Showcasing
Scholars
During the next several months, AACN will proudly author individual graduate narratives. In these stories, each of the remarkable graduates emerges as a talented leader who is driven by passion for gerontology nursing. AACN boasts a long history of commitment to gerontological nursing educational initiatives and hopes to inspire others by chronicling Creating Careers graduates’ professional accomplishments.
 Laura McNamara, APRN-BC, ANP, GNP ACHPN
Boston College
Creating Careers graduate Laura McNamara earned her baccalaureate degree from Harvard University in 1982 (with a major in English literature) and an MBA from Northeastern University in 1988. She became interested in nursing in 1989 when her first child at 18 months of age, was diagnosed with retinoblastoma. His eye was removed and the vision in his second eye worsened permanently. Through the whole traumatic process, nurses “held our family together.” Laura’s course was set—she wanted to be just like them, and from that point forward, made nursing her life mission.
After the birth of her fourth and last child (all boys) she completed her science pre-requisites and enrolled in Boston College’s accelerated BSN-to-MSN program. She had already picked gerontology as her specialty, having lovingly cared for older family members on both sides of her family through the years. Pat Tabloski, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at Boston College’s SON, who has “a down-to-earth passion” for gerontology, encouraged Laura to apply for the Hartford scholarship funding.
Laura enjoyed being a full-time nursing student, with “great support” from her project investigator and fellow Hartford scholars. Being an older student was “a delightful experience.” Most of the graduate nursing students were “girls in their 20’s, up here without families, needing mothering.” She graduated in May of 2004, and became dually certified through the ANCC as an ANP/GNP.
She’s been working for the Evercare Corporation since 2005, at Marion Manor long-term care facility in South Boston. She believes strongly in the Evercare model—“We treat the whole person in his current circumstance, with consideration to his environment, faith and family. We can do a lot right here, diagnosing and treating and avoiding hospitalizations, which are tough on the elderly. I enjoy my pts and feel privileged to be part of their lives.” In 2007 Laura became certified through the National Board for Certification of Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses.
Her incredibly laid-back and supportive husband “is the reason I have been able to do my work.” Credit manager at a wine and beer company, he provides “lovely wine at home.” Her oldest son was recently admitted to the Univeristy of Massachusetts, Boston with a full scholarship. The other boys are 15, 13 and 10. When queried about what she does for fun, she responded, “Honestly, I really enjoy my family. Most of what I do is with them.”
 Alicia Wolf, MSN, GNP-BC
Case Western Reserve University
During her second year at The Ohio State University’s BSN program, AACN/JAHF Creating Careers graduate Alicia Wolf had her clinical rotation in a nursing home for individuals with dementia. At this site, she discovered her talent for providing nursing care to the elderly. Shortly after earning her BSN in 2002, she heeded her undergraduate gerontology preceptor’s advice to pursue a gerontological advanced practice nursing degree. She was accepted as a scholar in the Hartford Creating Careers program. In 2004 she completed her MSN degree and became ANCC-certified as a geriatric nurse practitioner.
Alicia has fond memories of the moment when she became forever “hooked on gerontology.” At the dementia care unit, she continually noticed a tall, dignified gentleman patient who came to all meals in a suit and tie. In spite of his dementia, he recognized music and remembered his classical dance moves. One day, accompanied by piped-in background music in the nursing home cafeteria, he and Alicia waltzed (she was taking a ballroom dancing class at the time). “I have some kind of knack with dementia patients,” Alicia reflects. “It comes easy to me. They may not know what day it is, but they can tell me about their lives, and when they do, they are happy.”
Alicia loves her current job (since 2004) at a small physician’s group that is affiliated with Summa Health Systems in Akron, Ohio. The group consists of seven geriatricians and five gerontological nurse practitioners, all of whom work in multiple venues. Alicia provides services to geriatric patients on a rehabilitation unit and for geriatric individuals involved in a transitional home-care program. She also provides consultation on a geriatric inpatient hospital unit.
With encouragement from her advisor, Dr. Evelyn Duffy, Alicia became a member of the National Conference of Gerontological Nurse Practitioners (NCGNP) in 2005. In September 2006, she became president of the Ohio Chapter of NCGNP. The Ohio Chapter is co-hosting a long-term care conference with the Ohio Medical Director’s Association and the Ohio American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, to take place October 2007. Alicia remains proud of her involvement with this enterprise.
With involvement in professional organizations, Alicia’s confidence has grown. She hopes to eventually move to Columbus and build a GNP program at her undergraduate alma mater, Ohio State.
 Kelly Acevedo, RN, MSN, APRN-BC
Emory University
After obtaining a B.S. in psychology and sitting for the MCAT exam in 1999, Creating Careers graduate Kelly Acevedo changed her mind. At her job as an emergency room tech, she had become enthralled with her nursing colleagues as they interacted with their patients while caring for them. She quickly shifted her career path, and was accepted into Emory University’s BSN program. Impatient with younger patients and their “tendency to exaggerate” in the emergency room, she gravitated toward the older ones. “We need to pay attention to elderly patients. They deserve to be revered.” Her interest in gerontology nursing was born.
After graduation, she landed a job in the Long Term Acute Care unit of Emory’s free-standing geriatric hospital. It houses both a long-term ventilator unit and a short-term stay unit. She “enjoyed getting the over-70 set off ventilators, helping them walk again and returning them home. I love teaching the elderly while they teach me. It’s a give and take.” She once cared for a patient who had marched with Martin Luther King and another who was among the 1,000 African-American Tuskegee airmen to serve in WWII.
Kelly pursued Emory’s graduate gerontological nursing program with a vengeance after being picked as a Hartford scholarship recipient. She worked full-time and attended school full-time, finishing her accelerated program in one calendar year (8/04 thru 8/05). She recalls her favorite clinical at Grady Memorial Hospital, thanks to a geriatrician role model. He made house calls, hugged patients and sat patiently with them as he explained medical procedures.
After becoming ANCC-certified as a gerontological nurse practitioner in December of 2005, she and her husband moved to Charleston, where he attends nursing school. She loves her job as NP for a palliative medicine program sponsored by Hospice of Charleston and Roper Hospital. She works with two doctors who are board-certified in hospice and palliative care and one social worker in this hospital-based consult service. The team develops elaborate care plans for patients suffering from chronic, life-threatening illnesses. The consult service, which began in 2005, boasted 110% growth last year.
She and her husband intend to stay in Charleston for the foreseeable future. She plans to become certified as a hospice and palliative care specialist, and to eventually help open an inpatient palliative care wing. When asked what she does for fun, Kelly responded, “My husband is in nursing school! Nothing!” After some prodding, she conceded that as proud owners of a coon hound and a dauschund/lab mix, the couple loves to walk their dogs through downtown Charleston and on the nearby beach two miles from their home.
 Clausyl Plummer, RN, MSN
Emory University
Forty-three-year-old Army nurse and Creating Careers graduate Clausyl Plummer earned his CNS/GNP degree from Emory University in 2006. Born in Jamaica, he moved to the United States in 1984 after finishing his baccalaureate degree with a major in biology from West Indies College. He enlisted in the Army in 1989 where he trained to become a medic, then an LPN, and finally, a BSN-prepared RN. He became interested in gerontology while working for many years in Georgia as a critical care nurse in a large Army hospital’s medical intensive care unit.
Clausyl is the oldest of three brothers, all of whom pursued careers in health care. Clausyl married in 1986 and proudly boasts the accomplishments of his two children, one a pre-med student and the other a pre-law student. After losing his mother to pancreatic cancer in 1999, he cared for his 77-year old grief-stricken father, a retired theologian who remains in Jamaica. He saw “some quality of my dad’s aging process in every one of my geriatric patients. They ask themselves how they will live the rest of their lives. Life becomes more deliberate for them; they decide to spend their time with their grandchildren or to write their memoirs. They are at peace.”
He was honored when chosen to pursue his medical/surgical CNS degree at Emory in 2001. Faculty recognized his interest in and talent with the elderly, and encouraged him to combine degrees and apply for the Hartford GNP scholarship. Pursuing graduate nursing at Emory proved to be a sobering experience for Clausyl. “I had entered the big leagues,” he recalls. “I had always thought I was pretty smart. I spent most of my time trying to keep up! I very much wanted to graduate with a decent ranking among my peers.”
Deployed to Baghdad in early 2005 to the 86th Combat Support Hospital, he worked 12 hour shifts six days a week in the hospital’s surgical ICU, an experience that was “traumatic, frustrating and rewarding.” He returned to Georgia in December to manage an ICU and recovery room at Winn Army Community Hospital, where most of the patients were 65 or older. He finished his master’s program in 2006.
In 2007, Clausyl and five other Army nurses were recruited by the Army Nurse Corps and the University of Maryland, who had forged a partnership to address the nationwide shortage of nursing instructors. He and his five colleagues moved to Baltimore in August of 2007 to participate in this two-year program as undergraduate nursing faculty. He currently teaches a fundamentals lab, a med/surg clinical, and a med/surg senior practicum course in Maryland’s undergraduate nursing program.
In addition to teaching full-time and remaining in active duty, Clausyl just began an online post-master’s teaching certificate program. He also plans to pursue doctoral study at some point in the near future. With his many talents, ambitious nature, knowledge of and passion for gerontology nursing, Clausyl emerges as a dynamic leader whose influence in the field has only just begun.
 Kelynne J. Edmond, RN, MSN, GNP-BC
Long Island University
AACN/JAHF Creating Careers graduate, Kelynne Edmond feels blessed to have been a Hartford scholarship recipient. Thirty-four-year-old Kelynne, a Brooklyn, NY native and daughter of Haitian immigrants, earned her degree in geriatric advanced practice nursing from Long Island University (LIU) in June of 2007. Many years before, as a fiercely determined 18-year-old single mother, she earned an associate degree in Humanities from Laguardia Community College. She then overcame devastating odds as she continued her education.
In 1998, her third son Akur was born with kidney disease. Plagued during his short life with complications related to his condition, he died in 1999 at the age of 15 months. Kelynne, wracked by her grief, was overwhelmed by the compassionate nursing care her son received at Brooklyn Hospital. “Akur made me what I am today,” says Kelynne, who decided during his illness to become a nurse, just like the loving nurses who cared for her boy.
After her loss, she rallied the strength to pursue an accelerated track toward her BSN. degree at LIU. Her patient population was primarily 55+ at her first nursing job in med/surg at an acute care hospital. She recalls that she “loved it, felt I was making a difference in people’s lives.” While developing a keen interest in chronic health conditions among the elderly, she raised her three sons, Aaron, Anthony and Alex.
In 2003, she became an AACN/JAHF Creating Careers scholar at LIU. With “this wonderful opportunity,” she was determined to “do whatever I had to do to make it happen.” She struggled. “If I stayed with the cards I was dealt, I would not be where I am today,” she reflects. “I had to be aggressive.” She began her master’s when her boys were 12, 11, and 9, while continuing to work full-time. Her parents and her partner, Wendell, helped her juggle her responsibilities. “It’s doable because I did it. I kept telling myself that I had a responsibility to see this through.” At graduation in 2007, 6-month old A.J. had joined her family.
As Senior Staff Nurse, she often supervises four RN’s, four nurse techs and the unit clerk. End-of-life and palliative care issues abound. The frail elderly make up about 60% of her patient load. She believes strongly that her master’s education helps her assess and treat her patients in ways that she would not otherwise know. “I’m not just dispensing medication. I have a body of knowledge. I am always answering questions, sharing ideas, giving advice.” Her “side jobs” include LIU adjunct clinical instructor; and basic cardiac life support trainer for nursing students.
Although NP certification at the national level is not required in NY, she took and passed the GNP exam through the Amercian Nurses Credentialing Center. She plans to eventually move from acute care to long-term care, possibly at an Evercare facility. She also hopes to relocate geographically within the next couple of years to Arizona, Texas or New Mexico, so that Aaron, Anthony, Alex and A.J. can run and play in wide open spaces. Regarding her children’s reactions to her career pursuits, she reflects, “My children are very proud of me. I hope I have made them into tomorrow’s achievers.”
 Marianne Gelber, MSN, GNP, ACHPN
New York University
New York native Marianne Gelber boasts a life-long interest in nursing, born of family health crises that began during her childhood. Fearlessly and instinctively, she simply knew from an early age how to handle palliative care issues, bereavement, and the elderly. Currently a nurse practitioner certified in both gerontology through the American Nursing Credentialing Center, and in advanced certified hospice and palliative care through the American Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Nursing, she remains passionate about her work.
Marianne benefited from a myriad of valuable experiences after earning a BSN from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1975. She landed her first RN job in George Washington University hospital’s neurosurgery department, until choosing to locate back home in 1977. For the next 15 years, she served pediatric patients and their families at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (she took a two-year break to work in Saudi Arabia).
After earning an MBA from the City University of New York at Baruch, she managed an office practice, day hospital, and pediatric IV chemotherapy team at Sloan. Recruited by a head hunter in 1991 to work for a home infusion company, she eventually became their national director of nursing, setting up branches across the country. Her wanderlust then took her to Russia in 1993 to be director of operations at a full-service clinic.
She married in New York in 1994. Her new husband, in his late 60s, was soon diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. With love, sensitivity, and a wealth of knowledge, she ministered to him full-time until his death in 2001. To care for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, “you have to live their reality. If the queen is coming, set the table for tea.” She recalls, “Although I was on house arrest for eight years, I was my husband’s life extender. His quality of life was good. And so was mine.”
She waited a year before returning to graduate school. In 2006, she graduated from NYU with a combined master’s in gerontology and palliative care. She works with four nurse practitioners on a multidisciplinary team at Mount Sinai Medical Center. On this consultative service, she follows chronically ill patients, most of whom are elderly, with pain and symptom management, disposition planning, supportive counseling and education. By blending her two specialties, she “offers so much to patients and families. I can tease out realistic care plans based on their values and goals.”
 Sarah Gilbert, APRN, BC
Radford University
Creating Careers graduate Sarah Gilbert left her native North Carolina in 1976 to enroll in the BSN program at Radford University in southwest Virginia. For the next twenty years, she worked as an RN mostly in cardiac rehab, where she became completely enamored of her primarily geriatric clientele. After losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease in 2001, she became convinced that “gerontology was where I wanted to be. The aging population is vulnerable and growing and desperately needs help.” In 2002, she became a recipient of the Hartford scholarship at Radford’s GCNS program, having been prodded by a former professor to pursue a master’s degree.
Fascinated by the curriculum and inspired by the camaraderie that developed among the gerontology nursing grad students, she stayed in the program an extra semester to complete a thesis, rather than a capstone project. Her thesis explored attitudes about end-of-life decision making in community-dwelling older adults. Her school’s project investigator and personal mentor, Dr. Virginia Burggraf arranged for her and fellow graduate students to meet nursing icons at the 2003 HGNI Leadership Conference and GSA meeting in San Diego, an experience that she recalls, “blew me away.”
Dr. Burggraf encouraged Sarah to attend a week-long faculty training workshop in Houston during the summer of 2003. Led by gerntological nursing icon Dr. Claire Fagin, it gave her tools that she uses daily. She attends NGNA every year, participates on its planning committee, and writes for its new core curriculum, all of these activities as a result of “Ginger Burggraf dragging me everywhere!” Sarah boasts membership in several professional organizations: NGNA, Sigma Theta Tau, NACNS and ANA. A 2005 graduate, she earned ANCC-certification as a gerontolgical clinical nurse specialist.
Currently, Sarah works as a case manager in a retirement community for elderly and disabled residents who live in 160 of the facility’s government-subsidized apartments. She also holds a position as part-time faculty at Radford, where she co-teaches an undergraduate gerontology nursing course with Ginger Burggraf. Sarah “loves to guide students to learn how to care for older adults.” She often refers them to the JAHF “try-this” series. She advises students regarding their clinical placements across the continuum of care; she remains especially excited about the talks they give in elementary and high schools regarding healthy living to ensure healthy aging.
Long-term plans include doctoral study. She will most probably pursue the DNP degree long-distance at a university that has an online gerontology track, and continue teaching and clinical work. Her physician husband shares her love for the elderly, happy to treat Medicare-only patients who have been denied services by other doctors. Currently, the two are considering collaboration. They intend to pursue their goals and raise their 14 year old son while remaining in rural Radford and its peaceful environs.
 Stacey Green, RN, MSN, APRN-BC
University of California Los Angeles
2004 Creating Careers graduate Stacey Green wanted to be a nurse from age five, inspired by Nurse Dixie on the television program, Emergency, who “was so smart, always knew what to do, and everyone listened to her.” Eventually, she became her own Nurse Dixie—after earning her BSN, MSN, and dual-ANCC certification, she started her own practice. Although Stacey’s educational journey was a bit circuitous, she benefited from the myriad of experiences, continually incorporating new learning.
Believing nurses to be doctor “servants,” her parents tried to steer her away from a nursing career. Eager to please, after high school she attended Pitzer College in Clairmont, California, where she changed her major five times in three years before dropping out. She then obtained an emergency medical technician degree, but lasted in the field for only six months, bored by “basic first aid with a driver’s license.”
For six memorable years as medical assistant to a cardiologist, she delighted in rounding with him and observing cardiac catheterizations at West Hills Hospital. Of his frail, elderly cardiac patients, she recalls “rapport with them. They were more appreciative, told me stories.” Her cardiologist boss pushed her in the nursing school direction; finally in 1998, she began the BSN program at Mt. St. Mary’s College in L.A.
While a student she worked full-time at a UCLA neurology step-down clinic. She graduated in 2002 with a 3.98 GPA, and without skipping a beat, secured a Hartford GAPN scholarship at UCLA. The Hartford program provided “financial, emotional, peer and academic support,” the likes of which she’s “never known, before or since.”
She graduated in 2004 with majors in gerontology and neuropsychiatry, obtained ANCC certification as a GNP, worked in a hematology/oncology clinic, and passed the advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner exam. In 2005, after feeling “a little burned out” with oncology, she teamed up with an infectious diseases specialist, with whom she rounded in nursing homes. She aims for certification in infection control this year.
Currently, in her contracting business as partner to doctors who round in San Fernando Valley nursing homes and hospitals, she combines her expertise in geriatrics, emergency medicine, oncology, neurology and infectious diseases. With time, she plans to direct a facility that will cater specifically to elders, and will be part nursing home/assisted living/acute care. It will be staffed exclusively with RNs and NPs. She is also in the process of persuading UCLA to open a DNP program, which she plans to attend. The secret to Stacey’s success has been encouragement from her husband, who is “the best person I know. He made me the person I am and want to be.”
 Alison Lood, GNP
University of Minnesota
Creating Careers graduate Ali Lood, who grew up milking cows on a dairy farm in Cambridge, Minnesota, set her sights on nursing during her earliest childhood years. Although her siblings pursued careers in business, she always aspired to follow the example set by her nurse mother. Ali combined her interests in health care and gerontology as a nursing home volunteer during high school. She stayed focused and graduated with a BSN from the University of Minnesota in 1999.
She then set her sights on the graduate school of nursing at the University of Minnesota, which requires applicants to have had at least two years of nursing experience before consideration for the program. This pre-requisite “is vital,” Ali explains, as it “strengthens knowledge of anatomy, physiology and nursing theory, and provides interdisciplinary team experience.” Furthermore, her floor nurse experience helped her understand “that a key part of being a GNP is bridging the hierarchy between floor nurse and MD. I’ve been there—I know what nurses are going through.”
Employed by the University of Minnesota’s Fairview Hospital for the next three years in ICU and cardiac step-down, she gained valuable experience nursing an adult urban clientele whose co-morbidities mimicked those of a purely geriatric pt. load. What a “big relief” it was to learn of the Hartford funding in 2001, which enabled her to focus all of her energy on full-time schooling. She thrived academically during graduate school, and became “great friends” with three other Hartford Creating Careers scholars. “We still rely on each other. We have a wonderful network.”
After graduating in May of 2004 and becoming ANCC-certified as a geriatric nurse practitioner, she was hired by Fairview Geriatric Services, a collaborative group that is managed by a nurse practitioner and that employs 16 nurse practitioners. Each is a primary care provider, assigned to his/her own specific long term care sites and/or transitional living units. Staff members at these sites rely heavily on their GNPs.
Fairview maintains ties to the university and to Hartford, having hired a Creating Careers graduate each year of the grant. “I absolutely love my job,” Alison reports. “I have great personal satisfaction—it makes a difference.” In her spare time, in addition to riding horses and doing marathons and triathlons, she owns an apiary in which she rears honey bees.
 Jessica Maddox, MSN, CRNP
University of Pennsylvania
“That’s how nerdy I was,” Creating Careers graduate Jessica Maddox recalls of her interest at age eight in her family’s medical encyclopedia. “Nine times out of 10, I was right!” she proudly recollects of her uncanny early childhood ability to guess medical diagnoses accurately. On the nursing track from an early age, Jessica earned a BSN from Rutgers State University of New Jersey in 2003. She remembers fondly her first clinical in a nursing home, “I loved it.” Her preceptor advised her, “That’s special. Hold onto it.” During this time period, while caring for her grandmother who had become septic and delusional from a UTI that had gone unchecked, she decided unconditionally to pursue gerontology nursing. “I’m doing this. No one can keep me from doing it now!”
She qualified for the Hartford funding and enrolled in Penn’s GNP program in 2003. As a Hartford student, “I felt like I had to be the best in the class," she recalls. She worked three 12-hour night shifts weekly and attended school full-time. Second semester, she made her first foray into research by assisting a Hartford pre-doc to develop and implement a post-fall assessment tool.
After graduating and becoming ANCC-certified in geriatrics in 2005, she took a job with Evercare at a nursing home in Philadelphia, doing “all gero, all day. I am not an acute care person. I like my patients to be able to talk to me, to be functional. I like to spend time with them.” Initially, nursing staff felt threatened by her, a “young, brand-new NP.” With her people skills, knowledge, education and experience, she proved herself invaluable to them over the next six months. “Now everybody loves me,” she reports objectively.
Jessica married in 2006. She’s considered pursuing a PhD, but fears it will take away the “hands on” nursing that she cherishes. She is learning about the DNP option as well. She will rely on Penn faculty to help guide her. “Penn is like family. You don’t really ever leave.” She wants to be “more than a natural leader. I will never be fully settled until I become a true leader. My dream job will be caring for the elderly and helping to shape policy.”
 Ughanmwan Tokunbor Efeovbokhan, APRN, MSN, GNP
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Creating Careers graduate “TK” Ughanmwan, was raised in Lagos, Nigeria. His father, a strong believer in the value of a first-class education, sent his three children abroad for college. In 1992, as a new high school graduate at just 16 year’s of age, brave TK traveled alone to San Antonio, with the intent of attending college to study computer science and architecture. He became employed as a nurse’s aide to support himself, but soon became disenchanted with staff interaction. “I got tired of LVNs talking down to me,” he recalls. So he decided to become one himself and promptly enrolled in LVN school, where he concluded that he “loved nursing.”
For seven years, he worked as a referral nurse for Humana insurance company. He met Tammy, the woman he would later marry, at a church function. A recipient of two master’s degrees herself, she would not marry him until he’d earned a college degree. Determined to win her favor, TK enrolled in the University of Texas at San Antonio’s LVN-to-BSN program in 1998.
He jokes that Tammy and his mentor, UT’s Dr. Kathy Insel “colluded” to push him to pursue a PhD. He finished his BSN in December of 2001 and started at the University of Texas BSN-to-PhD program (he took the NCLEX and GRE exams the same month). After attending a Gerontological Society of America conference and learning all about research studies with the aging population, he applied for the Hartford funding at UT and enrolled in their GNP program, thus pursuing a master’s and PhD simultaneously.
TK’s daughter, Esther Rose was born in 2003. “I’d get up and study and feed the baby at the same time. While feeding her, I’d crank out 2, 3 chapters. I only stopped to burp her.” By summer of 2005 he had finished his master’s degree and had become ANCC-certified in gerontology, while working as an NP in an outpatient gerontology clinic.
He is currently an NP with the Veteran’s Administration’s extended care and therapy center. He will complete his PhD in 2008. When queried about his future, TK spoke of becoming involved in the VA’s research projects, advancing through its administration, and spending time with his family. He raced home after his telephone interview with AACN for a home-based research project with his daughter--how to make play-dough.
 Summer Armack, BS-ED, MSN, ANP, GNP
Yale University
Creating Careers graduate and equestrian Summer Armack attended undergraduate school in rural Connecticut with a major in biology and an interest in becoming a large animal veterinarian. However, after graduating in 2001, Summer changed her career direction--she’d become disenchanted with the lack of coordinated hospital-based nursing care her ill grandfather was receiving at that time. Determined to improve care for elderly patients like him, this highly motivated and no-nonsense young woman sailed through admissions and enrolled in Yale University’s Graduate Entry Pre-specialty in Nursing (GEPN) program. During her studies, she worked as an R.N. at the Franciscan Home and Hospice Care, enhancing her love of the geriatric population.
The three-year full-time course of study prepared her to become an R.N. with a master’s in adult and geriatric primary care. Yale had just become a recipient of the Hartford Creating Careers program, and Summer was quick to apply for the funds. She describes the support that she received from the Hartford Foundation as “huge for me.” Mary Stark Harper’s lecture at the 2002 HGNI Leadership Conference was life-changing. Ms. Harper’s speech “was the most memorable thing I had ever heard.” She left the Leadership Conference knowing that “I can do anything!”
After graduation in May of 2005, she became ANCC-certified as an ANP/GNP. The broad scope and impact potential of the NP role attracted her. A strong believer in the Evercare model of care, she landed her first job with the company. As NP for 85 nursing home patients, she delivered the kind of comprehensive care that had never been available to her grandfather. She had opportunities daily “to get to know my patients inside and out, to provide early interventions and to prevent inappropriate hospitalizations.” She was able to “develop relationships with family members and give them the kind of support my family desperately needed when my grandfather was ill.”
Since the summer of 2006 when promoted to a clinical advisor position, she’s been carrying ½ of a caseload, training new NPs and creating professional development materials. She’s also been the leader of the palliative care team for Evercare Connecticut—the team provides extra support to families and fellow NPs re: clinical interventions that provide maximum quality and comfort at end of life.
Summer married in September of 2007. The newlyweds live on a 30-acre farm in Cheshire, Connecticut. She is the proud owner of Finn and Prince, two Canadian Cheval horses, known as the “little iron horses” in Canada. She and her husband also board horses, ride “all the time,” and host horse-related events, “spinning off a nice side business.” Although passionate about horses, she intends to keep them as her hobby while she continues her professional development on the Evercare fast track.
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