When a natural disaster occurs: lessons learned in meeting students' needs.

Across the nation, weather-related natural disasters-tropical storms, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes-struck even areas where weather concerns are not paramount on the minds of most people. These natural disasters heightened awareness that all geographic areas are susceptible to aberrant weather conditions. The purpose of this article was to relate the lessons learned by one academic health center in meeting students' emergency preparedness and disaster recovery needs following a major hurricane in fall 2008. To gauge students' storm-related needs, a Hurricane Needs Survey (HNS) was conducted in spring 2009, 7 months after the hurricane. Students responded to 26 structured response items and 3 open-ended questions. Five hundred fifteen surveys were completed, constituting a response rate of 37.2%. Data were analyzed by creating frequencies to profile students' hurricane experiences. Results indicated that all students left the island under mandatory evacuation orders; most stayed with their families, and most experienced moderate material losses. For some students, the evacuation process and life after the storm contributed to ongoing problems, worries, and academic performance issues. Qualitative content analysis was used to derive themes from the students' narrative responses to the HNS open-ended questions about their perceptions of the extent to which the University of Texas Medical Branch met their needs. When students' hurricane response comments were analyzed, three major themes emerged: being prepared, needing to be connected, and returning to normalcy. The major lessons learned are that the emergency preparation of students requires greater specificity and that discussion about poststorm recovery expectations is essential. Following a natural disaster, students experience more distress than may be readily apparent.

Improving perceptions of patient care--a nursing education and nursing practice initiative.

In January 2005, the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) School of Nursing and the UTMB Hospitals and Clinics launched the first phase of a project to improve perceptions of patient care on the part of nursing faculty and nursing clinicians. A finding on the UTMB annual employee satisfaction survey that nursing faculty and clinicians tended to rate quality of UTMB patient care lower than other UTMB employees provided the impetus for the initiative. When UTMB colleagues noticed the findings, various entities including human resources and the Faculty Senate called for explanations from the dean of the School of Nursing, the chief nursing officer, and the CEO for the hospitals and clinics. In the process of attempting to give reasons for the findings, each of us determined we would take definitive action to address the situation. This article describes our accomplishments for Phase 1 of the initiative. Beginning with a vision for a productive professional community characterized by a pedagogical partnership between nursing education and practice, we share the processes we followed to (1) achieve mutual understanding among task force members, (2) obtain input on perceptions from nursing colleagues, (3) identify the clinical and nursing education aspects of the perceptions, (4) reach consensus on target perceptions for Phase 2 of the project, and (5) outline the next steps for the project.