Reflections Magazine Issue #83 - Fall 2015 | Page 9

Feature Article

Collaborative Creativity
SHU Nursing Program Teams Up with Social Work, Theater to Earn
National Innovation Award

S

iena Heights University’s nursing program was the
recipient of the Innovations in Professional Nursing Education
Award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
SHU earned the honor in the Small Schools category. The
awards program recognizes the outstanding work of AACN
member schools to re-envision traditional models for nursing
education and lead programmatic change. Innovation awards,
including monetary prize of $1,000, are given annually in
four institutional categories: Small Schools; Academic Health
Center (AHC); Private Schools without an AHC; and Public
Schools without an AHC.
According to Dr. Sue Idczak, SHU’s director of nursing,
the program was honored for a unique series of live training
simulations conducted in 2013-14 that involved students from
nursing, theater and social work programs. Under the faculty’s
guidance and supervision, specific scenarios involving the care
of older adults were recreated.
“Inter-professional education is becoming such a big thing,”
said Idczak, who credited SHU Assistant Professor of Nursing
Kelli Kusisto for the creation and development of the simulations. “It really brought liberal arts into the nursing field.”
Kusisto, whose specialty is teaching gerontology courses,
got the idea after attending a nursing conference that addressed improving the care of older adults.
“I had to come up with a project that would advance the
whole concept,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to work with
other disciplines around campus. I thought, ‘What if we used
theater students to be our patients, and social work student
could collaborate with our nursing students?’ ”
Using a National League of Nurses simulation, Kusisto
worked with SHU nursing, theater and social work faculty for
more than a year before the simulations were implemented.
After researching and studying their patient’s condition, groups
of approximately 8-10 students went through an “authentic
experience,” Kusisto said. Nursing students were charged with
transitioning patients from an acute care facility to a rehabilitation center, working with social work students.
“We didn’t make the patients look old, but it came off as
if they were really old,” she said of the roles theater students
played as patients and family members. “They had a specific
role to play out.”

SHU Director of Nursing Dr. Sue Idczak (second from left) as well as SHU nursing faculty member Kelli Kusisto (second from right) and SHU theater faculty
member Mark DiPietro (far right) accept the Innovations in Professional Nursing
Education Award Oct. 26 from American Association of Colleges of Nursing
representatives during AACN’s fall meeting in Washington, D.C.

“Theater students