If I had to sum up the last month, it would be how we as nurses adapt to change and, at times, turbulence.

Together, with my colleague, Erik Williams, I visited Ellis Island where authors Arlene Keeling (BSN ’74, MSN ’87, PhD ’92), professor emerita and former director of the School’s Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, and Michelle Hehman (PhD ’12) read from their new book, The Nurses of Ellis Island: Life and Work Inside the Golden Door (TCU Press, 2024) at a Save Ellis Island event (they'll be doing a virtual history forum on the subject Sept. 16, too! Please join us for that). 

Ellis Island, I learned, is actually three small islands. Nurses who worked on its 28 acres saw a lot, balancing roles as care providers to newly arrived immigrants and as government employees charged with halting the spread of contagion. They worked with American Red Cross Army Nurses training to be deployed, with wounded American servicemen, and, later, with “enemy aliens,” most often interned German, Italian, and Japanese citizens.  

Though the last Ellis Island nurses left in 1954, being in the Great Hall and seeing the crumbling remains of their hospital brought nurses such as Margaret Daly, Sarah Parsons, E. Blanche Augustine, and Evelyn Carney—who cared for the thousands of patients in their charge—to life.  

The week before I arrived in New York City, I got to travel to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA, where I was among a group of nurse leaders who learned about Apple’s newest healthcare endeavors in education, practice, and research. (Look for an Apple hospital near you in the not-so-distant future). I even got to try out virtual reality healthcare simulations, including starting an IV in a patient who wasn’t even there! Amazing. 

These two very different trips made me realize that no matter the time and context, nurses deal with change and turbulence. But if we identify the sources and consequences of turbulence in systems+, we can develop strategies to mitigate them, rather than having to work with, through, and around them.    

In this issue of VNL, we consider how nurses thoughtfully bring change to units facing turbulence. We see how faculty members use backwards design to ensure foundational concepts don’t get lost in assignment clutter. We learn how nurses both past and present—including AAN “Living Legend” Rita Chow, who died in June of this year, and summer research intern Jamilia McCoy, a student in our Clinical Nurse Leader program—thoughtfully, capably tackle their work. And we read an original poem by faculty member Jessica Keim-Malpass and meet our own “pinafore nurse,” BSN alumna Jackie Brownfield (DIPLO ’51), whose figure was captured in a painting hung outside McLeod Auditorium. 

A final reminder of how nurses adapt to turbulent times:

Ellis Island had a terrible measles outbreak in December 1914, with 195 confirmed cases. Thanks to nurses like Daly, though, the mortality rate—which might’ve been much higher—was kept at only 5%, due to systematic approaches, knowledge, and teamwork.  

We live in turbulent times. They do not, however, claim us. Thank you, as always, for reading VNL. 

Be well, 

Marianne Baernholdt, PhD, MHP, RN, FAAN
The Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor
Dean of Professional Nursing, UVA Health

+ Jennings, B., Baernholdt, M., & Hopkinson, S. (2022). Exploring the turbulent nature of nurses' workflow. Nursing Outlook, (70)3, 440-450. 10.1016/j.outlook.2022.01.002