CONTACT - Volume 9, Number 1
Message from the Dean

If, as you should always be, you are learners, you are all new at something. Those of you who just earned a degree are new at the application of what you learned. Those who have been in nursing practice for some time may be new at something else: horseback riding, raising orchids, or playing the violin. Learning is usually done in partnership with someone who is experienced and frequently with other learners. Through these partnerships you became an experienced student. As a learner you receive more than you give.

If you persist in applying what you learned, in a few years you may become an expert staff nurse, administrator, practitioner, educator, researcher, or violinist.

But the tide that ebbs also flows. At some point you will notice something happening that portends your becoming an expert. When you attend meetings or classes you no longer hear anything new, do not seem to be learning, and feel that your time is wasted. This is a sign, a red flag. You've become an expert.

Now comes the flow. The partnership must shift. It's now your turn as the expert to give more than you receive: as a supervisor to new nurses, as a senior administrator to middle managers, as a faculty mentor to fresh instructors, as a researcher with federal grants to a beginning researcher, or as an expert practitioner to a fledgling ARNP, not only in your own workplace, but at state, national, and international levels.

I recently returned from a consultation visit to Grenada, West Indies where they have a three-year diploma program but want BSN and MSN programs, have a new four-bed ICU and need qualified staff, and have four NPs and want more. Do you see yourself going there to help? I do and would love to invite those of you who are experts to help teach in the new BSN program, be a mentor to potential ICU nurses, or work as an NP until their vacancies are filled. If not in Grenada, then somewhere that your expertise is needed.

You came to nursing to become an expert to improve health care for all people. The potential for great and far-reaching giving is in front of you. Give and you shall receive. Do as Gandhi suggested. "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." Look, choose, go forward, and share your expertise to make a healthier world everywhere.