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UNMC College of Nursing Dean Virginia Tilden, D.N.Sc., talks about the newly established Morehead Center for Nursing Practice. Photos by Dan Brick. |
Last week (Feb. 3), the UNMC College of Nursing celebrated the opening of the Morehead Center for Nursing Practice, which will benefit people across the state.
Morehead, who died in 2000, was a University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumnus and former Lincoln and Omaha automobile dealer. He served as a University of Nebraska Foundation trustee and was a longtime supporter of university athletics. He began supporting UNMC and the College of Nursing in 1988 after receiving care at the former University Hospital, now The Nebraska Medical Center.
The Morehead Center for Nursing Practice will provide an infrastructure for the coordination, support and development of faculty nursing practices, said Kathryn Fiandt, D.N.Sc., associate professor of nursing and interim director of the center. Housed in Omaha, it will focus on improving the quality of patient care through education, research and outreach to the underserved.
Faculty nursing practices are contracted services for health care provided by nursing faculty typically in community settings. The practices include a variety of health services such as primary care, health promotion, helping vulnerable populations gain access to health services, and involvement and evaluation of community health projects.
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Kathryn Fiandt, D.N.Sc., will serve as interim director of the center. |
About 25 percent of UNMC faculty nurses have nursing practices, Dr. Fiandt said.
“The Morehead Center for Nursing Practice will help us coordinate our nursing practices, expand our activities, negotiate contracts and market our services,” Dr. Fiandt said. “We don’t want to give up our indigent care, so we need profit centers to subsidize them, all the while improving care and increasing access. Up until now, the faculty has had to do it on their own.
“We will have the opportunity to really make an impact on patient care in ways we haven’t been able to do before. Nurses in academia are leaders in terms of evolving nursing practice. In education, we have to do research to improve patient care – then take research-based knowledge and apply it in practice.”
An increase in faculty nursing practices will enable the college to hire more faculty members to teach. Currently, the college doesn’t have enough faculty or space to accept all the qualified students who apply to its undergraduate programs across the state.
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Virginia Tilden, D.N.Sc. |
Drs. Tilden and Fiandt say college faculty are involved nationally in developing new nursing standards. They see the center as a way to help position the college in becoming a national leader in academic nursing practice models.
“The faculty use creative, innovative models to deliver care to vulnerable populations and have been forward-thinking in incorporating nursing practice into their workload. The center will enable the college to achieve many of its ambitious goals in the pursuit of nursing excellence,” Dr. Tilden said.
Gloria Gross, Ph.D., assistant dean, UNMC College of Nursing West Nebraska Division, said the center is a boon for faculty and nurses in western Nebraska because it provides clinical services that are based on strong research and that work well. “We will be able to have a database for unified reports which will help us obtain grant funding for our clinical enterprises,” she said. “The faculty are especially interested in ways to promote publications related to their clinical work.”
Kris Hansen-Cain, the niece of Morehead, said her uncle always was complimentary about the nursing care he received during his lifetime. “I believe he intuitively felt nurses were undervalued for the important services and care they provided across many different health care settings,” she said. “From a business perspective, he would be very pleased to know his donation will make a positive impact on the community and Nebraska in particular.”
The Morehead gift also enabled the college to establish the Kenneth E. Morehead Clinical Professorship in Nursing to help recruit an outstanding scholar in clinical research and training.
A veteran of the Korean War, Morehead built a prosperous automobile dealership with locations in Falls City, Beatrice, Lincoln, Omaha and Kansas City, Mo. He was one of nine members and three generations of the Morehead family to graduate from the University of Nebraska. A longtime resident of Falls City, he was the grandson of former Nebraska Gov. John Henry Morehead.