The Harris College Magazine
- Winter 2008 ·
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4
· Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences
TCU leading the way in improving health care by ofering new degree:
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic
benefts from grant
TCU received a $15,000 grant from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation
to beneft the Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic, a part of the Communication Sciences
and Disorders program at TCU. With the help of the Bank of America grant, the Clinic
will have the ability to expand its services and provide more care to the surrounding
community.
“The Bank’s gift will enable the
Clinic to continue providing quality
speech and hearing services to
people in our community, many of
whom do not have ability to pay for
such services,” said Chancellor Victor
Boschini.
TheMiller SpeechandHearingClinic
ofers a wide variety of services to people in Fort Worth and the surrounding area.
Services are ofered to English- and Spanish-speaking individuals, and include speech/
language evaluations and therapy, audiological evaluations, hearing aid evaluations,
aural habilitation, speech and hearing screening programs, information and referral.
“At Bank of America, we believe healthy communities are wonderful places to
live and do business,” said Mike Pavell, president for Bank of America in Fort Worth
and a TCU alumnus. “We applaud TCU and the Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic, and
we are proud to support their eforts in removing the fnancial barriers that often exist
between our residents and the opportunity to receive quality healthcare.” - SK
Harris College launches oncology
education and research center
TCU’s Harris College of Nursing &Health Sciences has been awarded a $1,000,000
fve-year grant from UT Southwestern Moncrief Cancer Foundation. The grant will
enable the start of a highly productive partnership between TCU and UT Southwestern
Medical Center that will result in signifcantly improved education for nurses in the
area of oncology, as well as signifcantly improved cancer patient care inTarrant County
and all of North Texas.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with the TCU Harris College of Nursing & Health
Sciences on this exciting new program,” said Kim Pollock, associate vice president for
cancer programs at UT Southwestern. “The student rotation in the Harold C. Simmons
Comprehensive Cancer Center will highlight the valued role our oncology nurses have
on the multidisciplinary team caring for cancer patients.”
The grant will focus on enhancing oncology education and research in three
areas: 1) undergraduate and graduate curriculum at TCU, 2) research by TCU nursing
faculty, and 3) strengthening the relationship between UT Southwestern, TCU and
area Tarrant County hospitals.
“This will ofer opportunities in oncology nursing for undergraduate and
graduate students that would not be possible without this generous gift,” said
Dr. Paulette Burns, dean of the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences. “The
undergraduate students will have the option for additional coursework in oncology
nursing and graduate students will be able to specialize as clinical nurse specialists in
oncology nursing.” - SK
T
CU is leading the way in addressing the many issues in
health care through a new degree in nursing, the Doctor
of Nursing Practice. Health care today demands change in
order to produce better outcomes for patients as well as those
professionals who dedicate themselves to caring for others. The
complexity of the current system and its patients require that
nurses, particularly those in specialty positions, have the highest
level of scientifc knowledge and practice expertise possible.
Research from Drs. Linda Aiken, Carole Estabrooks and
others have established a clear link between higher levels of
nursing education and better patient outcomes. According
to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “Factors
emerging to build momentum for doctoral education for
practice include: the rapid expansion of knowledge underlying
practice; increasedcomplexityof patient care; national concerns
about the quality of care and patient safety; shortages of
nursing personnel which demands a higher level of preparation
for leaders who can design and assess care; shortages of
doctorally prepared nursing faculty, and increasing educational
expectations for the preparation of other health professionals.”
(source: www.aacn.nche.edu)
“The Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) is benefcial to Harris
College because it opens the door to doctoral education for all
advanced practice nurses (nurse practitioners, clinical nurse
specialists, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives),” said Dr.
Linda Harrington, director of the DNP program.
Dean Paulette Burns said, “This is extremely important as
the complexity and rapid change of the health care system
are moving many disciplines to the doctoral level such as
pharmacy, audiology, and physical therapy. The practice
doctorate in nursing prepares nurses to practice at the highest
level of leadership in nursing practice.”
TCU’s Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences
welcomed the DNP inaugural class on August 18; the class of
38 includes 28 full-time and 10 part-time students. The new
doctoral students hail mostly from across Texas, but also from
Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and
Louisiana. Five of the students are TCU alumni, including two
BSNs and three MSNAs. The types of advanced practice nurses
admitted include 19 certifed registered nurse anesthetists, 14
nurse practitioners and fve clinical nurse specialists.
“These are highly qualifed students. Some are academic
leaders; others own their own business. Some are published,
and some speak nationally,” said Dr. Harrington. “The inaugural
class represents some of the most talented advanced practice
nurses across the country. We are prepared to provide them
with new knowledge and new inspiration that will enable them
to make an even bigger contribution to health care.”
For more information about the online Doctor of Nursing
Practice at TCU, visit www.harriscollege.tcu.edu/dnp.asp. - SK
T
he minority population is expanding — and so is
TCU’s Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic. Long known
for its speech-language pathology work with
bilingual children, the clinic is now setting itself apart
with bilingual speech-language pathology training for
the full lifespan.
“We really are looking at a lifespan perspective,
preparing students to work with non-English speakers
and bilinguals from birth to old age — and that’s
not something that’s ofered at many other programs
nationwide,” said Maria L. Muñoz, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, who
joined the department in 2006 as an associate professor.
“We are one of the oldest bilingual programs, one of the
most longstanding, and I think we have tremendous
loyalty from the bilingual speech-language pathology
community in the area.”
TheMiller Speech andHearing Clinic—the training
site for upper level undergraduate and graduate students
inTCU’s communication sciences and disorders program in
the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences —ofers
a variety of speech, language and hearing screening,
evaluation and therapy services to the local community.
Undergraduate and graduate students provide the
services under the direction of faculty members.
William J. Ryan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, chair of the
communication sciences and disorders department
and director of the Miller Clinic, credits Muñoz with the
expanded services for bilingual adults.
“Having her here makes a huge diference,”he said,
noting that previously, bilingual students’ work with
Spanish-speaking clients was concentrated mostly on
children. “Dr. Muñoz’s expertise is working with adults
who have had strokes and who have communication
problems resulting from those strokes — especially
people who are Spanish speaking or bilingual. Having
her here, we can now cover all the way from very young
children to elderly patients, and that allows our bilingual
students to get training across the entire lifespan.”
Miller Clinic continues toworkwithbilingual children
through local Head Start programs. During fall ’06 to spring
’07, the clinic completed 129 child screenings at four Head
Start daycare centers, 17 full evaluations and 110 hours of
therapy for 14 diferent students, Ryan noted.
“We haven’t changed too much, but the goal is to
develop an on-site adult bilingual clinic,” Muñoz said.
“So I’ve been working more on networking with the
community. I’ll be giving a talk for community speech
pathologists on aphasia in Spanish speakers as a way to
connect with the community to encourage referrals of
patients to our clinic.”
Muñoz hopes to get one or two bilingual adult
patients by spring and by fall have a more established
program that could see six to 10 patients a semester,
depending on patients’ needs. “I’ll focus more on the
adults with aphasia, but the other faculty members are
also interested in providing services to bilingual adults,”
she said.
Timing couldn’t be better. Texas is now one of
four states — along with Washington, D.C. — that
is “majority-minority.” In 2006, the state’s population
was 52 percent minority, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau, and it accounted for the second largest Hispanic
population among states with 8.4 million.
The Census Bureau estimates 23.9 percent of the
Tarrant County and 36.4 percent of the Dallas County
populations were Hispanic or Latino in 2005. Some 29
percent of Texas residents speak Spanish at home —
leading all states — and a whopping 78 percent of
Hispanics age 5 and up speak a language other than
English at home, according to the 2005 American
Community Survey.
But for all the hurdles they must clear, the language
barrier won’t be one of them for Spanish-speaking
speech-language pathology clients at the Miller Clinic—
where students are truly bilingually trained.
“There are bilingual speech pathologists, but
then there are those who are bilingual and bilingually
trained — trained in the unique needs of individuals
who are bilingual or non-English speakers,” Muñoz said.
“Our students are coming out bilingually trained. They
have an understanding of the unique diagnostic features,
developmental issues and treatment options that are
specifc to non-English speakers and bilinguals. And that’s
an important distinction.” - RSM
Miller Clinic expands bilingual reach across full lifespan
Bilingual training sets TCU students apart