DiversityNursing Blog

It’s fascinating how people’s minds work. Some people take something that is very complicated to most, and break it down in very simple terms so it’s easy to understand. And some people see a problem and figure out a way to fix it or make what currently exists better. Right now, we’re hearing about Nobel prize winners who have done something amazing in their field. There are also young people doing very interesting things to help their fellow man as well.

Google has a science fair every year, open to 13- 18 year olds. The fair has different award categories such as The National Geographic Explorer Award, The Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award, and The Lego Education Builder Award. This year Anushka Naiknaware, 13, won the Lego Education Builder Award by creating something so simple but much needed in the medical field. Find out what this Google Science Fair winner invented by reading below! 

This 13-year-old just revolutionized an age-old problem in medicine using a remarkably simple method.

Anushka Naiknaware from Beaverton, Oregon became one of the top eight finalists of an international Google-run science competition after she invented bandages that notify doctors when they needed to be changed.

Using graphene nanoparticles and ink, the bandages start to display fractal patterns when they detect that moisture levels have dropped. Bandages need to be dampened in order to properly heal wounds, but changing bandages too often can be harmful to an injury. This way, medical officials no longer have to rely on guesswork.

Since she won the Lego Education Builder award for engineering, the 7th grader from Stoller Middle School was given a $15,000 scholarship, a free vacation to the Lego World Headquarters in Denmark with her parents, and a mentorship with Lego executives for entrepreneurship.

Anushka, who became the youngest recipient of the prize, plans on getting her invention patented and approved by the Food and Drug Administration so it can be put to use in hospitals worldwide.

After 13,000 miles and 75 locations in 32 states, Norma – the 91-year-old Nurse who chose to take a road trip instead of spending her last days undergoing chemotherapy – has passed away. This fun loving lady lived the last year of her life in an Airstream trailer with her therapy poodle Ringo, enjoying the sights of our lovely nation. Keep reading to learn more about Norma and see photos from her journey!  

In 2015, 90-year-old Norma Bauerschmidt found herself in the hospital, listening to a doctor explain the treatment options for her recently diagnosed cancer.

Bauerschmidt, better known as Miss Norma, stopped him right there. Matter-of-fact like, she told her doctor, “I’m 90 years old, I’m hitting the road!”

Now, more than a year after issuing that powerful statement, Miss Norma’s journey has come to a peaceful end.

Norma Bauerschmidt died at the age 91 in home hospice care from complications of stage four uterine cancer.

She became a worldwide icon for living life on your own terms when she famously rejected medical treatment for her cancer, in favor of going on the road trip of a lifetime.

She is survived by her son Tim and daughter-in-law Ramie, who were both instrumental in giving her a truly extraordinary last year.

Scroll through the gallery below to learn more about how Miss Norma took life by the reins, and inspired millions along the way!

In the summer of 2015, Norma Bauerschmidt made a decision that touched the lives of millions, when she lost her husband and found herself diagnosed with cancer in the span of just two weeks.

Bauerschmidt’s husband of 67 years, Leo, was admitted to hospice just as Bauerschmidt herself was undergoing a series of medical tests after her doctors noticed blood in her urine.

On July 7th, Leo Bauerschmidt passed away after lingering in hospice care for two weeks. Two days later, doctors confirmed the results of Norma’s tests; she had stage four uterine cancer.

It’s easy to speculate about what happened next; perhaps if Bauerschmidt hadn’t just lost her husband, or if she’d been ten or even five years younger, she would have chosen to go ahead with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

Instead, Norma Bauerschmidt made history when she told her doctor, “I’m 90 years old, I’m hitting the road.”

She refused treatment, and decided that with the amount of time she had left, she was going to spend it living her life to the fullest!

Her son Tim and his wife Ramie had retired to a nomadic lifestyle in their vintage Airstream trailer years before. They invited Bauerschmidt to join them, and set off all together on the adventure of a lifetime!

Bauerschmidt and her sweet therapy poodle Ringo got their very own trailer suite hitched to the back of the Airstream, and Ramie set up a Facebook page for fans inspired by Bauerschmidt’s decision to follow along.

With Tim and Ramie leading the way, the 90-year-old began a grand tour of the country, stopping to see every site she ever dreamed of.

She went from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon, visited the Jolly Green Giant in Minnesota, and collected sea sponges in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Everywhere she went, Bauerschmidt — often called “Miss Norma” who was in a spoof on the film Driving Miss Daisy — made sure to share her infectious smile and enthusiasm for life with everyone she met.

She traveled as a young woman when she worked as a nurse during WWII. In the intervening years, however, she settled down in Michigan with her husband to raise their family.

Faced with the uncertainty of a stage four cancer diagnosis, she made sure to experience each of her adventures with joyful enthusiasm.

After all was said and done, she spent more than a year on the road, crisscrossing the country from east to west and back again.

To mark the anniversary of Miss Norma’s grand adventure, Tim and Ramie took to the Facebook page in late August 2016 and thanked everyone that helped them and show the world how precious that time was for everyone involved.

“We have driven the RV nearly 13,000 miles and slept in over 75 different locations in 32 states. Miss Norma has experienced more “firsts” than we can count. 

Big things, like riding in a hot air balloon or on a horse, to little things like getting a pedicure or having her first taste of key lime pie, oyster, and fried green tomatoes. 

She had her hair done by ten different stylists and crossed the time zones nine times (I think.) 

Over these past 12 months, all of us learned so much about living, caring, loving and embracing the present moment. 

No matter where we are, when asked where her favorite spot has been on this trip, Norma now says, “Right here!””

As Tim and Ramie helped Miss Norma celebrate her one-year anniversary of hitting the road, they were also acknowledging that their adventure might be drawing to an end.

Bauerschmidt’s health was deteriorating. They knew that now, after a year of adventures and firsts, she had seen, well, just about everything.

At 90, the WWII WAVES Navy veteran — who once had her service benefits checks hand-delivered by her congressman, Gerald R. Ford, after they were delayed — got to tour the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford in style.

She saw whales in the Pacific North-West and ate as much cake as she could; by any description, that’s a great way to spend a last year.

In August of 2016, Bauerschmidt attended the San Juan Country Fair, and went into hospice on the same day.

She passed away on September 30th, not in a hospital, but in the trailer she called home for more than a year — her end-of-life care was molded to fit her unique lifestyle and extraordinary final year of seeing it all.

Tim, Ramie, and her poodle, Ringo, were by her side through it all, and when she left this world, her family commemorated her life with a beautiful quote from the Sufi mystic Rumi: “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.”

Below, they added, “Today, we are letting go.”

All we can say is, thank you, Miss Norma, for showing the whole world what living really looks like.

If you’re touched by the incredible story of the woman who learned she was going to die, and decided to live, make sure to SHARE in memory of Norma Bauerschmidt.

Work/life balance has been on people’s minds for decades. As individuals and companies strive to improve work/life balance, we want to focus on work/life balance for Nurses. Are you familiar with Dr. Brooks Quality of Nursing Worklife Survey? If not, this article will help you and your place of employment.

Any discussion of quality of life would not be complete without addressing the concept of worklife and specifically nursing worklife, a critical element in healthcare delivery. Developing and retaining the nursing workforce is one of the biggest challenges facing health care employers today. Importantly, the quality of healthcare is frequently judged by the quality of nursing care. The overall quality of care and excellence in nursing is intimately tied to the quality of nurses’ worklife. Quality of nursing worklife is clearly essential to quality care and is an essential component in recruitment and retention of the nursing workforce. Here I make the case for measuring quality of nursing worklife, instead of job satisfaction. 

Historically nursing has focused on measuring job satisfaction and linking job satisfaction to patient outcomes. In practice settings one often hears “satisfied nurses make for satisfied patients.” The relationship between job satisfaction and organizational outcomes has been discussed for so long in the literature that a causal relationship is often inferred, when in fact studies have actually denounced the relationship (Bradfield & Crockett, 1955; Hom & Kinicki, 2001; Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985; Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001; Organ, 1988). The validity of the concept of job satisfaction and its relationship with organizational and performance outcomes has been questioned for decades (Brayfield & Crockett, 1955; Hom & Kinicki, 2001; Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985; Judge et al., 2001; Organ, 1988). 

In fact, much nursing job satisfaction research linked to patient outcomes found only a correlational relationship not a causal one (Ma, Samuels, & Alexander, 2003). The questionable nature of this relationship might be in part due to questionnaire items (empirical referents) that do not have a strong theory base or unclear and ambiguous conceptual definitions of job satisfaction (Brown, 1999). This leads to inconsistent operational definitions that directly influence how job satisfaction is measured. On the other hand, quality of worklife, and in particular quality of nursing worklife, as the variable of interest does not suffer from the weaknesses in job satisfaction research in job satisfaction research.

Quality of worklife (QWL) has strong theoretical underpinnings that can be traced back to socio-technical systems theory. Socio-technical systems theory maintains one must co-optimize both social (people) and technical (equipment, the environment) subsystems to not only improve worklife, but to also improve the organization's productivity. In fact, going back as far as the 1950s Trist and Bamforth (1951) found a causal link between improved QWL and productivity. In addition, psychologists have found that as much as 30% of the variance in measures of job satisfaction measure personality something an employer has little influence over (Agho, 1993; Judge, 1993; Remus & Judge, 2003). Yet, employers continue to attempt to improve satisfaction in order to improve productivity.

There is increasing conceptual clarity around the construct of QNWL. My dissertation research synthesized years of empirical and conceptual research that studied QWL. A conceptual framework devised by nurse researchers at the University of Toronto was based on many of the principles underlying sociotechnical systems theory. Moreover, measures of QWL take into consideration the balancing act employees do between their worklife and home life. This too made sense for QNWL since nurses, like any employee, balance work and family. The strong theoretical underpinning from socio-technical systems theory (STS), the conceptual framework, and qualitative research exploring the worklife of nurses from the research unit became the basis of Brooks' Quality of Nursing Worklife Survey(C). Requests to use Brooks’ Quality of Nursing Worklife Survey have been received from graduate students and researchers in 30 countries from Greece to Estonia, Canada (Ontario, Quebec), India, Iran, Australia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Taiwan. And, my survey has been translated into 5 languages. 

It's important for organizations to look beyond job satisfaction when attempting to improve the work life of their employees, as well as the productivity of the organization.

Related Article: Nurses Practicing Self Care

Congresswoman Lois Capps of CA is committed to helping people improve their daily lives through better schools, quality health care, and a cleaner environment. During her 20-year tenure as a Nurse and public health advocate, she felt her education and background was needed in Congress to help improve health care in the US and strengthen our Nursing workforce across the country.

We know that the important work of strengthening our health care system is not yet done — it’s far from it. But legislation like this will help get us there.

Chief Diversity Officers can make a hospital a more welcoming place for employees and the patient's they serve. It takes many steps for a CDO to make that possible. Continue reading to learn more about how CDO's can help your healthcare organization. 

Workplace harassment complaints. Recruiting a diverse workforce. Cultural competency training. These are matters that traditionally fall under HR, but healthcare organizations are increasingly relying on professionals with specialized skills to work on these sensitive and important issues.

Enter the chief diversity officer, or CDO.

As the country grows not only more ethnically diverse but more diverse in personal beliefs, regional origin and identification, and disability status, the demand for leaders who specialize in creating dialogues between people with differences will increase, says Oliver B. Tomlin, III, senior partner at search firm Witt/Kieffer and founding member of National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. He has assisted with several CDO searches.

Below are several functions a CDO might play to make a hospital a more welcoming place both to workers and the community they serve:

1. Make Sure Everyone is Heard

Many of us can remember attending a party or other event where we didn't fit in, possibly because of differences between ourselves and others.

A CDO specializes in being the person who makes sure workers don't have to feel uncomfortable about what makes them unique, and that they can bring their "whole selves" to work, says Deborah L. Plummer, PhD, vice chancellor and chief diversity officer at University of Massachusetts Medical School and UMass Memorial Healthcare.

"If everyone feels they can bring their whole self to work and they feel like differences are respected, it can make the workplace richer and stronger," Plummer says.

"Then, we are able to come together and work in diverse teams, and are able to solve challenges with our collective wisdom."

2. Teach Awareness

What's the next step that will lead toward improved patient satisfaction and both clinician and worker retention? Teaching the workforce to be sensitive to and accepting of the differences that are inherent to a diverse organization or in a diverse community.   

Sometimes it's not always easy to gain the trust of people when there are differences involved, especially in light of healthcare disparities members of minority groups often experience, says Tomlin, but educating a workforce can help.

Plummer suggests offering regular inclusion events, hosting employee and community research groups, and familiarizing hospital leadership with hot topics in the workforce and within the community.

She also suggests that CDOs organize training sessions around current topics, such as:

• LGBT-related issues
• Sexual harassment
• Building an inclusive workforce
• Cultural competency education

3. Devise and Implement Inclusion Strategies

Diversity and inclusion aren't easy topics to tackle, says Plummer. "There has to be someone who gets up every morning thinking about the complexity of these differences."

A CDO can fit that bill.

Plummer makes it clear that she believes HR is "necessary and great function. [It keeps] the trains running." But appointing a leader to specialize in diversity makes sense.

"I can say that the space of diversity is more about people strategy and management, while HR is about the employee, and their employment relationship to the organization," she says.

A CDO will be able to prioritize diversity matters above all else; these hot topics will have their full attention. Far from being just another C-suiter, the CDO has potential to be a mediator, a teacher, an outreach coordinator, and someone who helps make your hospital a more comfortable place for everyone.

If you have any questions about Chief Diversity Officers, Diversity and Inclusion, or just a general question, please ask one of our Nurse Leaders by clicking below!