever spoken with, and she also aspires to be in health care. Her goal is to be a heart surgeon, and her eyes sparkled a bit when she talked about her dream career. I look forward to interviewing Jayanie in the future as a Moraine Park health sciences student.
Moraine Park Technical College will be hosting a site review February 5 -7, 2019 for its continuing accreditation for the Nursing Associates degree program by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN).
The public is invited to meet the site visit team and share their comments about the program. The open forum meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 6, 2019, from 4:00 to 4:30 p.m.at any of Moraine Park’s three main campuses, Beaver Dam, room K-201; Fond du Lac, room E-141; West Bend, room L-137.
Written comments are also welcome and should be received by January 31, 2019.
Moraine Park held a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) course at Slinger High School this fall. This opportunity allowed for high school students to obtain both a certificate and college credit.
To say that Rosy Samou, of Ripon, has had a winding journey to get to Moraine Park Technical College would be an understatement.
Rosy is a native of Cameroon, Africa, and in the last five years has moved internationally twice, traveled nearly 10,000 miles, learned English, gave birth to her third child, earned her CNA, enrolled in the nursing program, and is now petitioning to be a Registered Nurse (RN).
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