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.”

KDWPT

PRATT – The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism (KDWPT) is conducting a five-year review of the lists of Kansas species that are endangered, threatened or Species In Need of Conservation (SINC). Endangered is the most imperiled category of the three, and species on the SINC list are deemed to require conservation measures to prevent them from becoming threatened or endangered. A five-year review is required by the Kansas Nongame and Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1975. Any individual or group can petition KDWPT to propose an addition, deletion, or modification to the current lists by providing pertinent scientific information required within the petition form.

KDWPT relies on the Threatened and Endangered Species Task Committee to assist with the review process. The task committee consists of seven members representing various disciplines, and include staff from state and federal agencies and state universities. To determine if a full review is warranted, the task committee examines updated scientific information and research for any species petitioned for a listing change. Species experts are consulted and all available data is evaluated during the full review. These recommendations, and any amendments to them, are published in the Kansas Register for public comment for at least 90 days. After a full review is completed, the task committee makes recommendations to the KDWPT Secretary and any changes to the lists must be approved by the KDWPT Commission following a public hearing.

At the last five-year review completed in 2014, the redbelly snake, smooth earth snake, longnose snake, spring peeper, chestnut lamprey and silverband shiner were downlisted or removed from the threatened list and added to the SINC list. The Eskimo curlew, black-capped vireo, and many-ribbed salamander were removed from the threatened list due to no evidence of viable populations in Kansas. The northern long-eared bat was added to the SINC list.

Currently, the state endangered list includes 10 invertebrates, five fish, two amphibians, two birds and two mammals. The state threatened list includes six invertebrates, 11 fish, six amphibians, four reptiles, two birds and one mammal. The state SINC list includes 83 species. For detailed information on each list, visit www.ksoutdoors.com and click “Wildlife & Nature,” then “Threatened and Endangered Species.”

Click here for a list of Threatened and Endangered (T&E) Species in Ellis County.

A recent survey conducted by Responsive Management – an internationally recognized research firm specializing in natural resource and outdoor recreation issues – found that conservation of threatened and endangered wildlife remains important among Kansans. Some interesting findings included:

• A majority of Kansas residents (91 percent) agreed that the KDWPT should continue to identify and protect habitat critical to threatened and endangered species.
• A majority (73 percent) of residents agree with the statement, “Wildlife that is threatened and endangered in Kansas yet abundant in other states should still be protected in Kansas.”

Petitions must be received by May 31, 2018 to be considered for the current five-year review. Petition forms can be downloaded at

https://ksoutdoors.com/Services/Threatened-and-Endangered-Wildlife/Five-Year-Review-of-Listed-Species and submitted electronically to [email protected] or mailed to KDWPT, Attn: ESS, 512 SE 25th Ave., Pratt, KS 67124-8174.

By DAWSON ROONEY
HHS Guidon

Science Olympiad placed second at Division C regional competition at Fort Hays State University on Thursday, Feb. 15, allowing them to continue on to the April 7 state competition at Wichita State University. To make state a school must take one of the top three spots at regional competition.

The results for the Science Olympiad regional competition are as follows:

Seniors Ashton Balthazor and Dawson Rooney placed third in Thermodynamics.

Senior Sara Rohleder and sophomore Emily Huff placed second in Astronomy.

Junior Jackson Stanton and freshman Johnathan Rupe placed second in Game On.

Seniors Eric Adams and Dawson Rooney placed second in Optics.

Freshmen Marisa Schindler and Alexis White placed third in Remote Sensing

Seniors London Keller and Analyse Claude placed second in Material Science.

Senior Taya Randle and junior Jackson Stanton placed third in Herpetology.

Sophomore Kari Satomi and freshmen Callie Raacke and Marisa Schindler placed first in Experimental Design.

Freshmen Callie Raacke and Marissa Schindler placed second in Mission Possible.

Seniors London Keller and Ashton Balthazor placed third in Chemistry Lab.

Senior Sara Rohleder and freshman Jonathan Rupe placed first in Fermi Questions.

Senior Dawson Rooney and freshman Callie Raacke placed second in Hovercraft.

Junior Johnny Fuller and freshman Alexis White placed second in Disease Detectives.

“Our team is amazing,” sophomore Kari Satomi said. “We all support each other in many ways. I believe that if our team keeps working together and working hard we will do amazing at state.”