Germanna nursing grads come through when it counts

            By PAT MONICAL

During a routine checkup our primary care physician asked my husband if he ever experienced shortness of breath.  He said no, only upon exertion, and it went away quickly.  He is physically active, is up and down stairs all day and never experiences pain or becomes winded.  He did say if he carried a box of copier paper up to the second floor he gets a little winded but it goes away immediately.  All blood work is good but he does take a statin for cholesterol.  Just to be safe the doctor ordered a stress test, EKG, and echocardiogram.

On June 26^th my husband went in for the tests at the Pratt medical center next to Mary Washington Hospital.  The EKG was fine.  The echocardiogram was fine.  The stress test showed a problem.  The technician came out and told us we would have to go to the hospital for evaluation.  She told us to wait, that she would be contacting the hospital, and would prepare papers and images for us to take with us.  When she came out she very firmly said, “Go to the hospital….NOW.” 

In the ER they looked at the images and scheduled a catheterization immediately.  The cath lab cardiologist came out and abruptly stated, “This is very bad.  Very bad.  We don’t know why he is still alive.”  He was sent to ICU and scheduled for a quadruple bypass first thing in the morning.   We went from a semi-routine test to crisis management in the matter of a few hours.  I was blown away and by myself in a hospital I’ve never been to before.  We moved here in 2010.  I still don’t know the names of the streets and I have no history of any medical facilities.  Now we were facing serious surgery.

This is where Germanna Community College’s nursing program comes in.  The people at Mary Washington hospital (from administrative staff, volunteers, housekeeping staff, food service, clerks, parking lot attendants, security to all medical personnel) were efficient, professional, KIND, helpful, eager to be of service, and basically acted as if they knew what they were doing and had done it before.   We were treated as if we had a brain, things were explained to us, and we were constantly asked if we had any questions.  We weren’t a number and we mattered.  That human touch and professionalism scored highly with me.  And you know what?  Most of the nurses we encountered were GCC grads. 

I work at Germanna and there were times before this that I’ve encountered some students who have made me wonder if they have what it takes to take care of others.  There were times they were too busy talking on their phone to notice a door held for them or to even hold a door for others and other similar events.  I’d wonder if they’d ever notice the needs of others.  What I found is that, somehow, the necessary skills and caring were imparted to them during the course of their training. 

The nursing staff was constantly on the go, yet their attention was to their patient and their family members.  They didn’t wait for someone to ask them for help.  They offered it without asking.  They anticipated the needs and acted as if it was a privilege to serve.  That made a difficult and stressful situation a whole lot easier to handle for the patient and family. My husband came home four days after his surgery.  His progress has been amazing and                     that’s a testament to the care he received.

Thanks to Dean Patti Lisk and the rest of the nursing department at GCC.  I could not be more appreciative or impressed and I no longer wonder if a student has what it takes.  If they are in Germanna’s program, they do.

Fred Rankin to be honored as GCC Educational Foundation's Distinguished Person of the Year on Feb. 10

The Germanna Community College Educational Foundation will award its 2012 Distinguished Person of the Year award to Mr. Fred M. Rankin III, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mary Washington Healthcare, at 6 p.m. on Feb. 10 at the Fredericksburg Country Club.

"Fred Rankin is a difference-maker," GCC President David A. Sam said. "He's made a difference in our community and he and Mary Washington Healthcare have made a difference for Germanna's 15,000 students. I don't think he knows how much of a positive impact he's had on our college and our area."

In 1992, Mr. Rankin was named president of Mary Washington Hospital. In 1995, he was promoted to and continues in his current position with Mary Washington Healthcare. Under Mr. Rankin's leadership, Mary Washington Healthcare has been Germanna's biggest corporate benefactor, investing $1.4 million in the college.

"Mr Rankin and Mary Washington Healthcare have been critical partners in developing Germanna's highly-respected nursing program and helping us double the program's size," said Michael Catell, director of GCC's Educational Foundation and Alumni Relations,

The event will begin with a 6 p.m. reception, followed by dinner and the award presentation.

Go to www.germanna.edu or call 540/834-8988 for reservations or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.



Germanna Educational Foundation Distinguished Person Of The Year BanquetDate: Friday, Feb 10th, 2012

Time: 6 p.m.
Location: Fredericksburg Country Club

Cost: $75 Per Person

Share in a very special evening to honor this year's recipient Fred M. Rankin III. President and Chief Executive Officer, Mary Washington Healthcare.

The reception will be followed by dinner and award presentation.

Germanna student realizes dream of becoming a registered nurse; sets goal for 4-year-old daughter

Mary Washington Hospital registered nurse Tiffany Henderson, above, credits Germanna with getting her where she wanted to go, career-wise.

Fredericksburg resident Tiffany Henderson, 26, had more than her own career in mind when she entered the Registered Nursing Program at Germanna Community College.
She wanted to be a good role model for her 4-year-old daughter, Aleah.
Henderson completed the RN program at Germanna in May, passed her state board exam, and is now a critical care nurse at Mary Washington Hospital.
She was in the Licensed Practical Nursing program at GCC she became pregnant with her daughter and left college. When her daughter was a couple of months old, she returned, entering the RN program.
For the past six years, she had worked as a registrar in the Mary Washington Hospital emergency room, watching others perform the job she longed to do herself.
“I definitely wanted to finish before Aleah started school—to focus on her studies and not my own.
“She asks me: ‘Mommy, are you going to work to make people feel better? Are you going to take people’s temperature?’ “
Henderson said she’d like Aleah to become a nurse, too.
“I wanted to set an example for her,” Henderson said, “to do something that will help her take care of herself in the future. She saw me go through the process. Children follow your example.”
Henderson said the GCC Nursing program: “gave me what I needed to reach my goal of becoming a registered nurse. I was ready when I took the state board exam. There were no surprises in the questions because of the way Germanna prepared us. I feel like I got what I paid for. I’m satisfied.”
She is one of nine critical care nurses at Mary Washington Hospital, all from the same class at Germanna.
GCC Assistant Professor of Nursing Debbie VanNortwick taught Tiffany in both clinical and classroom settings. “She consistently sought to understand the whole picture in order to develop critical thinking skills,” VanNortwick said. “In clinicals [live hospital settings], she was always kind to the patients and her coworkers. She demonstrated the ability to be a strong member of the health care team. She will be an asset to any organization.”
Dean of Nursing Mary Gilkey said: “Accounts like Tiffany’s are typical, especially in today's economy where many moms, dads, sons and daughters of all ages are working very hard to find a means to support their families.”
She said Germanna Nursing, and other programs, including GCC Workforce and career and technical studies: “are challenged to meet the ever-growing workforce needs of our region. It’s our hope that if families have not looked to Germanna to prepare them to fill job openings in growing fields that they take a second look and see just how we can be a means to affordably provide an education for career and lifetime educational choices.”

DALE FEATHERSTON, ICONIC 'FORCE OF NATURE' WHO GAVE LIFE TO THE GERMANNA COMMUNITY COLLEGE NURSING PROGRAM, WILL BE MISSED

This photo was taken one of the last times that all three Germanna deans of nursing had lunch together. Left to right, Jane Ingalls, Dale Featherston and Mary Gilkey. “That meal was most enjoyable as it was peppered with her very wry sense of humor-- she had a contagious giggle,” current GCC Dean of Nursing & Health Technologies Mary Gilkey said.

Dale Featherston was a nurse in a M.A.S.H. unit in Korea. She once snuck an injured dog into the Mary Washington Hospital emergency room for treatment. And her revolutionarily proactive, intelligent and caring approach to teaching nursing made Germanna Community College’s program something special from the beginning.

Featherston, who was director of nursing when Germanna opened its doors at Locust Grove in 1970, passed away on Feb. 28, 2011. She was far ahead of her time, teaching nursing 30 years ago the way it's being taught today, with an emphasis on preventing illness rather than waiting to treat it after it develops, and working to create a healthy community as a whole to prevent the spread of disease and reduce health care costs.

“She called waiting for people to become ill ‘sick care,’ not ‘health care,’ said Dr. Jane Ingalls, R.N., who succeeded Featherston as dean of nursing at Germanna Commmunity College in 1992. Dr. Ingalls said it required courage for Featherston to take what was then considered a radical approach.

"She would present ideas to the Board of Nursing that they did not particularly approve of - but within a few years, those ideas became models for other nursing programs and the Board wanted her to share them all the time," said Sandy Demotses, who worked with Featherstone.

“Dale Featherston pioneered Germanna Community College's nursing program,” said GCC President David A. Sam. “She was a force of nature and a loved presence. We at Germanna will miss her deeply and extend our deepest condolences to her family.

“She provided visionary and entrepreneurial leadership---without her, Germanna's nursing program would not be the world-class program that it has become," Dr. Sam said. "Through her leadership, her sense of humor, her ethic of compassionate care, and her spirit of challenge, Dale Featherstone served not only as a great teacher and a powerful leader, but lived a life of service that is the model of the nurse who ministers to the body, the mind and the spirit.”

“Dale was the conscience of the college, always loving, always caring, and always giving. Mother Teresa now has company,” said Dr. Rich Gossweiler, a professor of history at GCC who was Dean of Instruction and Student Services during Featherstone's time at at Germanna.

Alice Doeppe MSN, RN, an assistant professor of nursing at GCC, was one of Featherston’s students during the 1980s.

Doeppe said that after retirement from Germanna, Featherston helped organize nursing programs in Alaska and Russia and worked with Indian reservations to improve nursing there. She also developed the nursing program at Blue Ridge Community College.

“Dale was a M.A.S.H. Army nurse during the Korean War and loved to tell her students stories about her adventures,” Doeppe said. “She loved animals as much as people, and I think my favorite story was the one she told about when she was a nurse at Mary Washington Hospital. Apparently she or a friend had an ailing dog that they smuggled into the E.R. in the middle of the night for treatment.

“Dale influenced me in so many ways, but perhaps the biggest impact on me was the example she set, Doeppe said. “Her honesty, fairness, love of mankind, and passion for teaching ignited the spark in me that has led me to where I am today. Just to have known Dale Featherston was a privilege and an honor.”

Featherston, who lived in Fredericksburg, was devoted to her family and cared for her parents, a sister with disabilities, and her ailing brother.

“She had a gruff voice and a most contagious laugh that made you feel happy just to be around her,” Doeppe said.

“Dale Featherston was a nurse’s nurse,” said Mary Gilkey, who is now GCC’s Dean of Nursing & Health Technologies. “She was known for her advanced vision for the role of nursing. She was committed to making sure students were prepared to serve and provide the best health care for their patients. Even in her final days she was urging us at Germanna to petition a way to bring baccalaureate education to Germanna so all ‘her’ graduates would return to school and get that degree. In the short time I interacted with her she clearly shared with me the importance of believing that ‘each one of us can make a difference.’”

“I urge all those who were impacted by her to continue her mission,” Dean Gilkey said. “Provide the best patient care you can.”

“She walked in the room and took over --- in an exciting and positive way,” said GCC’s Locust Grove Campus Coordinator of Counseling Sarah Somerville. “She very frequently wore black leather pants and and a jacket and she was so striking.  Her hoarse- toned voice was mesmerizing....she had been a heavy smoker and in those days you could smoke anywhere in the building.  She cared so much for the students -- I can genuinely say I learned some of my passion and compassion for students from her.  She would come into Counseling and tell you the entire life story of a student and what they needed in way of help.  She many times confided that she had ‘taken them under her wing’ and if I am not mistaken, even probably put some of the most desperate in her basement when the need was at that level.  She would do absolutely anything for a student.  She wanted them to succeed and she knew them all--each and every one...  She was aggressive in making sure they got all the support and resources they needed to have a chance at success.
 
'There is no exaggeration in what you hear about the extent of Dale Featherston's graciousness and charity towards all she came in contact with -- but especially and particularly Germanna nursing students," Somerville said. "She was tough, though....She didn't put up with nonsense. She expected the students to step up and meet the bar she set for them.  She knew what they had to face as nurses and she did not sugar coat anything.”
 


Survivors include her daughter, Susie Kilian and husband, Jim; three granddaughters, Rachel, Rebecca and Olivia; and her sister, Mary F. Ball.

A rosary service will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 3, 2011, with visitation following until 8 p.m. at Covenant Funeral Service, Fredericksburg.

A funeral Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, March 4, 2011 at St. Mary Catholic Church in Fredericksburg with Rev. Donald Rooney officiating. Interment will follow in Sunset Memorial Gardens.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Germanna Community College Educational Foundation, Dale Featherston Endowment for Nursing Scholarships, 2130 Germanna Highway, Locust Grove, VA 22508.

Dean Gilkey added: “We can all honor her when we recommitment ourselves to our roles as nurses and as a further tribute please consider sending a small donation in her memory to the school she loved, Germanna Community College Nursing Program. She believed that nursing gave people the means to feed, clothe and take care of their family as they care for others. We need to continue this legacy. RIP Dale, you will be missed.”



Michael Zitz
Director of Media & Community Relations
Germanna Community College
540/846-5163