As most health care professionals know, patient care in hospitals and clinics is radically shifting from the style of care given decades ago. Beliefs like “the doctor will take care of everything” are unrealistic today, and the nursing profession stands at the brink of a major revolution.

Today nurses need to learn to work with sophisticated computer technology. They need to know how to communicate with a fast changing ethnic and cultural demographic. And if that is not enough, they need to address the new demands that the aging baby boomer generation brings to the profession.

At Barry University’s School of Nursing, Dean Pegge Bell is watching her profession rapidly evolve. With a keen awareness of the profession’s future in Florida, Bell addressed a group of visiting high school students November 30 with straight talk about what it’s like to work in nursing.

The event was called “A Day in the Life of a Nurse,” and it brought nearly 30 young men and women to get a look at Barry’s nursing program. After delivering a short speech, Bell led the students through a tour of the facilities where the students got to check out the Wallace Gilroy Clinical Simulation Lab and try out CPR skills on the computerized medical simulation dummy, Sim-Man.

“This is really important,” Bell said after her welcoming address. “This way the high school students can get a chance to see what it’s like to be in nursing school, and begin to make those important decisions.”

The day was important, indeed, considering that studies show Florida is currently understaffed by as many as 3,000 registered nurses in hospitals around the state. That number is only expected to grow alongside the population. Whenever she can, Bell makes appearances and tries to bring students to her program.

“We need better prepared nurses,” Bell says. “As nursing gets more complicated, a better prepared nurse is going to be beneficial to the state and the entire medical profession.”

Given all the changes in the profession, what does the nurse of tomorrow look like?

“The nurse of the future is culturally competent, technologically proficient, and better educated to be prepared for challenges,” Bell says.

A major part of the nursing program at Barry is focused on cultural competency, best defined as a nurse’s ability to communicate directly about medical needs with people from various cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Bell takes advantage of Miami’s diverse population to train nurses in effective community caretaking.

Students who visited for ‘A day in the life of a nurse’ observe nursing techniques on Sim-Man

More than 40 percent of the undergraduate nursing curriculum requires that students work in the community. In South Florida, that means nursing students work in Little Havana and Little Haiti, and the various pockets within the suburban landscape that speak languages other than English.

The teaching model, she says, is proactive and experiential. And since she began her tenure in 2002, Bell’s students have made a difference in many of the communities where they served. For example, in Homestead, Barry’s Community Health instructor Gene Majka led students in a project to educate migrant farm workers about separating their work clothes during washing from their children’s clothes. The program entitled ‘Project WASH’ started when Majka and his nursing students observed that the workers’ children were developing rashes as a result of the pesticide residue their parents brought in from the fields. It is believed that the chemicals were transferred to the children’s clothes during the wash, thus causing breathing problems and skin rashes. The project was a unique teaching opportunity that informed the Barry nurses about problem solving and real-life critical thinking regarding the health of migrant farm workers and their children.

“South Florida is a microcosm of cultural diversity,” Bell says. “As more and more people from different backgrounds continue to move into little neighborhoods across America, it really challenges the community to provide culturally sensitive care, not a blanket recipe for everyone. That’s not going to work.”

Beyond providing effective care for diverse communities, Bell is training a population of nurses that are just as diverse as their environment.

“It’s not enough to care for diverse people,” she says. “We need to have diverse caregivers.”

Bell designed a program at Barry that provides support and seemingly endless resources for student nurses. Working with a $500,000 federal grant, the Barry nursing program helps disadvantaged students and students of diverse ethnic backgrounds enter the profession with custom counseling and mentoring programs.

She’s also streamlined various programs so that young nursing students, like the ones visiting that day, can get their bachelor of nursing degrees directly from Barry without having to finish a two-year associate degree first.

The goal, she says, is to shape a better nurse for the future without as many obstacles.

“Our students don’t have to make 4.0 (grade point averages),” she says. “We take 3.5 (GPA) students and others. We know they could be good students, but they just need a little help.”

The technical and academic work in addition to the myriad exposure to South Florida’s diverse population is intended to develop a fully rounded nurse who is experienced and who, most importantly, knows how to think critically, Bell says. The difference becomes apparent at a patient’s bedside or in clinical visits.

“The nurse is the hub, the manager of a patient’s care,” Bell says. “The more techniques that a nurse has, the more it gives the nurse the ability to directly connect and affect the outcome of patients.”