Jodi Sutherland receives 2022 Honored Nurse Award

Jodi Sutherland receives 2022 Honored Nurse Award

Jodi Sutherland receives 2022 Honored Nurse Award

June 17, 2022

Jodi Sutherland, Ph.D., RN who is currently an Associate Clinical Professor at Binghamton University, Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Dr. Sutherland is a dedicated educator. One course she co-leads and teaches is, NURS 363, Practice of Nursing IV, which is taken by traditional and Baccalaureate Accelerated Track students. In this course students learn about providing nursing care in the community health setting and the care of those with chronic illnesses. During the COVID lockdown, overwhelmed health care agencies either prohibited or severely restricted student clinical activities. This led to the dilemma of how the students could continue to learn nursing care and hone their skills with less time in clinical sittings. These students were graduating at the end of the Spring Semester and becoming our colleagues shortly afterwards.

Dr. Sutherland and her co-course lead, Debbie Palmer, Clinical Instructor, developed and implemented an innovative home care simulation that met some of these clinical training and assessment needs which the students loved. This simulation was so realistic in part because it was conducted in a private home. The details of the event were highlighted in a BingUNews story entitled “There’s no place like home for community health clinicals” (Blando-George, November 2020).

Jodi Sutherland receives 2022 Honored Nurse Award

The patient was a human-patient simulator or manikin who could “speak” via a human technician and controlled from outside the setting. All “student-patient” interactions could be observed and heard through strategically placed cameras and microphones. Each student had a 50-minute home visit with explicit nursing care and skills to be completed in that time period. Each visit was documented. One student noted “I had to practice a large variety of nursing skills including wound care, a comprehensive head-to-toe [assessment], vital signs, medication reconciliation and medication administration. These are all crucial skills that we would not have been able to practice without the simulation due to the unique circumstances of attending nursing school during the pandemic.” Another student recognized the creativity and effort of this type of high-impact learning experience and said, “The professors thought of everything - from cords on the floor that could cause the patient to fall, to hidden snacks around the house that he shouldn’t be eating. This was creative, effective and such a nice change. I can always expect nothing short of amazing from Decker faculty; they truly want us to be our best.”

Additionally, Dr. Sutherland has developed, coordinated, and taught one of our new online RN to BS courses. While also teaching, she has volunteered on a regular basis for the Binghamton University COVID testing center. Dr. Sutherland also published eight articles and has a long list of presentations and posters at local, regional and national conferences. She reviews for several professional journals and is active as a member of the Board of the Zeta Iota Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau. She is an invited member of the UHS Home Care Board. She has garnered recent support for her educational research from the International Home Care Nurses Organization and the Community Foundation for South Central New York, the Barbara H. Chaffee Educational Fund. Last year Dr. Sutherland received the Association for Nurses in AIDS Care 2021, HIV Nurse Educator of the Year Award.