Gray honored by heart disease group
Mended Hearts Inc., a national organization supporting patients with heart disease, selected Richmond RN Jill Gray to receive one of two Sydney & Helen Shuman Nurse Recognition Awards in 2009. The annual award was established to show appreciation for nurses who “make a positive difference in their care and presence,” states the Mended Hearts Web site.
Gray, who has worked in cardiac surgery at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital’s Forest campus for 10 years, was honored at a celebration at HDH in September. She currently works in the HDH Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit.

U.Va. acute-care students receive scholarship
In January, University of Virginia School of Nursing guest lecturer Tom Johnson awarded each student in the Acute and Specialty Care graduate program a $1,000 scholarship, made possible by the Roy R. Charles Charitable Trust. The scholarship is named in honor of professor of nursing Suzanne Burns.
Johnson has been a guest lecturer for the leadership portion of the class, teaching students about the process of writing out goals and accomplishments. Burns, who said she is humbled and appreciative of Johnson’s generosity and support, noted that the “gift is a testament to the fact that Tom is confident that these individuals will continue to do their very best to provide superior evidence-based care to our critical-care and acute-care patients and families.”

Teddy Bear clinic reassures children
Since many children hate to go for a health checkup because they are scared, some University of Virginia nursing students conducted a Teddy Bear Clinic at Clark Elementary School in Charlottesville.
The 29 students, under the direction of assistant professor Carol Lynn Maxwell-Thompson, used teddy bears to teach the 3- and 4-year-olds about the health checkup process and being in an unfamiliar setting with foreign medical instruments. Faculty, staff and students at the nursing school made personal contributions to buy 56 identical teddy bears for the late January event.
Each child was given his or her own teddy bear to keep. To make the clinic a real-life scenario, the children were told that their bears were sick and they needed to help the nurses make the bears better. Nursing students showed the children what the medical instruments did and the children began checking out their bears. They looked down the bears’ throats with flashlights and tongue depressors, checked heart rate and listened to lungs with a stethoscope, learned how to check blood pressure and temperature, and weighed their bears.

By the end of the 30-minute sessions, the children were having fun play-diagnosing their friends and some expressed a desire to be nurses or doctors.