MORGANTOWN, W.Va. The Monongalia County Health Department (MCHD) has recognized the efforts of the West Virginia University (WVU) School of Nursing for their assistance during the pandemic.
Dean Tara Hulsey said her program and students had always had a relationship with the MCHD, but the pandemic created a very different and real task that had to be accomplished in a timely fashion. The nursing students filled gaps in the frontline worker structure at the mass vaccination site at the Morgantown Mall early in the pandemic as the coronavirus vaccine was rolled out and demand was very high.
“We created a model with our nursing students to work with the health department so that we could expand the amount of vaccinations exponentially that they were able to produce,” Hulsey said.
The students and faculty had to make a basic plan while officials and community leaders worked to prepare the site. Because both groups were developing plans simultaneously, the nurses had to make adjustments, sometimes daily, to make the most efficient use of the vaccines provided. Hulsey said the atmosphere provided all the training elements needed for nurses to develop professionally.
“I will tell you this: they learned to be flexible. They learned to be creative, and they learned to pivot,” Hulsey said. “And those are all skills that are very valuable in nursing.”
Students remained in an academic environment, but the severity of the situation increased, changing the tone. Hulsey said learning to be empathetic and comfortable with patients took on a new level of importance as students understood the reality of dealing with a real pandemic and the concern surrounding breakthrough vaccine technology.
“We had our faculty with us and with our students, so they were role modeling that,” Hulsey said. “So, I would say the students definitely learned some additional skills with that because of the uniqueness of the situation.”
Despite the struggles and obstacles, the nurses had to continue learning and supporting the MCHD, so suspending some or all of the operations was not possible. Through those circumstances, methods that kept the learning and serving mission afloat have been adopted as permanent parts of the program.
“We ended up learning some things through the experience and keeping some of those things created during that time period that we found were actually really creative and good learning modalities, so we actually kept some of those,” Hulsey said.
As the pandemic continued and reports of medical professional burnout surfaced, Hulsey became concerned that interest in the program could fall off. But she said participation in the program is increasing as the state continues to battle a shortage of qualified nursing professionals.
“We’ve got numbers going up in enrollment, so recruitment really hasn’t been a problem for us,” Hulsey said. “I was worried about that because of the pandemic.”