Nurse Shirley Turner: A Legacy of Love & Learning

88 years young, Shirley Marie Turner has her eye on the future and making a difference in nursing. After more than three decades of retirement she and her daughter Janis Boyd have found a way to make that happen. At the USF College of Nursing, Janis is creating a scholarship fund in her mother’s name.

"I just love nursing," says Shirley, now a retired nurse in Delray Beach. "...love it because you’re helping people. I know sometimes it can be difficult. It was difficult for me when I was young to be able to afford nursing school, so I can understand those young people who want to go and don't have the finances to. Thank goodness my father was able to get funding for me to go." Janis, a USF graduate, Class of '73, says it's the kind of legacy that certainly "fits" her mom, a petite 4'5" woman with a Herculean passion for nursing and kids. "My late husband Jack and I have been involved with USF scholarships for years. I thought it would be good to create a nursing scholarship in mom's name. At first she said 'I'm so not worthy!'" laughs Janis. "I said 'Mom, you raised three teenaged daughters at one time! I think that counts for something!' After it sunk in, mom thought it was really cool."

Cool indeed.

"I think what the USF College of Nursing is doing is so great, so I went for it," says Shirley. "It's always a great thing when you're able to give back," says Janis.

Looking back, it's clear that nursing allowed this family to have the best of both worlds. For the kids, it was quality time with mom at home. For Shirley, it was a rewarding career.

William Robert Turner and Shirley Marie Foreman were married on April 25, 1941.

A 1942 graduate of the Springfield City Hospital Nursing School in Ohio, then Shirley Marie Foreman, began her nursing career 'working the floor' of Springfield City Hospital. Two years later and married, Shirley faced the question new moms have struggled with for generations - whether or not to become a stay at home mom. She made the choice to put her nursing career on hold until her girls, Lois, Janis and Sara were in high school and college. "It was very fulfilling to be able to do that," says Shirley of her return after years of child rearing. "At the same time, Florida was having nursing shortages, and I wanted to help."

Speaking from her home in Homosassa, daughter Janis is quick to point out that Shirley was as devoted to her colleagues as she was to her patients. "Mom often worked weekends and holidays to give nurses who were still raising kids time to spend with their families," says Janis beaming with pride. "Helping people has always been mom’s first priority."

"I just did what the Lord wanted me to do. I felt a calling and followed my heart," says Shirley. "I'd work my own weekends and then help other nurses if they wanted a day off for a special reason. We were a team."

Daughter Sara, who lives in Palm Coast, Florida, notes that her mother first felt a calling for nursing since childhood. "Mom knew she wanted to be a nurse when she was just 10 or 11 years old. We always felt that mom had a gift. When ever one of us was sick, one of the first things mom did was to touch us. She could tell, just by touching us, what was going on," says Sara, who also attended USF. "We could NEVER fake being sick because mom could tell right away!" adds Janis. "We never got to stay home faking we were sick. Believe me, we tried!"

As one might expect, Shirley's nursing memories are many and varied – stretching from Ohio to Florida. "Too many to remember in great detail," she says with a laugh. Her daughter's personal favorite is one from Ohio. "In the early days, they had large hospital rooms with 4 to 6 patients to a room. Mom was taking care of a group of men one day when one of them told her he needed something, but he was having a hard time telling her what that was. He was an older man, shy and in a roomful of other men. Maybe he wasn’t comfortable telling my mom, a tiny, pretty 22 year-old, what he needed," says Janis with a chuckle. "Finally he said to her 'I need... you know... one of those vases.' And my mom said 'Oh, okay. How big is your bouquet?' Well, as it turned out, what he wanted was a urinal."

True story.

"Oh my, yes!" says Shirley, almost blushing.

Focusing on today, Shirley marvels at the increased choices nursing students have. "Back in 1942, you hit the books and from then on it was 'learn and do'" says Shirley. "And back then, you were either an operating room nurse, an emergency room nurse, or a floor nurse…and even those were limited," she recalls. "Now? My goodness, it's wide open! Unbelievable!" Re-energized by the opportunity to give back to the profession she loves, Shirley's golden years of retirement are filled with a renewed sense of optimism and hope.

"There just never seems to be enough qualified nurses around and this is our way of doing our part to help," says Janis.

"The College of Nursing is honored to have a scholarship memorializing Shirley Turner," says Patricia Burns, PhD, RN, Dean of nursing and Senior Associate Vice President, USF Health. "She is truly a role model for the nursing profession and her passion for nursing is infectious."

Shirley has this advice for nursing students of today. "Number one, you really have to love it. You have to know in your heart that you want to do this. It may be tough sometimes, as any job would be, but if you really want to do it, hang in there! It will work out."

Shirley Turner is living proof of that.
Story by Lissette Campos, USF Health Communications

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Nursing School Highest Percentage Gain in Record Year of Research Awards

The USF College of Nursing saw a 64% gain in research awards, making it home to the highest jump in research funding at USF.

To: The USF Community
From: President Judy Genshaft

One of the most exciting developments at the University of South Florida today is the growth of research awards and the wide range of interdisciplinary ideas that are contributing to this momentum.

In my Fall 2008 Address yesterday, I talked about how USF's strategic plan recognizes and shapes signature research programs that cross disciplines and colleges. Integrated research will make us the university of the future.

On our USF news website, you'll see USF's press release on research awards from the fiscal year 2007-2008. I'd like to thank the many members of our community who contribute their best ideas and hard work to our research mission: faculty members, as well as graduate students, staff members, and undergraduate students who've become involved in research.

Congratulations to all of you.

USF Sees Record Breaking $360 Million in Research Awards:

- The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has seen a reduction in funds allocated from the Federal government, awarded $107.5 million to USF in FY 2007/2008, up from $62.5 million during the previous fiscal year.

- Funding for medical and health research leads the university’s quest for excellence. Year after year, programs headed by Dr. Jeffrey Krischer in the USF College of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics help drive the research dollar totals upward. In FY 2007/2008, the college’s external funding increased by 35 percent.

- The USF College of Nursing increased its research awards by 64 percent and achieved its goal of raising both public and private funding by 40 percent.

Researchers Finding the Mind-Body Connection is a Two-Way Street

For more information on the PNI conference, visit www.cme.hsc.usf.edu/pni. Are you sick because you’re depressed, or are you depressed because you’re sick? The short answer is yes.

For more than 25 years researchers in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI, have been accumulating evidence showing that what you think and feel may alter your immune system. Relatively recently researchers have also begun documenting the flip side – that the immune system gone awry may profoundly impact the inner workings of your brain, leading to significant behavioral and health consequences. PNI has evolved with advances in technology, which now allows scientists to more precisely measure inflammatory chemicals such as cytokines and stress hormones like cortisol, as well as tap into sophisticated imaging techniques that map out metabolic changes in parts of the brain controlling emotions.

Some of the nation’s leading experts in psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI, will gather Sept. 18 to 21 when the University of South Florida College of Nursing hosts a national conference, Frontiers in Psychoneuroimmunology: The Emotional Interface, at Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, FL.

They will share emerging research linking emotions with health and immunity, the connections between emotions and cancer progression, the immune system’s involvement in diseases such as fibromyalgia, depression and metabolic syndrome, the potential of stress and fatigue to hurt the body’s ability to fight infection, and the global health implications of mind-body research. The conference will include a preconference training program in meditation/stress reduction and roundtable discussions with opportunities for health professionals in attendance to ask questions.

Nick Hall, PhD, directs the USF College of Nursing Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, one of few PNI research centers in the country housed within a nursing school.

"One of the biggest challenges is interpreting the results of mind-body interactions and transforming them into clinical outcomes that will benefit our patients and clients. We are dealing with an extraordinarily complex system and we don’t yet understand all that we need to consider." said Nick Hall, PhD, director of the USF College of Nursing Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, one of few PNI research centers in the country housed within a nursing school. "But this conference will bring together the country’s top PNI experts in one spot to answer tough questions. Many of the speakers are funded by the National Institutes of Health, and we all share a passion for scientific validity."

PNI is a wide-ranging field studying the relationships among the mind (psyche), the brain (neuro) and the immune system (immunology) and what all that has to do with your health and susceptibility to disease.

"In the early days when the term 'psychoneuroimmunology' was coined, the bias was that the brain controls everything – that information flows in the direction of gravity, from the nervous system down to the rest of the body," Dr. Hall said.

When researchers found that depressed people were more prone to infections, they assumed the brain must be triggering a stress hormone to tamp down the immune system. But, Dr. Hall said, the evolutionary advantage for suppressing the immune function of a depressed person with slowed reflexes -- already lacking energy and motivation - was questionable. Making the depressed individual more susceptible to viruses and bacteria didn't seem to make sense. Scientists eventually suspected that symptoms of depression may sometimes be triggered by the immune system sending the body a message to slow down so it can rest and restore energy, he added. But, what would happen if that message didn't get turned off?

"We now know that some forms of depression may actually be triggered by too much immunity, rather than weakened immunity,” Dr. Hall said. “Something happens to make the immune system keep going on and on, without any restraints, rather like the Energizer Bunny."

The USF conference’s keynote speaker is Peter Bourne, MD, a former health advisor to President Jimmy Carter, whose frontline studies on the psychological and physiological aspects of combat stress during the Vietnam War are considered classics in the field of psychoendocrinology.

Dr. Bourne, a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, will speak on the public health implications of stress, which he maintains often exacerbates illness among those struggling with poverty and global conflicts.

Other top scholars will include Lydia Temoshok, PhD, of the University of Maryland, author of the book The Type C Connection: Behavioral Links to Cancer and Your Health, and Ronald Glaser, PhD, a pioneer in studies linking stress and infection. Dr. Temoshok’s latest research looks at how higher inflammatory cytokine responses correlated with a Type C coping style (characterized as unfailingly eager to please and unable to express emotions, particularly anger) may influence the progression of HIV. Dr. Glaser, an immunologist from the Ohio State University, found that the immunity of medical students went down every year under the stress of their three-day exam period. The test takers had fewer natural killer cells, which fight tumors and viral infections, and stopped producing immunity-boosting gamma interferon.

Contributors from the USF College of Nursing will be Maureen Groer, RN, PhD, director of the Center for Women’s Health Research, and Dr. Hall. Dr. Groer will discuss the immune and long-term health consequences of post traumatic stress syndrome in women who have experienced events such as rape, accidents, threats and warfare. Some studies suggest that inappropriate activation of inflammatory responses in these women may contribute to their future risk for chronic illnesses like heart disease and autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Hall’s research probing the interrelationships between emotions and health has been featured on “Nova” and the Emmy-Award winning television series “Healing and the Mind” produced by Bill Moyers for PBS.

He will speak about his previous work at USF and Arizona State University, which indicated that the body chemistry of theatre actors was impacted by the emotions they experienced while performing in a controlled setting. If they performed an uplifting piece requiring a lot of laughter, their immune systems were boosted and disease-fighting chemical reactions were enhanced. If they acted in a tense dramatic role requiring expressions of grief and anger, their immune systems were suppressed. While more study is needed, Hall said, eventually role playing exercises intended to create physiological changes might help patients with chronic illnesses like cancer and AIDS.

Initial skepticism among scientists about the link between emotions and physical health has been greatly muted by mounting evidence from animal and human studies showing that the brain communicates with the immune system and vice versa, said conference speaker Margaret Kemeny, PhD, director of Health Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Kemeny's own research is looking for ways to bridge the science of emotions and meditation with the aim of developing interventions that can influence emotion regulation, biology and health. "We want to determine whether we can modify biological systems by helping people to become aware of and alter their emotional reactions – and that's still an open question," she said.

"I'd venture to say not one of us in this field thinks psychological interventions should be the sole treatment for any disease. But we are excited about the prospect of developing interventions based on PNI findings that might not only supplement standard high-quality medical care, but synergize with treatment benefits," Dr. Kemeny said. Dr. Hall emphasizes that there is too much uncertainty to draw a direct cause and effect line between emotions, or personality, and disease. Being a pessimist won’t give a person cancer any more than being an optimist will spare someone who has a family history of heart disease, eats poorly and never exercises from a heart attack, he said.

"Getting any illness is like playing the lottery. You’ve got to have all the numbers lined up to get the disease,” Dr. Hall said. “One of those numbers is your genetic blueprint, but genes only determine probability, not causality. There has to be something to activate or deactivate genes. It could be a behavioral factor like how you cope with stress or your social support system. It could be any number of environmental factors that can impact biology – nutrition, how much you exercise, how much sleep you get, how much caffeine or alcohol you pour into your body, whether you take drugs."

While no one is to blame for their health consequences, everyone can learn how to take a more active role in preventing illness, improving quality of life and take advantage of therapies that may allow traditional medical treatments to work better, Dr. Hall said.

"There are scientifically based things you can do, like mindfulness meditation, stress management or reframing exercises, that can make a significant difference in promoting your overall health – in ways you may have never imagined."

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Graphic from National Institutes of Health (1995) Mind-Body Interactions and Disease conference

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• Versie Johnson-Mallard, PhD, WHNPc presented, "STD Prevention, Early Detection and Treatment" at Leading the Way in Healthcare, the 2nd Annual Polk County Nurses Association Symposium on September13th.


• Versie Johnson-Mallard, PhD, WHNPc also presented, "A nurse-directed intervention focusing on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections in childbearing aged women" at the Moffitt Cancer Center Nursing Research Education Working Group on Wednesday Sept 24th from 5:30-7:00pm in the Stabile Research Building, David Murphey Conference Room.


• Ph.D. nursing student, Rachel Myers, RN, MSN, CDE will be presenting, "Teaching and Learning Principles" at the USF Diabetes Center's "Basics of Diabetes 2008" program, which will be held on October 2 - 3, 2008.


• Adjunct faculty, ARNP practicing in the Naples area, and alumna of the USF College of Nursing, Catherine Chiaradonna, MS, ARNP-C recently published:Chiaradonna, C. (2008). The Chlamydia cascade: Enhanced STD prevention strategies for adolescents. The Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 21(5), 233-241.


• USF Research Resident and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the USF College of Nursing Doctoral Program, Teresa Russo RN,MSN, PhD(c) is in candidacy, and will be attending the national Emergency Nurses' Association Conference in Minneapolis as a Florida delegate 9/23 - 9/27.


• Nancy Olliver RN, MS, CNL passed the Clinical Nurse Leader Credentialing Exam on August 21, 2008.


• Allison Edmonds, USF College of Nursing faculty member and doctoral candidate at the University of Central Florida, has been notified that her poster presentation titled: Dietary Supplement Use in a Population of Low-income, Uninsured Patients Attending Public Sector Medicine Clinics will be presented at the 136th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association which takes place October 25-29, 2008 in San Diego, CA.


• The following paper was just accepted by Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Neonatal Nursing: Groer, M and Shelton, M. (2009). Exercise is Associated with Elevated Proinflammatory Cytokines in Human Milk


• "Word of Mouth: The HPV Virus and Heterosexual Couples" by authors, Johnson-Mallard, V., Kostas-Polston, E., Lengacher, C.A., Guiliano, A., Kip, K., & Jacobsen, P. has been selected as a poster presentation at the 11th Annual Conference of the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health in Seattle, Washington October 16th. Congratulations!


• Cindy Tofthagen, MSN, ARNP, AOCNP will present, "Cancer Patients with Neuropathic Pain Symptoms Experience More Sever Pain Than Patients with Non-Neuropathic Pain Symptoms", as a poster at the 2008 Advanced Practice Nursing Conference in Seattle, Washington in November.


• "Pilot Feasibility Study of Binaural Auditory Beats for Reducing Symptoms of Inattention in Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" by Susan Kennel, PhD, RN, CPNP was published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing.


• Roberta Capewell has advanced to Doctoral Candidate after passing the nursing qualifying examination taken as part of the requirements for completion of the Doctor of Science degree in Nursing at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions in Utah. Her dissertation research is titled "Evaluation of a Tool Kit for Safe Patient Handling in the Home Care Setting" and is aimed at the study and reduction of injury for home health aides. The Bay Pines VA Healthcare System is supporting her research and our own Dr. Audrey Nelson, Director of the Patient Safety Center of Inquiry is on her dissertation committee as well as Dr. Kathleen Rockefeller, Assistant Professor in our School of Physical Therapy at USF Health.