News

Nursing Instructor Has Real Touch

(Released 6/13/10)

JAMESTOWN - His name is Jewels, an elderly "patient" who has a variety of illnesses and injuries from time to time. He suffers from whatever illness nursing instructor Kathy Willard decides is needed to help her students learn how to handle traumatic critical patients.

Today Jewels, lying in a hospital bed at Guilford Technical Community College's nursing department, has an "open wound."

The wound was created by Willard - not by a blunt blow to the old man's thigh, but with liquid latex, "stage" blood, three colors of costume makeup and molding wax.

Willard, an associate professor in nursing who spent 25 years in the real world of a hospital operating room, simulates medical emergency scenes to challenge nursing students.

She also recently received the GTCC teaching innovation award presented by the school's board of trustees. Trustees chairperson Shirley Frye noted that Willard is the innovator who "supports student success" with her work in the simulation lab.

The "open wound" is only one of Willard's creations. "We can simulate a lot of things - fake urine, a heart attack, vomit - things you don't want to happen to patients. But in case they do, nurses need to know what to do."

The lab scenarios make nursing students aware of the "real" thing if they later see the same injury or symptom with one of their patients, she said.

This job is a "natural" for Willard, a veteran nurse whose forte is the technical aspect of nursing. She misses those challenges in the hospital operating room but said she loves the academic side of nursing.

"I'm technically inclined and coming from OR (Operating Room) makes simulation for me easy," she said.

Willard has virtually "seen it all" by having been an OR nurse.

Becoming a nurse wasn't a vocation she thought before graduating from Page High School in Greensboro. "My mother had wanted to be a nurse and never became one," she said. Reinforcing her mother's influence was a neighbor, Dr. Micqui Reed, a nursing professor at UNCG, she said.

Willard, who has bachelor and master's degrees in nursing from UNCG, lives in Jamestown.

"I love what I do. I am having fun," she said. "Vascular surgery is my specialty - heart transplants, clogged arteries and things like that," she said.

"I was a take command person, and I've had to learn to give it up. I was aggressive - a 'let me fix it' person. As I get older and mature, I see the value of looking at alternatives."

"Blood doesn't bother me," she said. "I was a little squeamish when I saw my first amputation."Willard enjoys sharing knowledge with others, even those outside her occupational classroom. She has made two mission trips with medical teams to Africa where she worked as an advisor in the operating rooms. She also is becoming involved with Leslie's House, a safe house for homeless women in High Point.

Willard also loves singing in the choir at First Wesleyan Church in High Point.

Her "spare" time is often spent watching videos to learn more about medical simulation. "I want to be as good at this as I can be - I want to do it for the students.It's not about me; it's about the people who will be taking care of me."

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