FHSU University Relations

The first group of students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Fort Hays State University, in its first full year of operation, will soon graduate. The program is designed to train doctoral-level nurse practitioners who will put academic nursing research to use in treating patients.

The first group of Doctor of Nursing Practice students will graduate this May. The bachelor’s to doctorate program has already admitted students to begin in the fall.

The foundational purpose of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program is to produce nurse practitioners who will be change-leaders in the hospitals and communities where they work to improve patient outcomes and the patient experience, said Dr. Colleen Paramesh, assistant professor or nursing at Fort Hays State.

The culmination of the DNP program is the project. Each student designs and conducts a project that must be sustainable, in Paramesh’s terms, so that the work in the project can be maintained and continue to improve care.

The doctoral projects of two of the first six students, Callea Breiner, a nurse practitioner focusing on ostomy care in Manhattan, and Abbie Weatherley, an emergency room nurse practitioner in Kansas City, will present their work at the Midwest Nursing Research Society later this spring.

Breiner’s project, “Quality of Life and Self Efficacy in Ostomy Patients in a Local Support Group,” seeks to improve the quality of life for ostomy patients. Weatherley’s project, “Sepsis: Utilization of a Protocol and Algorithm in the Emergency Department,” is aimed at improving care and treatment for patients coming into the emergency room with severe infections.

Results from their work will be presented at the society’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio, in April.

“The DNP expands on master’s-level education to improve the nurse practitioner’s knowledge and use of evidence-based practice and leadership to improve patient outcome,” said Dr. Colleen Paramesh, assistant professor of nursing at FHSU.

“A doctorate in nursing practice,” said Paramesh, “is different from a Ph.D. in nursing. While the Ph.D. is research oriented, the DNP, as the name implies, focuses on the clinical practice of nursing. Both areas of focus are needed to advance health care.”

Paramesh said that the key to doctoral nursing practice projects is that they must be sustainable, so the work performed in the project can be used in their communities and organizations. All six of the MSN to DNP projects currently under way, she said, are showing significant improvements in patient care, and they are making sustainable impacts in their facilities and communities.

Breiner, for instance, a nurse practitioner for a gastrointestinal medical and surgical group in Manhattan, saw many ostomy patients who had no follow up care. “As I was seeing people more frequently and the need for support, the idea for the support group was there,” she said. In June of 2016 she started a support group that drew members from as much as 60 miles away.

So when she began in the DNP program at Fort Hays State, she decided that her project would be to implement a project to improve care and evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program and a support group for ostomy patients, both in terms of being able to provide daily care for their own ostomies and to improve quality of life.

After the conclusion of the study, she said, “I think the big thing that this has shown – and shown me – is that there was such a huge need, first for the course in ostomy care but also for the support group.”

She is considering starting a non-profit to provide support and education for ostomy patients, and a summer camp in which “actual ostomy patients will teach.”

Weatherley’s project, at a suburban hospital in the greater Kansas City area, was a quality-improvement project which had as its aim measuring improvement in the care of sepsis patients in the emergency room by implementing a treatment “algorithm,” which she described as a protocol for treatment. It is “a kind of chart to follow when a septic patient checks into the ER. This flow chart guides the treatment of the septic patient during their entire stay in the ER.”

The protocol is a way of implementing the pre-set guidelines established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, she said, which hospitals must follow in order to qualify for reimbursement. The compliance percentage was not where the hospital wanted it to be.

“Our goal is 100 percent, so we still have a little room for improvement,” she said, “but that was a big first step.”

Paramesh emphasized the primary point. “The takeaway for the DNP program is that everything we do has to help patients,” she said, listing the general criteria for evaluation: The program is focused on enacting change; that change has to meet the requirements of health care today; the projects have to improve care for patients.

“We want to cut health care costs and be sustainable,” she said. “We want to become an ongoing part of the process.”

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Hays mayor James Meier is feeling more positive about the new governor’s awareness of the city’s long-term water project with the R9 Ranch in Edwards County.

Meier and City Manager Toby Dougherty were in Topeka last week to update Hays state representative Eber Phelps (D-111th Dist.) about the project progress. Andrew Wiens, chief policy officer on Gov. Jeff Colyer’s staff, also met with Meier and Dougherty.

“We had a good meeting that lasted more than an hour,” Meier reported Thursday night during the city commission meeting. “I felt like he asked really good questions.”

Meier thinks the governor, a Hays native, and his staff now better understand the city’s position and that “we’re ready to get things moving.”

“The overarching message I conveyed to the governor’s representative was essentially there’s no disagreement between the city and DWR (Division of Water Resources) over major or minor problems there may be with the R9. We’ve come essentially to an agreement on all points when it comes to the change application. That’s why we don’t really see why there’s the delay in getting the change order issued.”

Meier noted no promises were made in the meeting. “They still need to talk to DWR and the Agriculture Department to find if they have any concerns.”

Still, Meier is hopeful the bureaucratic process will begin moving more quickly. “I think we’re seeing some good progress.”

The city employs a lobbying group, Capital Strategies of Topeka, specifically for water exploration issues. The yearly contract is $36,000 paid  with the half-cent water sales tax. According to Meier, “once the R9 passes all regulatory hurdles, we’ll terminate the contract.”

The application to change water use from agriculture irrigation to municipal was filed with the Division of Water Resources nearly three years ago.

The cities of Hays and Russell are co-owners of the R9 Ranch, purchased in 1994 as a long-term solution to water needs for the towns. Hays owns 82 percent of the ranch; Russell owns 18 percent.

The state’s Water Transfer Act has never been triggered. Hays is the first entity to make such a request. The city began the regulatory process in February, 2014.

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Parents kept about 50 Hays High School students at home Tuesday out of concerns about an alleged threat at the school.

The school’s enrollment is about 800 students, so this was about 7 percent of the student population.

A 14-year-old student was removed from school on the morning of Monday, Feb. 12, after police were informed about an alleged verbal threat the student made against the school.

The child was placed in detention through Juvenile Services of Northwest Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority, and a child-in-need-of-care case was opened. The student remains in custody outside of the city of Hays, according Ellis County Attorney Tom Drees.

However, information about the threat was not released to the public until Saturday, Feb. 17, after the a deadly school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead.

Between Feb. 12 when the student was removed and Tuesday, Feb. 20, rumors swirled at the school.

On Thursday, Feb. 15, and Friday, Feb. 16, rumors circulated someone had a gun at the high school.

Both Superintendent John Thissen and Principal Marty Straub said these rumors were investigated by law enforcement, and it was determined there was never a firearm at the school.

Further rumors circulated that friends of the boy who was taken into custody planned to carry out violence at the school when students returned to school on Tuesday, Feb. 20, after a day off for President’s Day.

Drees told Hays Post that law enforcement investigation had uncovered no other student involvement in the threat, and this second rumor was also found to be not credible.

RELATED: Hays city commissioner proud of police work surrounding alleged school threat.

Straub released a letter to parents via email on Monday night trying to alleviate concerns. The school brought in a police officer to be at the school at the start of the day on Tuesday, Feb. 20. Superintendent Thissen was also on campus that morning.

Straub said those students whose parents kept them at home due to security concerns will not be penalized for the day they missed. Eighth-grade students were also visiting HHS Tuesday, Feb. 20, for orientation. Straub said he was not aware of a large number of students absent from that group.

Straub, as well as school board president Lance Bickle, said they had taken dozens of calls from parents concerned about the threat and rumors. Many parents expressed frustration about the delay in notification and what was perceived as a lack of communication between the public and the district.

One parent commented on the Hays Post Facebook page, “I’m a parent of a child at Hays High, and this ticks me off beyond belief knowing my child was there that day and no notice was sent. I think in situations like this, the decision should be of the parents to decide what is safe. I would have pulled my child from school until I feel it’s safe for his return. …”

Another parent wrote, “Wondering why my child and several others are convinced … and I mean convinced that this was a group and Tuesday they are in grave danger. I need to hear more about this. These kids are very scared, and I know several are planning to stay home. It could be imaginations gone wild, but I believe some more information would put many of us at ease, especially the students.”

Yet another parent said, “This is great and all that it’s finally came out, but why weren’t we parents notified yesterday? Instead of coming home from work to hear such startling stories, we should have been informed by the school! They can send out regular automated messages about school events and early releases, but they can’t about our children’s safety? At least let us know it’s handled instead of having to hear this from our kids! The responsibility of our district makes me sick to my stomach! The responsibility of keeping my kids safe is in the hands of the school, and this is sadly how I’ve finally been officially notified.”

Bickle said he had concerns, but did not want to make an official comment until he knew more about the incident. He has asked that a discussion of the incident be placed on Monday’s school board agenda.

“We are going to talk about what happened and what changes need to be made,” he said.

Straub said Thursday he hoped to sit down soon with the superintendent and law enforcement to discuss how this incident was handled and how communication with parents and the public could be handled differently in the future.

The student who made the original threat was removed from school on the morning of Monday, Feb. 12, and Thissen said he thought things were being handled, but then the situation became much more complicated after the school shooting in Florida. Thissen said he thought the school shooting on Feb. 14 affected how the students and parents perceived safety at the school.

“I think we have to acknowledge that something really horrible happened in the middle of the week that had some impact on this. Although Florida is a long ways away from here, the media allows it to be right next door. It created a whole other impact of what was happening with this case,” he said. “Although this was a school threat, it was a child in need of care from the beginning with the county attorney being involved.

“For me to say this needed to be handled differently … if they would have known what was happening on Wednesday, yes. But they had no crystal ball to see how things would have progressed through the week. It is so easy to look back now and say if we would have known how things were going to happen in the United States, I would say I would have handled things differently. I am not going to say the county attorney, I going to say I should have.”

Straub noted schools are restricted in what information they can release about individual students based on student privacy laws. Child-in-need-of-care cases are also confidential. Straub said these restrictions add another dimension to a case like this.

The school district has both district-wide and school crisis plans. However, Straub said HHS has not had an active shooter drill. He said the district has tried to balance student safety with the desire not to make security plans public to people who might have violent intentions.

Straub encouraged parents and members of the public to contact school or law enforcement officials if they have a safety concern or believe a threat has been made.

He said he would rather tell a parent the school has already heard about a threat and investigated it than have a threat go uninvestigated.

“Let somebody know,” Straub said. “They say if you see something or hear something, say something,” he said. “It’s that concept. If we all communicate better, and we all will communicate better, I think that it is a better and safer county altogether.”

The National Association of School Psychologists said social media can be a friend or foe when dealing with a school crisis. The organization encourages administrators and crisis teams to build plans on how to use social media into their crisis plans.

“Sometimes social media can be a source of psychological trauma and other challenges. Of great concern is the fact that social media has the potential for triggering or exacerbating crises and the phenomena of contagion, wherein learning about a crisis event can lead to another crisis event,” the association’s website said.

Hays High is not the only school in Kansas to experience a school threat in the last two weeks. Police and school districts in Dodge City, Wichita, Great Bend, Salina, Junction City and, most recently, Hill City have learned of alleged threats.

The association said intensive, detailed coverage of a crisis can raise children’s anxiety levels.

The American Psychological Association has a series of articles available that discuss how to talk to your children about school shootings. USD 489 also has school psychologists on staff who might be able to help if your child is experiencing anxiety about school violence.