Eastpointe High School if one of 25 schools to offer the C2 Pipeline through Wayne State University. The program gives students a look at different careers and hobbies that students don’t always learn about during a normal school day.  

The Wayne State University College of Nursing has received a $1.6 million grant from the state Department of Health and Human Services to educate more mental health and psychiatric nurse practitioners. Umeika Stephens, graduate specialty coordinator for psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners at Wayne State University and a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Detroit, said it is important to have providers who can assess patients’ mental health needs holistically.  “Our goal is to make sure that when patients are able to come in, that they’re able to see a psychiatric nurse practitioner,” Stephens said. “They’re able to see somebody who can not only do therapy, but also prescribe medication for them if they needed it.”  

By Lucia Peters and JR Thorpe  Humans are fascinated by death — and a lot of that fascination may stem from the fact that most of us just can’t comprehend death in its entirety. Indeed, the answer to the question “What does it feel like to die?” is largely, we don’t really know — mostly because (for what are perhaps obvious reasons) there aren’t a lot of ways to gather this information. Scientists do have some guesses, though, whether that’s through research on near-death experiences or through listening to people recount their first-hand brushes with the great hereafter. We do know what happens to the body when you die, per research published in Nature in 2016: Your oxygen depletes, which slows your circulation, making your skin mottle and your extremities turn cold; it gets harder to breathe, and what breathing you are able to do becomes noisy (although for what it’s worth, the “death rattle,” as it’s called, isn’t thought to be painful); and when your heartbeat, breathing, and circulation stop, clinical death occurs. Biological death follows a few minutes later as your brain cells die from the lack of oxygen. But as for what death feels like? Well, a lot of it depends on exactly how you die. People who die from illness, for example, aren’t typically able to describe what they’re feeling. As Margaret Campbell, a decades-long palliative caregiver and nursing professor at Wayne State University, told The Atlantic in 2016, “Roughly from the last two weeks until the last breath, somewhere in that interval, people become too sick, or too drowsy, or too unconscious to tell us what they’re experiencing.” As a result, much of the talk around death in these situations centers around what those observing it see, rather than what those experiencing it feel. 

By Patrick Boyle  At Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas, doctors have been stepping up for duties normally done by nurses and medical assistants, such as turning and bathing patients. At UAMS Medical Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock, administrators have been recruiting new nurses with signing bonuses of up to $25,000. And at UAB Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama, nursing school faculty have been leading teams of students in turning critically ill COVID-19 patients from their backs onto their stomachs (knowns as proning) so they can breathe better. “I’ve never seen such teamwork. It’s been a mind-blowing experience,” says Summer Powers, DNP, CRNP, an assistant professor at UAB School of Nursing who helped to organize the faculty/student teams. Also never seen before are the staffing shortages that are plaguing hospitals in the latest COVID-19 hot spots, forcing them to offer eye-popping employment bonuses and draft everyone — from students to administrators to physicians — to fill in the gaps as best they can. While shortages abound across front-line jobs, nowhere is the need greater than in nursing, as hospitals hit by the current surge report unprecedented vacancies in nursing slots: 470 out of 3,800 positions at Parkland; 240 out of 1,400 at UAMS; and 760 out of 4,000 at UAB. COVID-19 has intensified some of those conditions. The first surges last year compelled many nurses and other health care workers to leave their jobs, but the vast majority battled through the exhaustion, despair, and fear out of a sense of duty and with faith that medical researchers would find ways to combat the disease. They just had to hang on until then. “When we were able to jump in with vaccinations in January [2021], there was a sense of great hope,” recalls Tricia Thomas, PhD, RN, associate dean for faculty affairs at Wayne State University College of Nursing in Detroit.  https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/hospitals-innovate-amid-dire-nursing-shortages 

When Michigan went into coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, Madison and Darlene Wiljanen went to work. Madison, 23, was working as a nursing assistant at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Her mother, Darlene, is a hospice nurse. "It was absolutely insane... people would transition so quickly," Madison said. "They would come in, I’d talk to them; they wouldn’t be on a ventilator yet. They would be on high-flow oxygen being monitored very closely. The next day I would come back and they would be ventilated, so nonverbal, sedated. Then two days later, they would be gone." Madison spent three weeks working with patients in the ICU who had COVID-19. It was a drastic change from the cardiac telemetry floor she worked on for months previously. She said "there was no light at the end of the tunnel" when she was working on that unit. This year Madison participated in a vaccine initiative in Detroit through the Detroit Public Health Department. Together with a group of doctors and nurses, Madison and several of her classmates in Wayne State's nursing program visited group homes in Detroit. Many of those living in the group homes had special needs, Madison said. "It’s a matter of life or death for these people," she said. "For me it was, yeah, I want the vaccine so I can have things go back to normal, but these people need it to keep them out of the hospital."

We’ve spent more than a year battling the COVID-19 pandemic, and doctors and nurses are among the heroes on the front line every day. The U.S. will need nearly 140,000 doctors by 2033 and around 500,000 nurses by 2030. Thankfully, the determination we’ve seen during the pandemic is inspiring an explosion of interest and applications for nursing schools and medical schools across the country and right here in metro Detroit. That sense of commitment and desire to help others is what schools are looking for in future doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. "I think most people are good at heart and they want to make a difference," Wayne State School of Medicine Dean Dr. Mark Schweitzer said. He said you can make that difference with these professions but you also get a reward. "To have a profession where you go home every night and you said that I helped patients X, Y and Z today is a righteous thing to do," he added. Wayne State’s medical school received 1,000 additional applications - up 10%. But the school can only increase the size of the class by 3%. The size of medical schools is regulated by their accrediting body, and there are only so many clinical spots for med school students and nursing students. Schweitzer says it would be easy to fill up an incoming med school with people with perfect GPAs and from the right zip codes. He says Wayne State’s mission is to train people who might not be able to get that training elsewhere.

While the number of immigrants from Arab countries to the United States has steadily increased over the past several years, family and child health research on this population remains scarce. To address this disparity, Dalia Khalil, Ph.D., RN, assistant professor in Wayne State University's College of Nursing, was recently awarded a two-year, $161,451 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Khalil and her team will expand on her previous research on immigrant Arab American parents and families.

Mustapha Al-shorbaji is a nursing student at Wayne State University. He sits in the lobby of the Campus Health Center with a black mask on, waiting to get a COVID-19 vaccine. “As soon as I was presented the opportunity, I took the first appointment I could get to come here,” says Al-shorbaji. Wayne State University began offering the vaccine to medical students and faculty with clinical rotations on January 7. That’s how Al-shorbaji found himself among the first people in the country to be given the chance to be inoculated against the coronavirus. In addition to frontline health care workers, vaccinations throughout Michigan have been given to some people in long-term care facilities, police officers, bus drivers, K-12 teachers, postal workers, people over the age of 65 and others. Eligibility varies depending on where people live, work, or go to the doctor. As of January 19, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, about 75,800 people in Michigan have received at least the first dose of the vaccine. In a state that’s estimated to have roughly 8 million people age 16 and up (according to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey), that means less than 1% of the population has been vaccinated.

Wayne State University has begun issuing COVID-19 vaccines to medical students and faculty who work on the frontlines. The plan is to inoculate 120 people per day with Moderna and Pfizer vaccines which are being supplied by the Detroit Health Department. “Right now we have people who have been categorized as essential. Those are individuals who are actually touching patients in the hospital,” says Dr. Toni Grant, the Chief Nursing Officer at the Wayne State University Campus Health Center, where the vaccinations are taking place. Grant says these essential workers were emailed a survey to see if they were interested in receiving the vaccination. Those who said they wanted the shot and are eligible for it are being emailed specific instructions on how to schedule an appointment. These emails are coming out in batches, so some may not be able to make their appointment for a couple of weeks. Bill Fulson is a clinical nursing instructor with Wayne State who came into the Health Center to get the vaccine. He says he doesn’t feel any anxiety about receiving the vaccine. “I have no reason to feel not confident,” says Fulson. “I’ve been nursing for 40-something years. So you know when to do things and when not to do things. And this is a must-do for a medical professional.” Grant says the vaccinations are a great opportunity for the Wayne State community. “We’re in the midst of a pandemic but this is also something that none of us have ever gone through before,” she says. ”And to actually see what research and science can do in order to get us through to this particular point, it’s exciting because it’s students, faculty and staff together and able to experience it firsthand.”

In West Michigan, Hope College will look for COVID-19 in wastewater. In the Upper Peninsula, Michigan Technological University will randomly test 600 students per week. Central Michigan University students are expected to self-report symptoms on an app. And in Detroit, Wayne State University is coupling random diagnostic testing with a search for virus antibodies. As students head back to campus, Michigan’s colleges and universities are employing a dizzying variety of tools to catch and curb the spread of the new coronavirus. But the frequency of testing — and the tests themselves — vary by campus. “What complicates the issue is that not only is the science about the disease developing, the modalities of testing are changing too,” said Laurie Lauzon Clabo, dean of the college of nursing at Wayne State University. Wayne State is scheduled to start weeklong testing of incoming students Monday as they arrive on campus. Sections of campus housing are reserved for students who test positive for COVID-19, where they will quarantine for two weeks if they can’t do so from home, she said. The university also will randomly test staff and students every three weeks. If the rate of positive test results climbs above 1 percent, the university will make testing more frequent, Lauzon Clabo said. Additionally, the university is complementing the nasal swab diagnostic tests designed to catch current infections with blood draws to determine how many of those on campus carry antibodies to COVID-19, indicating they’ve had a past infection and possibly (but not certainly) have a resistance to the virus. If a new saliva test, authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Aug. 15, becomes available — the university might turn to it later this year, Lauzon Clabo said. “We're going to respond to the science as it emerges and to local data,” she said.

Another 77 people in Michigan have died due to COVID-19, pushing total deaths up to 617 – a 14 percent increase from Saturday. The number of new cases in the state increased by 1,493 from Saturday, brining the total to 15,718, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. The city of Detroit, which has by far the largest number of cases and deaths in the state, reported an additional 27 deaths over the 24-hour period, bringing its total death count to 158. The number of cases in the city hit 4,495, an increase of 545 from the previous day. At least five health care workers have died in Southeast Michigan from COVID-19 since early March. Wayne State University’s School of Social Work and College of Nursing are launching a crisis hotline Tuesday, April 7 to offer support for first responders and health care workers on the front lines of the outbreak.

Donulae Knuckles is known as “Nurse Knuckles,” and when she’s teaching, her most important lesson comes from when she suddenly found herself as the patient. Local 4 spoke with Knuckles on National Wear Red Day, which is designed to raise awareness for women’s cardiovascular health. Knuckles is a Detroit mother of five and a registered nurse for the past 23 years. She’s a PhD student, a graduate teaching assistant and an advocate for the American Heart Association. At the Wayne State College of Nursing, Knuckles teaches the next generation of nurses to care for the whole patient -- body, mind and spirit. She wants them to care for themselves, too. “It has become my passion and my purpose in this life,” Knuckles said. “This is what I do. I love it.”

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson today announced the appointment of Mark Schweitzer, M.D., as dean of the university’s School of Medicine and vice president of Health Affairs for the university. Schweitzer, a preeminent radiologist and chair of the Department of Radiology at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, will join the university and School of Medicine on April 27. “We conducted in-depth interviews with a number of outstanding candidates during a yearlong national search, and Schweitzer’s experience, enthusiasm and vision made him a perfect fit for Wayne State University,” Wilson said. “Our faculty, our students, and the people of Detroit and the surrounding region will see great advances with Schweitzer’s leadership and energy. He will quickly become a leading contributor to our great city’s ongoing renaissance.” In addition to his leadership role in the School of Medicine, as vice president of Health Affairs, Schweitzer will work with the deans of WSU’s College of Nursing and the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences on clinical training issues. In this role, he will develop avenues to strengthen collaboration between the three schools to advance interprofessional, team-based approaches to healthcare. “I attended inner-city public universities during my undergraduate and medical school training, and I served at public safety net hospitals,” Schweitzer said. “My passion throughout my career has been education at all levels. The DNA of Wayne State University and the city of Detroit are intertwined, and the university’s national reputation is illustrious. I’m very much looking forward to serving the people of greater Detroit and Michigan.” An outstanding medical scholar and educator, Schweitzer is a talented administrator who has served in many hospital and medical practice roles, including vice chair for clinical practice and chair of the Information Management Group for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Extensively published and a lecturer for Harvard University Medical School, he holds a number of medical patents. “The Board of Governors is extremely pleased to be hiring someone the caliber of Dr. Mark Schweitzer to assume what is a critically important leadership position,” said Marilyn Kelly, chair of the board. “Wayne State’s health-related education and community programs are a vital part of the university’s identity and mission, and we think that Mark is the right person to lead us into the future.”

A diagnosis of a life-threatening illness is an enormous shock wave to any family. But there are extra challenges involved when that diagnosis happens for a teen or young adult. While their friends are getting ready for the prom or for college, they will be going through treatment and having tough conversations with family and doctors. Cynthia Bell is an assistant professor and research scientist at the Wayne State University College of Nursing, and has studied end-of-life conversations with teens and young adults.