| Service Learning Program NEWS | ||
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Students
to compile history of Visiting Nurse Association
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The Courier News October 20, 1998 By LARRY HIGGS Staff Writer BRANCHBURG -- Judy Schwartz now works in the paper maze of managed health care. But she started her career as a staff nurse, making her rounds in the heat of the summer and the snows of winter, visiting patients at home. Nursing students Tiffany Bermel of Flemington and Bob Wojcak of Manville picked Schwartz's memory on Monday to help write the history of the Somerset Valley Visiting Nurse Association, which will turn 50 this year. Raritan Valley Community College nursing students started interviewing Visiting Nurse Association members at the college Monday. They'll write the organization's history through the college's Service Learning program, which won a national award this year. In the world of managed care, which encourages shorter hospital stays, visiting nurses have to juggle keeping costs down and making sure patients get the proper care, Schwartz said. "Before managed care, people would be in the hospital for a month; now, they're home in four days," said Schwartz, an 11-year association veteran. "The biggest part of our job is to get patients to the highest level of independence." Bermel and Wojcak are two of 20 second-year students working on the project through Service Learning, a hybrid program of community service and internships. Students will continue to interview past and present visiting nurses to put together a timeline of the organization's history back to its founding in 1948. That information will be condensed and included in a brochure students will publish in time for the association's annual meeting in May. "They're excited for a number of reasons; this history doesn't exist," said Lori Moog, college service learning coordinator. "This kind of research is normally done on the baccalaureate level." Wojcak and Bermel's questions ranged from whether nurses wore caps when Schwartz started working to the subject of men breaking into the field. "Nurses stopped wearing caps in the 1970s," Schwartz said. "Men haven't been involved until the last five years. Some patients appreciate it." Students Glanda Gonzalez of the Franklin section of Somerset and Romina Tolentino of Hillsborough volunteered to run the project and learn more about different aspects of nursing in the process. "I'm looking for an opportunity to know the association in depth; it's the trend of the future," Gonzalez said.
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