As technology advances, nearly every industry around the world changes with it. Department stores have morphed into online shopping, taxis have become ride-sharing apps, and going to the movies is now as simple as a monthly streaming service.
Healthcare, and nursing by extension, have also become significantly more accessible.
BYU College of Nursing recognizes this shift and its implications for the nursing job market; as the healthcare environment changes, the work options for nurses are expanding dramatically!
“A lot of healthcare is moving out into the community,” said BYU College of Nursing professor Brandon Thatcher. “More and more of it is done in your driveway, your home, or an outpatient clinic.”
Expanding Options
Seeking to adapt to changing times, the College has created the Nursing 372 Chronic Disease Management course which aims to amplify nursing students’ perspective of where their nursing education can take them.
Professors Carly Peterson (BS ‘99), Melanie Livingston, Brandon Thatcher, and Katreena Merrill (AS ‘83, BS ‘85) got to work preparing the course for the Winter 2025 semester.
Nursing 372 gives fourth-semester students the chance to participate in atypical clinical experiences. While all nursing students must put in many hours of hospital work, locations like smaller specialty clinics, schools, and mental health institutions aren’t typically emphasized. Students in the new course were able to experience each of these locations and many more as they participated in different clinical rotations each week.
First-Block Students' Experiences
Each student got a smörgåsbord of clinical experiences, shadowing professionals in specialized clinics, an elementary school, and more. The professors felt that every student should spend time learning about mental health treatment.
Savanna Harris remarked on what she learned during a clinical at an inpatient psychiatric unit. She recalled caring for someone who had attempted to take their own life just hours before, saying that “it felt surreal” to sit with them and play a simple card game. “Our only job was to help them through that time of crisis and see them for who they are,” she said.
Students also had the chance to shadow a school nurse in Sandy, Utah. During Carter Bird’s shift, he got to help as they performed vision and hearing screenings for young children. There were several Hispanic children present, and he got to utilize his Spanish skills to connect with them in their native language!
Sometimes as nursing students, we get caught in the track of [wanting to] work in the ER or the ICU — the more intense side of medicine. This course gave us new opportunities to think about interacting with patients in different ways.
Brooke Slagle shared one of the unique experiences she had. She described a special part of the course where students were paired off and assigned to visit families of children with chronic illnesses.
She also visited a mother of two children who’d been born prematurely. Asking the mother about her experience, Brooke learned that the children's survival wasn’t certain at first. Two years later, the only health issue is a backup inhaler they have for emergencies!
“For me it was really cool to see that, especially with kids, they make it [through the illness] and they do well,” Brooke remarked. “There are so many miracles in medicine that you could never deny.”
Seeing Patients as People
This clinical [experience] helps you dive deeper behind the doors of people’s homes and into their actual life, rather than in their hospital room.
One main takeaway the students are coming away with is that chronic diseases are just that: chronic. Patients may leave the hospital bed, but they still grapple with their illness each day.
Jane Hansen, a student who was particularly impacted by her experience in the psychiatric hospital, spoke about the need to see others for who they are.
"You have to learn to be compassionate and understanding of others," she said. "[Patients] all have different families, different backgrounds and outlooks on life.”
Hand-in-hand with developing deeper empathy for patients, students in the course are also taught the importance of advocating for them outside of the hospital. Several students in the second block recently got to take a trip to the Utah State Capitol last month to learn about how nurses can lobby government officials for certain healthcare policies.
Through connections at the American Cancer Society, students were taught by professional lobbyists about different bills and the way policies are created. They were also able to set up meetings with several representatives and had great conversations with them in the capitol halls.
Professor Peterson remarked that “this was an experience they never would’ve gotten to do on their own,” and it taught them valuable lessons about how the role they play in driving the changes they hope to see for their patients.
To read about BYU College of Nursing FNP students’ work at the Utah State Capitol, click here.
A Work in Progress
For being brand-new, this course has proved to be quite functional. Professor Livingston explained that her team worked hard to provide students with all the information for their clinicals, and they check in with them by text throughout their shifts to ensure everything goes smoothly.
Not only has it given students a chance to learn about potential career landing points, it has increased their awareness of what it means to have a chronic illness and their ability to see patients holistically.
Reflecting on their debrief after the family interviews, Professor Livingston said that “I think at one point, everybody in the group was crying…There were some pretty spiritual insights that the students had gained…”
The students have had ample opportunity to provide feedback about what’s working well and what can be improved. Currently, the professors involved are working to expand their arsenal of clinical sites and make the process more efficient.
The professors hope that this course will become an integral part of BYU College of Nursing in coming years.