Congratulations on a job well done!

Nine faces that are familiar to many around USF Health belong to nine dedicated employees whose work has earned each of them a 2008 USF Outstanding Staff Award.

Each year, USF employees from across campus are selected to win the award, which recognizes those who demonstrate excellence and performance that supports the overall values and standards of USF. The award includes a plaque and a check for $500.

This year, the employees from USF Health (listed below) included six state employees and two MSSC employees. Daisy Martinez is also listed because, although her department resides on main campus, her work is centered at USF Health.

On May 19, the winners from USF Health will be treated to an open house, hosted by the USF and MSSC departments of human resources. Come by and congratulate them yourself. Here are the details for the event.

A big congratulations to the all of the winners throughout USF. The USF Health employees recognized for a job well done are as follows.

         Luis Battistini
         Senior computer support specialist
         IT, College of Nursing

Nominated by: Denise Passmore
“Luis has brought a level of technical sophistication to the College of Nursing beyond the scope of his job description.”

A quote from a letter of recommendation:
“…I believe Mr. Battistini has the ability, motivation and passion to strengthen our IT Department and inspire his coworkers. He is a sincere, intelligent, and mature individual who, I believe, embodies the qualities that the Outstanding Staff Awards at USF Health represents.”
Jason Beckstead, PhD
Associate professor, Quantitative Methodologist

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College of Nursing Dean Patricia Burns - Heroic Leadership

On May 6th, National Nurses Day, schools across the U.S. commemorate the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. She was fearless, visionary and genius all wrapped into one – words that can easily apply to Dean Patricia Burns at the USF’s College of Nursing. She is, easily, a modern day version of the Nightingale that has inspired generations.

The ambulance pulls in to the hospital emergency room and like clockwork – out jump the paramedics, the ambulance doors fly open and out rolls the patient on a stretcher. But this time – there’s a shooter standing inside the E.R. and he’s firing! The psychiatric patient has just overpowered his police escort, taking his gun, and is now blocking the path of the paramedics rushing in with a patient.

Like a scene out of a movie, this real life drama unfolds.

Bang! Bang! Bang! There is screaming. There is chaos. There is fear.

Then, one of the paramedics sees her – the young nurse stepping out in the open. She’s standing there waving her arms, locking in on him with her eyes. She's going to tell him when to make a run for the exam room - his patient still on the stretcher.

"…go through now!" she yells and he does.

That young nurse was Patricia Burns. The hospital was E.J. Meyer Memorial in Buffalo, New York in the early ‘70’s. And the young paramedic was Timothy O’Brien, who decades later became the Executive Director of Florida’s Nurses Association. For years, they shared that story without knowing each other’s names. Their faces, though, were etched in memory.

“I stepped out to shield him,” says Burns. Suddenly taking pen to paper, she maps out the E.R. on my reporter’s notebook and points to the big square in the middle. It’s the nurses ‘triage desk’, “Here’s where I was supposed to be!” she says with a chuckle. Eyes beaming, smile wide, her finger is pointing behind the desk. Way behind.

“Right as he (paramedic) was coming in the door, the guy just started shooting,” she says.
Q: You didn’t fear for your own life?
A: “You know how you do things and your adrenalin pumps?! I saw a lot of things at that county hospital!”

“It’s funny how you remember clips and pieces of things,” says O’Brien, now retired in Jacksonville, FL. “I drove for La Salle. We brought that patient in and there was shooting! It was bedlam breaking loose right at the entrance! I remember her taking charge of that situation! I knew things were going to be okay, if she was there.”

The day of the shooting, Burns was not chief in command. “I was a triage nurse and seized the moment,” she says simply.

Something needed to be done. She seized the moment. She led. Something she’s been doing her entire life - heroic leadership.

Dean, Researcher & Nursing Advocate…
Patricia Burns, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a Senior Associate Vice President of USF Health and, since 1997, has been the Dean of the University of South Florida, College of Nursing. She’s a nationally recognized researcher in female urinary incontinence, invited to share her research findings by scientists as far away as Rome, England and Norway. She’s a leading force on the national nursing stage, from the American Academy of Nursing, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty. In the late 90’s she was a moving force in Tallahassee, helping to change Florida statutes which limited to 70 the number of nursing students schools could enroll each year.

Here at USF, the award winning dean has set the nursing school on the fast track to reaching Top 20 ranking in federal research funding. Currently, it ranks first in Florida for research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). U.S. News & World Report ranks the nursing school 3rd in the nation in “e-learning” – with volumes of educational materials available to its students on-line, on-demand, any time. Under her leadership, USF nursing graduates have achieved a 100 per cent pass rate on Florida’s state licensing exam – every single “USF Bull” to take the state boards passed, a feat few nursing schools can claim.

Also thanks to her, new generations of nursing students at USF are learning in a hospital preceptor model created by Burns. They’re learning in cutting-edge simulation laboratories with real-time scenarios and simulators that present medical symptoms, complications, and even simulate “labor & delivery”. Here nursing students have a constellation of new degrees to choose from including the Doctor of Nursing Practice and the Nurse Anesthesia Master’s Program.

…Clearly a “big shot” in all things nursing, but to her family and friends, she’s still just “Pat” – loving, loyal, brilliant. The unassuming ‘genius’ who’s always there to take care of everyone else, they say.

In the Beginning…
Burns was one of four children born to Edwin and Sophie Staley in the area of Buffalo, New York. Mrs. Staley was a stay at home mom. Husband Edwin was a Greyhound ticket clerk. He worked at the same bus terminal in Buffalo for 43 years ‘til the day he retired. The young Pat spent summers on her grandfather’s farm in rural western New York. It was there that she cared for her first patients – cows. “I can milk a cow real fast!” she quips. Little Pat found her calling at the ripe old age of seven. “I said ‘I’m going to be a nurse!’ I was in the second grade I think. I don’t know where it came from but all those years I insisted that I was going to be a nurse,” recalls Burns.

Q: Did your parents ever say to you ‘Pat, are you sure you want to do this?’
A: “I was raised in an era where my father said ‘I think you should be a teacher because it will only cost $70 and you can afford that.’” – with the emphasis on you. “My parents made me very independent.”

On the job training…
She never wavered - working three jobs to pay her way through nursing school at the Edward J. Meyer Memorial Hospital, School of Nursing. Her training stories from nursing school sound more like clips from the war front – the nights in charge of the “PSYCH unit” (psychiatry); treating polio patients with “iron lungs”; the tuberculosis patient who’s lung erupted the night Burns was the only one on-duty and not yet a graduate. “We didn’t just get patient assignments. We actually ran floors. So at the age of 19, I had 40 patients on a GYN (gynecology) floor. I was the only nurse and I was a student nurse!” explains Burns. “I did admissions, discharges, treatments - the whole thing.”

That was her training job for school. One of her other jobs was the overnight shift - 11:00 PM – 7:00 AM - at the E.R. of Emergency Hospital in inner city Buffalo. “Can you imagine what I saw brought in? Cops would come in with stab wounds, gunshots, everything and I was the only nurse (and still in school) working that E.R.,” says Burns.
Q: How old were you then?
A: “Twenty.”

Q: People react differently in moments of intense pressure, high stress. You were still a student. How would you describe your thought process at that point?
A: “I always have something in my head that I’m piecing together. When I was on those units, I knew what I needed to keep going over, in my head, so that I would be able to take care of the emergencies that I was going to find.”
Q: Sort of like a Rolodex in your brain? You pulled out the information as you needed it?
A: “Yes.”

Graduation day from nursing school came on September 11, 1960. “When I graduated from nursing school, I made as much money as my father did,” says Burns. “My father and mother got married in the depression, so we didn’t have a whole lot!”

Her first official job as an RN was at EJ Meyer Memorial Hospital - first in Pediatrics, then Infectious Diseases, then E.R. - the memories of those early days in the emergency room as haunting as ever.
Q: When was the first time you remember being actually afraid for a patient?
A: “The day they brought in two motorcycle victims. It was a fellow and a girl…they’d crashed. She came in without a leg and they handed me her leg in a bag! I thought ‘Oh my God!’”
Then lowering her eyes, Burns says “The boy died. They opened his chest to pump his heart right there in the E.R. and everything. Can you imagine that? I saw so many things…”

Time for family & friends…
Along the way, this young woman with nerves of steel managed to start a family of her own. In 1961, “Staley” became Burns when she married her high school sweetheart Neil Burns. Their son Robert followed in his mother’s footsteps becoming a registered nurse. Daughter Karen grew up to be an accountant. The joy of watching their son & daughter grow, was tempered by the sadness of loosing their first two. “Most people think I have two children, but really there were four. My first were twins,” she says softly. “They died 4 hours after being born. I usually don’t talk about it. It’s been so long.” After a while, she shares their names, Maureen and Marguerite. One of the premie babies was named after her good friend Marguerite “Marge” MacPhee - Burns’ dear friend since the 9th grade.

Now retired in Camberia, NY, “Marge” still marvels at Burns’ inner strength and resilience. “She’s had plenty of heartache in her life, but she never gave up. When she says ‘We’re going to do something’, she just does,” says MacPhee. “She’s not one to say ‘Oh poor me.’ And she never complains!”

Calling in from Buffalo, Connie De Simone agrees and adds “After 50 years of a friendship, I think the most important thing about Pat is to be personally involved with her friends…how she found the time, I don’t know!” says De Simone. “She was always brilliant, but she never played that up. She was always there for all of us.”

“Us” is a group of nine very close high school friends from freshman year at Sacred Heart Academy in Eggertsville, NY. Their names landed towards the end of the alphabet – Staley, Syracuse, Viger…. the all-girls, parochial school laying the groundwork for a sisterhood that remains to this day. All live in New York State, except for Burns, and stay in touch with reunions and by phone.

“We started out eating potato chips and drinking pop. Then, we got married and would bake a cake and drink coffee. We progressed to having dinner out once a month, then the occasional lunch or breakfast. And that’s where we’re at now!” laughs Dawn Buono, who’s known Burns since she was 13 years old.

“She’s very proud of the university,” says Buono referring to the USF College of Nursing. “It’s like her baby, her child. She wants it to be absolutely perfect!” It’s the same with every one of Burns’ girls. It doesn’t take long before the conversation turns to Burn’s love of the nursing school. “We lost her in Buffalo,” says ‘Marge’ “but you all (USF) really got a star!”

The road to USF…
Which leads us to the end of our story and how this “star” and beloved daughter of Buffalo landed in Tampa after 16 years in nursing and teaching nursing at State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY).

“My husband Neil and I had decided that he would take early retirement. I would retire from the SUNY system and would look for a deanship in a nice climate.” But life took another unexpected turn for the couple in 1987. Neil was struck by a neighbor’s tree and suffered a traumatic brain injury of which he never recovered. He died in 1993. It wasn’t until 1996 at the urging of a friend, that Burns breathed new life into her dream of becoming ‘dean’. There was a deanship at the USF College of Nursing. She applied. She interviewed. Love at first sight. “I came here. I looked at the college and thought ‘They don’t know what they have here. What a well kept secret!’” she recalls. Then newly remarried, she and husband Steve Scherman began their journey to a new life in Bulls country.

In a twist of fate, Burns’ initiation to deanship and Florida licensing threw her right back to the E.R. shooting at EJ Meyer Memorial Hospital some 25 years earlier!

“I called up Tim O’Brien (then the Executive Director of the Florida Nurses Association) and I said ‘Tim, I’ve got to have this nursing license. Can’t I pay the costs to have it ‘Fedex-ed’ to me in New York?”

He wasn’t budging. But then she saw the opening. She noticed that he too had graduated from EJ Meyer Memorial Hospital School of Nursing.

“‘I worked the emergency room…maybe I saw you as a student?’ I said to him,” she recalls. Then, leaning forward with a broad smile Burns continues “There was a long pause and all of a sudden he asked me ‘Do you remember the guy with the gun?’ Of course I remembered! And he said to me ‘I was the ambulance driver you got into the ER!’ …After all those years,” says Burns, still shaking her head.
Q: Did he know it was you all along?
A: “Not until I said that. That’s when he put a name with the face.”

Ten days after that phone call, Burns’ Florida nursing license arrived in the mail.

Burns took the helm of the USF College of Nursing in 1997 and the rest is history… a history that continues to be amended as she stretches for, and reaches, greater heights.

Story by Lissette Campos, USF Health Communications

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Nursing achieves 100-percent pass rate on state board exam

Graduates of the USF College of Nursing achieved a 100-percent pass rate on the required exam to practice as a nurse. The college’s graduates have attained this benchmark several times, previously in Feb. 2007.

All Florida nursing graduates averaged 77.4 percent on the Registered Nurse Licensure Examination (NCLEX) reported most recently by the Florida Board of Nursing. The report covers all graduates of baccalaureate and associate nursing degree programs who took the exam the first quarter of 2008.

Only 23 percent (12) the 52 nursing schools in the state scored a 100-percent pass rate.

"This is a special recognition, and tribute to our hardworking faculty," said Patricia Burns, PhD, FAAN, dean of the College of Nursing. "I congratulate our graduates on a job well done."

"It’s quite an achievement, especially when you consider that every single one of our 33 students who graduated in December 2007 sat for the licensure exam and passed it the first time," said Sandra Cadena, PhD, ARNP, assistant dean of undergraduate programs for the College of Nursing.

"It’s a testament to the clinical collaborative model and how well our faculty work with our Tampa Bay area hospital partners to prepare the best nursing graduates possible."

Of the 11 other nursing schools with a 100-percent pass rate, none had more than 10 student nurses successfully completing the state board exam in the first quarter of 2008.

Dr. Cadena said a majority of the 33 December 2007 USF graduates who passed the exam were in the college’s accelerated second degree program, and 10 to 15 percent of these graduates have applied to advanced nursing degree programs.

Student nurses who have completed their coursework are eligible to take the national licensing exam.

Before nurses begin practicing, they must graduate from a recognized nursing program, like USF’s, meet specific requirements of the state board of nursing, and pass the National Council for State Boards of Nursing NCLEX exam for registered nurses. USF student nurses who sat for the exam in 2003 were the first to have completed their baccalaureate study in the College’s community-based clinical collaborative curriculum. The USF College of Nursing teamed up with nurse leaders from community hospitals to devise the Clinical Collaborative curriculum — a plan to keep new nurses in nursing and in Florida by bridging the gap between academic preparation and professional application of the skills and knowledge a nurse uses every day.

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• Dr. Kevin Kip was recognized with an article in the Spring/Summer 2008 volume of USF Magazine for his work in stent safety that was publisher din the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2008.


• Barbara Anderson Watts’ manuscript, “Outpatient Management of Asthma in children age 5-11: Guidelines for Practice” has been accepted for publication in The Journal of American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (anticipated March 2009 issue).


• Jane Fischer expects her manuscript, “Automatic Referral to Cardiac Rehabilitation” to be published in The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.


• Dr. Kip is the senior author on the recently published paper:
  • Mulukutla SR, Vlachos HA, Marroquin OC, Selzer F, Holper WM, Abbott JD, Laskey WK, Williams DO, Smith C, Anderson WD, Lee JS, Srinivas V, Kelsey SF, and Kip KE. Impact of drug-eluting stents among insulin-treated diabetic patients: A report from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Dynamic Registry. Journal of the American College of Cardiology Cardiovascular Interventions. 2008; 1:139-147.


• Master’s Student Cynthia Paulk has had her capstone paper "Hypothermia prevention - nurses take charge!" accepted for publication in the AORN Journal.


• Dr. Cecile Lengacher presented “Symptom Experience An Evidence-Based Approach to Targeting Interventions” at the 33rd Annual Congress, Oncology Nursing Society, May, 2008


• The Academic Assessment visitors for the College of Nursing will be conducting faculty Interviews on Thursday May 29, 2008. Please join me in making them welcome to the College. The three visitors are:
  • Doreen C. Harper, PhD, RN, FAAN
  • Gwen Sherwood, PhD, RN, FAAN
  • Diana J. Wilkie, PhD, RN, FAAN


• Dr. Versie Johnson-Mallard, has been chosen to advance to the next stage of the selection process for the RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholars Program. Congratulations to Dr Johnson-Mallard! This is a prestigious honor. Our College of Nursing will be well represented in the RWJ Foundation through her accomplishments.


• Cheryl Zambroski PhD, RN recently published:
  • Zambroski, C. H. (2008). Self-care at the End of Life in Patients with Heart Failure. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. 23, 266-276.


• Dr. Lengacher’s research team’s abstract entitled, “Symptom Clusters and MBSR in Breast Cancer Survivors, Preliminary Results” has been accepted for presentation at the 2008 National State of the Science Congress in Nursing Research to be held in Washington, DC, October 2008.


• Harleah G. Buck MS, RN, CHPN and Susan C. McMillan PhD, ARNP, FAAN recently published, “The Unmet Spiritual Needs of Caregivers of Patients with Advanced Cancer” in the March/April Journal or Hospice and Palliative Nursing.


• Susan C. McMillan PhD, ARNP, FAAN was recently published in:
  • McMillan S.C., Dunbar, S.B., & Weihua, Z. (2008).Validation of the Hospice Quality of Life Index and the Constipation Assessment Scale in End-Stage Cardiac Disease Patients in Hospice Care. Journal or Hospice and Palliative Nursing.10(2), 106-117.


• April 22, 2008 the USF College of Nursing was presented with a trophy for the Top Team Fundraiser from USF’s 2008 Relay for Life. The event took place April 11-12, 2008. We surpassed our $5,000 goal by raising $5,600. Next year’s event will be held April 3-4. 2009. Congratulations to our fantastic students. The College takes pride in their commitment to USF College of Nursing and this very worthy cause. We are privileged to educate the nursing leaders of the future.


• Two of our doctoral students, and two of our masters students have won ACS scholarships starting in the Fall. Congratulations!
  • Cindy Tofthagen and Mary Ann Morgan received doctoral scholarships worth $30,000 for two years.
  • Lura Henderson and Maria Gallo won MS scholarships worth $10,000/ year for two years.


• Phd candidate and MPH candidate, Sabrina Robinson, MS, SRNP, FNP-BC was selected as a recipient of this year’s “Golden Bull Award” from the University of South Florida. Congratulations Sabrina on this distinguished recognition!


• The Sarasota Appreciation Reception on April 22, 2008 at the USF Sarasota Campus was an outstanding success. The event drew Sarasota community members, hospital partners, alumni, faculty, and current as well as prospective nursing students.
  • Clinical Nurse Leader Poster Presentation at the event include:
    • Regina Sherlock, RN, CNL Candidate
      Sarasota Memorial Hospital
      "Preventing Catheter-Related Blood Stream Infections"
    • Vivien Cruz, RN, PCCN, CNL Candidate
      Sarasota Memorial Hospital
      "Sleep Apnea: The Awakening Screening Surgical Patients for Obstructive Sleep Apnea"
    • Maura Wright, RN, CNL Candidate
      Doctor’s Hospital of Sarasota
      “The Clinical Nurse Leader: Implementation of the 12 Bed Hospital Model Delivery of Care"


• The TGH accelerated students spent their last clinical day in the new Emergency Center training alongside Special Forces soldiers learning nursing, medicine, anesthesia and surgical skills to be self-sufficient on the field. Students inserted IV’s, nasogastic tubes, drew blood, and assessed trauma, MI, stroke, and pediatric emergencies with their preceptors.


• Communications Specialist, Ashlea Hudak will be inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, the collegiate national honor society that recognizes academic excellence and promotes scholarship in journalism and mass communication, on April 26, 2008. Congratulations on this distinction and honor!


• Dr. Jason Beckstead has been invited to serve as a review panelist for one of the National Science Foundation’s review panels associated with the Foundation’s Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) competition, an interdisciplinary initiative.


• Patricia Gilliam, MEd, MSN, ARNP, a doctoral student at the USF College of Nursing and Nurse Practitioners with St. Joseph’s Hospital Tampa Care HIV/ AIDS Clinic, was recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Her research is in the area of Transitional Care for Adolescents with HIV.
  • Gilliam, P.P., Ellen, J. M., Leonard, L., Kinsman, S., Straub, D., & Adolescent Trials Network for HIV/ AIDS Interventions (2008). Transitional Care for adolescents with HIV. Journal of Adolescent Health. 42(2 S1), 523.


• Assistant Professor and VMS Clinical Collaborative Team Coordinator, Cas Cahill, DNP, ARNP has been nominated as Chair of the NP/PA Special Interest Section of the American Headache Society. The AHS nominations resulted from her activities as an advocate for an enhanced role and voice for NP’s within the organization.


• Jennifer Cline, MSN, ARNP-BC and Research Coordinator, Melissa Molinari Shelton, RN were chosen to attend the NINR’s Summer Genetics Institute. The full-time eight week research training program designed to provide a foundation in molecular human genetics for bio-behavioral research for nursing faculty, graduate students, and advanced practice nurses includes lecture, seminar/tutorial, and laboratory components. Participants who successfully complete the requirements will receive 12 hours of doctoral level graduate credit awarded through Georgetown University. Congratulations Jennifer Cline and Melissa Molinari Shelton!


• The College of Nursing is currently in a 5 way tie for Top Team Fundraiser for this year’s Relay for Life. We encourage donations to keep coming in, and the winner will be announced on April 22, 2008. Congratulations and thank you to our own College of Nursing’s Tania Cruickshank, who was honored with the Top Fundraising Individual award.


• Students in 5580L at TGH received a 2 hour in-service on Safe Patient Handling last Tuesday. Students enjoyed learning how to be safe. Overhead ceiling lifts will be in our learning lab in the near future. The sling and lift in these pictures are from the company, Waverly Glen who has generously donated this equipment to our school.


• College of Nursing CONECT’s Luis Battistini is a recipient of a 2008 USF Outstanding Staff Award. Congratulations!