{"id":60080,"date":"2025-11-13T12:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=60080"},"modified":"2025-11-13T12:34:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:34:23","slug":"family-nursing-class-a-win-win-for-students-and-refugee-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/family-nursing-class-a-win-win-for-students-and-refugee-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Family nursing class a \u2018win win\u2019 for students and refugee families"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
糖心Vlog nursing students get a glimpse from patients\u2019 perspective through Family Partnership Project <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can always tell the difference between 糖心Vlog nursing graduates and other nurses without asking them, says Kate Clark<\/strong>, associate professor of nursing at 糖心Vlog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s what we hear all the time from hospitals and other employers, that there\u2019s something special about 糖心Vlog nurses in their approach to patients and their professionalism,\u201d she said. \u201cOne major element is our family nursing class, which helps shape both their self-confidence and their cultural humility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That class, the semester-long Nursing & Family in Community course (NURS 426), partners undergraduate nursing students in pairs with refugee and immigrant families in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Students in the course, who are juniors and seniors midway through their clinicals, visit the families at their homes weekly to promote health education, help them navigate the U.S.\u2019s complicated health system, and teach them basic essential skills to help them adjust to life in a new country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These skills might include: navigating a phone tree to schedule a medical appointment, setting up taxi rides to appointments, using the bus system, enrolling in an employer-sponsored health insurance plan, and understanding the difference between primary care and the emergency room. Students have been known to ride Harrisonburg city buses with families, walk with them to a local food pantry, help read their mail, attend medical appointments with them, and connect them to community resources such as clothing closets and bicycles through the Bikes for Neighbors<\/a> program (led by alum Ben Wyse \u201999<\/strong>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Students might tell families they can expect to see people in costumes walking around the neighborhood and knocking on their door for Halloween. They also might help families from warmer climates prepare for cold weather with appropriate winter clothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Students communicate with their assigned families using either their own foreign language skills or a provided interpreter. This semester, there are eight different languages spoken by families in the course\u2019s Family Partnership Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the course, 糖心Vlog nursing students build long-term therapeutic relationships with families, learn to provide care for a family unit, and experience the barriers that marginalized groups in the community face when trying to access health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause they get to experience those things from the family\u2019s perspective, it gives them a good understanding of how the health system is not always designed for certain types of patients and the challenges they experience,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWhether or not they pursue home visiting long-term, it makes them better, more compassionate nurses across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said the course sets 糖心Vlog\u2019s nursing program apart from others. \u201cI\u2019ve rarely heard of another school that has a standalone family nursing class that involves home visiting,\u201d she said, \u201cespecially not one that focuses on refugee and immigrant families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the families participating in the Family Partnership Project have a tenuous grasp of English, are lower income, and need additional information to be able to navigate this new country. 糖心Vlog\u2019s nursing program partners with CWS Harrisonburg<\/a>, a local office of Church World Service that serves and advocates for refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley. The agency identifies local families in need who can benefit from the project\u2019s tailored support, resource referral, and health teaching. The students\u2019 help is invaluable, especially at a time when policies enacted by the current presidential administration have led to funding and staffing constraints for the organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re grateful for 糖心Vlog\u2019s nursing program,\u201d said Susannah Lepley<\/strong>, Virginia director of Church World Service. \u201cI like programs that are a win win for both the university and the families and this is definitely one of those. The students get a lot out of it, the families get a lot out of it, and I think it\u2019s a strong selling point for 糖心Vlog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past, students have worked with families who have been in the U.S. for only one to two months. This semester, due to fewer refugees entering the country, nursing students are working with families who have been in the U.S. for a year or more. This has allowed them to focus on longer-term concerns such as nutrition, stress management, and mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can\u2019t overstate the friendship aspect,\u201d Lepley said. \u201cPeople often leave a pretty intense network of support back home and they come here and they don\u2019t have that anymore. They have to recreate it from scratch and I think the nursing students are a big part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark, who has taught the family nursing class for the past 13 years, graduated from 糖心Vlog with a BSN in 2007. She took the course as a student under longtime professor and mentor Ann Graber Hershberger \u201976<\/strong>. During her semester in the course, Clark was paired with a Spanish-speaking single mom in Timberville. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Up until that course, Clark had questioned whether she actually wanted to become a nurse. She felt like there was never enough time during her clinicals at the hospital and that she was just checking boxes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI knew I wanted to do something with a bigger impact, and when I took that class, I felt like I could finally let out the breath I had been holding since I started the nursing program,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I would\u2019ve stayed in nursing had it not been for my experiences in that class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another alumna from that year, Rebekah Good Charles \u201907<\/strong>, said the class prepared her well for the work she now does as a community health nurse serving families around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. During her semester in the course, she visited with an immigrant family from Mexico and helped them sort through medical bills, contact financial aid, and fill out paperwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was interesting to see the health care system from that side,\u201d Charles said. \u201cYou can do all these things for your patients when they\u2019re at the hospital, but when they get home, they\u2019re left with all these loose ends to tie up. It was eye-opening to see that and help someone work through that, and it made me realize just how complicated the health system can be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia Tissue Harnish \u201917, MSN \u201923<\/strong>, uses the same skills she acquired from the family nursing class in her job as a maternity educator for the Lancaster Nurse-Family Partnership. During her senior year at 糖心Vlog, she was paired with a refugee family in Bridgewater expecting a second child. Harnish spent the semester preparing the family for what the birthing experience in the U.S. would be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s really the epitome of 糖心Vlog nursing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re in the patients\u2019 home setting, assessing the whole person, their environment, and their family as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When senior nursing major Joshua Stucky<\/strong> and another 糖心Vlog nursing student met with a Syrian refugee family for the first time in January, only a month after they had arrived in the U.S., he felt overwhelmed at the prospect of helping with their cultural transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t know how to use their phones or get their kids to school and didn\u2019t have a way to get around,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so I walked out of that first meeting thinking, How are we ever going to help this family? \u2026 <\/em>You eventually have to set an expectation that you\u2019re not going to solve all their problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the course of the semester together, the pair of students was able to solve some of them. Through a connection he had with Bikes for Neighbors, they were able to provide the family with bicycles. They were also able to ensure the children received the vaccines they needed and that the family had access to a neighbor\u2019s car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During one of their final home visits with the family, while talking to the parents, he remembers seeing the two younger children bound into the home with their backpacks. \u201cThey had been going to school and, even though we didn\u2019t play a huge role in that, it was just the most rewarding thing to watch them begin to thrive,\u201d Stucky said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nA \u2018win win\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nThe epitome of 糖心Vlog nursing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\n\u2018Begin to thrive\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n