Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Eugenia Mills
Title
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Eugenia Mills
Description
Date
May 6, 2017
Duration
34:24 minutes
Transcription
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Final Transcript: Eugenia Mills, May 6, 2017
Donation record #_Mills.E. 5062017.1_
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 7/18/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha R. Robinson 9/16/2018
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Eugenia Mills as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on May 6, 2017, at the Levey Hall. Professor Mills, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
EM: Yes.
MRR: Thank you. Can you tell us about how you became associated with Miami Middletown campus?
EM: I came to Miami University in a teaching position back in 1971. I had just completed a Master’s in Nursing degree and recently had lost my husband in a tragic accident and I wanted a job not too far from where I had family. And I suddenly discovered there was a place here in Ohio and I lived in Indiana. It wasn’t that far away. So, my first job was at the Hamilton campus and I stayed until, with Miami University until 2006.
MRR: So you’ve seen many thing change with the campus. Can you tell us how the nursing program has changed?
EM: The nursing program has changed in many ways. It has, I would say it has moved with the times. At the time the nursing program started at Miami University, most nurses were educated in diploma programs. Diploma programs were hospital-based programs, usually three years in length and the student graduated with a certificate and they were eligible to write the state board exam and, upon passing, were a registered nurse. Nursing was beginning to change worldwide, well, I should say nationwide. And, there were what were called “associate programs” popping up across the country. These were academic-based programs rather than hospital-based. They were two-year programs. And Miami decided they would bring nursing to the university and it would be the associate degree program. In the surrounding area here, there were a number of diploma nursing programs and specifically Middletown Hospital had a nursing program and Mercy Hospital in Hamilton had a diploma nursing program. So Ruth Ann Basald, who was hired to start the nursing program at Miami, worked with the two diploma programs. And the agreement that Miami went with was that as a diploma program closed in that city Miami would open an associate degree program so that, well, to cut the competition but to work together. And Mercy Hospital was ready first to close out its program so the associate degree program at Miami began at the Hamilton campus in 1968. And then two years later, Middletown Hospital closed their diploma program and the associate degree program was opened here. As time went on, Miami continued to make changes that would benefit nursing. I believe it was 1970, I can’t remember it was ’76 or ’77, I believe it was ’76, Miami opened its RN-to-BSN program. So that wasn’t too much after we opened an associate degree program. This was meant to serve all of these nurses who over the many years had graduated from diploma programs. And we were beginning to get some graduates in the workforce who were associate degree program graduates, as well as our own associate degree graduates, who would like to have a Bachelor of Science and Nursing. The traditional baccalaureate program-- which is where you start as a freshman, go through graduate as a senior, get your Bachelor of Science in Nursing and then be eligible to write your state board--were not too friendly to finding a way to move that diploma grad into their program outside of starting over. So Miami set up a specific program to help the nurse that was a diploma or associate degree graduate to go on and get their Bachelor’s of Science degree in nursing. It was tailor-made for our graduates in that our graduates with the associate degree fit right in to the junior and senior year. And we attempted to work diploma nurses or associate degree nurses from other programs in as easily as possible, depending on what courses they had taken other places. So, Miami’s friendliness towards these other graduates made us popular. They could find a way through. And our RN-to-BSN program started as an evening program since probably the largest number of nurses employed at the time were on the day shift. Now, there certainly were nurses on second and third shift but nurses on those two shifts were in lesser numbers than that day shift. So we started as an evening program so that nurses could at least work two of the shifts. They could work first or third shift and fit into our program. At later time, since I’ve been away, we’ve had the traditional baccalaureate program.
MRR: You mentioned that our nurses had usually been to work when they were doing the completer program. Can you talk about that population? What were they like? What were their ages? Were they diverse? Who was coming back?
EM: The nurses who came into our RN/ BSN program were a wide age range and they were a variety of AB and diploma grads. And they made fascinating students partly because of the age range but mostly because of their nursing experience. And they challenged the instructors. We weren’t teaching people, for instance, how to do the first steps most nursing students learn: making a bed, giving a bath, how to assess their patient. We were getting students who already had that background, who already understood a lot about nursing, about patient care. This was a real challenge then to the instructor, a fun challenge, because you had students who could ask exciting questions. I recall one time a student called me, well actually this was later years, she sent me an email on the weekend, asking a question about something I had said in class because she didn’t see that in her textbook and she was having a hard time fitting that together. So I answered to her by email but it made me think if she had that question, surely others did too. So I took time at the next class period to explain that the instructor in writing the, well probably wasn’t a, yeah she probably was an instructor, but the lady who wrote the book was trying to keep it a little on the simple side so that she wouldn’t confuse us and I had dropped in something that was a step ahead and therefore was not in the book. So we went through and I explained that to the students. But it’s just fascinating to have students constantly at you with questions and suddenly here they keep popping up in email, more questions, but this is the sign of a working nurse. He or she is out there working during the week. When they get a day off or they have a free evening, they’re doing their studying. And when that question pops up is not necessarily during school hours and they can sit down and fire off an email to their instructor. They haven’t forgotten their question and hopefully the instructor gets back to them in a timely manner.
MRR Well, that’s a change in technology and how that affects the classroom. What kind of technology changes did you see in your time here as an instructor?
EM: Oh my. There’s technology as far as education goes. There’s technology in the hospital. So much technology changed. To go back to what I just had talked about a little bit ago, students emailing, I taught a course on this campus here at Middletown. I forget now just what we called it but it was a sprinted course so they got the entire semester credit in about six weeks. This helped out some of the RNs because they would take a day off and we would have a full day of class and it met just once a week. We did a lot then by email. If they just happened to be a nursing research course and they were to look at certain types of articles and if a student had a question, whether the article fit the criteria for the project, I would get the whole email or the whole article in the email to look at. And we were just sending things back and forth to each other all the time. Changes in our lab. We now have simulated dolls. We used to have a, just like an adult size baby doll that we would give baths to or you know instead of having a live patient. Now, we have simulated ones and they’re run by a computer. And the instructor who runs the computer can have the simulated doll have different crises that you might expect to have in a patient and the student needs to respond to that. And however the student responds to that doll, they get feedback immediately that, you know this eased the pain or something else went wrong and they see another sign in that doll. And the instructor can control that through the computer and it’s a great learning experience for the student before he or she lays hands on a patient.
MRR: One of the things I’d like to talk about is the feeling of being an instructor here. What was it like to work with your colleagues? Do you have stories of colleagues you’d like to share?
EM: Miami has always been good to its faculty. If a faculty member was ill, as long as one of us other on the faculty could cover for that person, they were not charged a sick day. Miami was good to me in that over the years that I worked here, they gave me different jobs to do and it was all in nursing. But, you know I started out in the associate degree program. I got to teach in the baccalaureate program. I got administrative opportunities as chair. There was, I just felt like Miami stimulated the faculty to do their best. I like the idea that the university not only looks at whether you’re doing scholarly activities but also what are you doing to help fellow men in your service piece. I really appreciate the way Miami treats their faculty.
MRR: I’d like to talk a little bit about being a department chair. This was during the time period of the Women’s Movement. Was it unusual to become a female department chair?
EM: Being a department chair in nursing and being female was the usual since that department, it was mostly female. In the division or the school that nursing was in, which at the time I was chair basically was in the Engineering Department that had the computer technology courses and the engineering courses, and being the department chair was, a female, was unusual in that department. Now, eventually I wasn’t the only female chair. There was another person in computers who was chair who was female but to begin with I was the only female.
MRR: Well, let’s keep talking about gender then. Can you tell us about gender diversity among the students in the nursing program?
EM: Gender diversity, we, you know nursing nationwide has basically been a female occupation. However, from the beginning of nursing at Miami we have also had some male students. In the early years a very small number. I found out this week that the current class is about thirteen percent male which is a little higher than in the general population which is probably nearer ten to eleven percent. So the number of men in nursing has greatly increased. In my early years at Miami I sort of felt sorry for the fellas because there might only be one or two in a class. And I think if I were the only female in a class of men that, you know, I’d be a little uncomfortable at times. I only had a male student who had to work with his wife on and on because she had a hard time understanding his going off to study with a group of students and they happened to all be women. But the nursing students were very prone to study together. This was a common thing in nursing and he had no choice. But that had to be understood at home, too. And in the early days I was surprised to find out, I didn’t realize it until a student told me, that many times patient assumed all men who went into nursing were gay and that may or may not have helped them with the patients they were caring for. And I finally asked one of my male patients [students] if this was presenting any problem to have that sort of perception among our patients and he just answered with “When I walk into a room I begin mentioning something about my family.” So it did bother him obviously but as time has gone by it’s been more acceptable to have men in nursing just like we have women in nursing and we have a lot more of them.
MRR: If one goes down the hallway and sees images of the graduating classes of nurses you’ll notice that there is an ethnic diversity and ethnic diversity has always been part of the Middletown story. Can you speak to ethnic diversity issues here?
EM: Ethnic diversity in nursing has been a struggle in that our population generally is white but we’ve made some efforts. And I think that over the years, that also is changing in that, as best as I can recall from my years here, we have had African American students. We’ve had students from other countries, usually one or two at a time. And of course, you know men in nursing is a minority. We also had a student who was a member of the Miami Indian tribe from Oklahoma. We have made, tried to make, effort in attracting minority students. I forgot to say we’ve also had Hispanic or Spanish students. At one point we called together a group of graduates who were minority students and asked them were there things that we could do that would actually make our program attractive to minority students. And they made a number of suggestions that we tried to follow up on. I don’t think we looked at whether that really worked or not but we put effort into it because we want a diverse population. Our patients are diverse and they have a right to have nurses that look like them.
MRR: Was this normal for a college to make this effort?
EM: I think that Miami was beginning to also look at that although Miami was a little slow. But I think it was a general feeling or trend you heard out in the world. It’s just that we jumped on it and tried to work with it. Nursing has for a long time had some minority nurses, not large numbers. But because that’s just been a part of nursing and we know our patients are a variety of types of people that we tried to bring that into our nursing program.
MRR: You mentioned about nursing over time. We’ve had some people talk about being patients at the old Middletown Hospital and there have been changes on caregiver- patient relationships in nursing over the years. Would you speak to how the structure of care delivery at hospitals with nurses has changed?
EM: Well, over the years hospitals, well doctors, everything connected to patient care, has become more specialized so that people learn, especially even nursing which at the baccalaureate or associate degree level prepares a generalist. When you get hired you’re usually hired to work a certain type of unit so you become a little more specialized in that area, whether it’s pediatrics, obstetrics, coronary care. Hospitals have also made shifts. The biggest shift I’ve known is that many hospitals hire what they call “hospitalists.” These are doctors hired by the hospital who manage patients while they’re in the hospital. And if I were to enter the hospital ill, the hospitalist would be writing the orders for my care. And then when I was discharged, I would be discharged back under the care of my private physician so that my private physician is not visiting me while I’m in the hospital. And that has its pluses and its minuses. If I should have a major change in my condition and they would need my doctor to change orders, write new orders to manage that condition, in the past that doctor would have to come from his or her office. And if the office was full, there’s a temptation to say, “As soon as I can empty my office and that might be five or six o’clock, I would be into the hospital.” Well, that’s a long time maybe to go if your condition has changed. So having a hospitalist right there in the hospital who immediately goes to your bedside, takes care of the issue, orders what’s needed is very helpful. But we’re also very specialized so the next thing you know a specialist is called in who sees you, who steps out. The hospitalist steps back in to take care of you while you’re there and there’s not always that conversation between all the doctors that also gets transferred to your home physician. Now, I think doctors think they’re trying to do that but my personal experience is that that’s been difficult.
MRR: How does this change the job of a nurse?
EM: The nurse should be in there and help be that middle person if at all possible. The nurse’s job is to educate the patient and as well as take care of the patient so that the patient understands what’s going on, how they’re to take care of themselves. And the nurse can’t do that if she isn’t also talking to all of those doctors so that she understands what’s going on or, if the doctors aren’t talking, to ask them to.
MRR: We’ve heard from some of the people in industry that we need to graduate students who have great interpersonal skills. How does that comment reflect upon educating nurses?
EM: Great interpersonal skills are important not only to relate nurses among nurses, but also to relate to your patients, as well as getting along with the physicians who are caring for your patients. In many ways I think it’s a little easier in terms of nurse-doctor today because even doctors are being better educated in the area of communicating. And I think there’s a little more respect between nurses and doctors and caring for the patient. So it’s better. Nothing’s ever perfect.
MRR: Have you ever taken nurses on field trips or has Miami ever taken nurses on field trips or trips out of the country or anything like that?
EM: Yes, if field trips are defined as to other places away from the usual healthcare facilities in our area. A few years ago a group of students went several years to, I think it was Zambia with…
MRR: Unrecognizable
EM: Sorry?
MRR: Which country?
EM: I think it was the Zambia, one of the African countries.
MRR: Ok.
EM: And Marilyn Anderson on our faculty was the one who put that together with a faculty member here at Middletown, Mel and right now…
MRR: Mel Cohen?
EM: Cohen, yes.
MRR: Would that be The Gambia trip?
EM: Gambia that was it. Instead of Zambia, Gambia, yes, yes. Near [unintelligible]. And they went several summers with a group of students. They found that to be quite an enlightening experience. And students got to do a little more there in some ways than here just because of what the country allowed nurses to do compared to here. They were where there was very few doctors and they got to do a little more. We also now have group who goes to the Miami Tribe in Oklahoma during the, I don’t know what Miami calls it now. it’s an intersession in January.
MRR: January Term.
EM: January term, ok now that. We would’ve liked to have done that sooner. But when they changed the academic calendar so there was this month of January, it really made it possible to put together the experience with the Miami Tribe, which has been very rewarding for our students also.
MRR: What happens on that trip?
EM: You know, I can’t tell you what all has happened because that’s happened since I retired. I’ve been there a couple of times but that was prior to the course.
MRR: Could you describe it? We have not had a description of what the location is like.
EM It’s in Miami, Oklahoma. The Miami people, they have tribal lands but Miami people are pretty well integrated throughout and they may or may not live on tribal lands. There are no full blooded Miami Indians anymore. They have a center where they have their government seat, you might say, because it is a tribe of its own. It has its own country, you have to say. They are ruled under their rules rather than the rules of Washington. They have a health service clinic there. Oh, and they have a library. They have their own businesses. They’ve set up a number of businesses and they have their own casino. When I was there, we got to visit with one of the festivals they were having at the time which was delightful. I loved it. I also remember a number of the tribe’s people set up booths with some of the artwork that they do. And I remember going to one woman who was doing some beadwork that I wished to purchase and I don’t usually carry a checkbook. I did have it with me but I rely when I’m traveling on a credit card. And when I presented my credit card she said, “Well, we don’t take credit card but I’ll take your check.” So, I wrote my check and I said “Do you want ID or something?” And she looked at me with my Miami t-shirt or sweatshirt on and she says, “I know where to find you, so I trust your check.” So, there was a good feeling there about Miami University and its relationship with the tribe. One of our graduates happens to have been a member of the Miami tribe and every time that I visited the tribe she was there to help escort me around. And I enjoyed it.
MRR: That’s wonderful. At another university I heard something called “frontier nursing for rural America.” I’m not sure what we do here at Miami about that but do you have any
information about rural healthcare needs might be like that are different from urban areas?
EM: I’m not, I don’t know that I can give you a specific example. Most of the area around Miami would not be considered the rural in the way that we think rural nursing because well, Middletown’s not a huge town. Neither is Hamilton. They’re of similar size but they’re not that far apart. Oxford’s another small town but it has a hospital. It’s easy for almost everybody to go to any of those sites and then north of us, it’s Dayton and south it’s Cincinnati. So we don’t have that wide rural area that maybe southeast Ohio would have. So I think rural nursing there would be a lot different than what we might do here. Now, at the same time we have a number of people in our southwest area of Ohio who have chronic illnesses, serious illnesses. And chronic illnesses mean that the family’s going to have to deal with healthcare on a regular basis. I mean every day, every week. That often makes them poor or really makes them struggle to meet financial needs, particularly when it’s a young child with a lot of years. Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati is one of the places that tries to address that but if you think about it, if I were the parent of that child and struggling to meet those medical needs and trying to stretch my pocketbook to meet it, I might not have a car so how do I get to Children’s Hospital? So, those were the type of rural needs that we might have in this area. And one of the things that we did in our community health program the instructor asked her students to go to the nearest bus stop to where they lived and take the bus to Children’s Hospital and just see what it meant for a parent with a child who was not well, who didn’t have transportation, who needed to- the only way to get there was on the bus. It took all day but it was quite an interesting experience so the students had some feel for what was being asked when, you know you want your patient, the sick person to attend regular clinics at Children’s Hospital.
MRR: Did we do any other community outreach programs or experiences for our nurses?
EM: You had your, in terms of outreach programs for our nurses you have to remember I’ve been retired several years so I speak to my period of time. I’m not sure what they’re doing now…
MRR: That’s what I need to know.
EM: But over the years with the baccalaureate program particularly, the RN to, it was the RN completion program in my day, there was a community health experience. And in the early days we had students who were a part of the Health Department here in Middletown and in Hamilton but overtime those Health Departments became smaller as there was less need for that and there were more Home Health Care agencies addressing that need. So our instructors did look for unique ways to help students gain that experience. Since most of those were already RNs many of them were asked to work with a particular community agency and develop a project that that community agency needed.
MRR: Thank you. Is there anything else that you’d like to enter into the record about your time here at Miami?
EM: It’s been exciting to see nursing change and grow. I talked about the two programs that were here when I was here. But the other sort of program that happened while I was here was we were able to streamline the AD program and the RN completion program so that our own students who wished could start as a freshman, two years complete the ADN program, write boards, become an RN, began working as an RN as they completed the BSN program. And this was when we began to develop more of the Oxford students coming through our program in that they could start with a couple of years in Oxford, come out to our Regional campuses and complete their bachelors and they did it in the four years that they were here. They were busier than most students because they spent summers working as an RN after the first two years. And so they graduated with their bachelors as an RN with work experience and the traditional student cannot get licensed until they finish that senior year. So that was also exciting.
MRR: That’s wonderful. Thank you for your time. Do I have your permission to discontinue this interview?
EM: Sure.
MRR: Thank you.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
African Americans
Africans
Anderson, Marilyn
Associate Program
Baccalaureate degree
Bachelor in Science and Nursing
Basald, Ruth Ann
Children
Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati
Cohen, Mel
College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Computers
Dayton, Ohio
Degree completion program
Department Chair
Diversity
Doctors
Engineering Department
Ethnic diversity
Family
Four-year degree
Gambia, West Africa
Gender diversity
Hamilton campus
Hamilton Health Department
Health Department
Hispanic Americans
Home Health Care
Indiana
January term
Mercy Hospital
Mercy Hospital, Hamilton, Ohio
Miami Indian Tribe
Miami, Oklahoma
Middletown Health Department
Middletown Hospital
Nurses, men
Nursing degree completion program
Nursing Diploma Program
Nursing Program
Oxford
Patient simulation doll
Physicians
RN-to-BSN Program
Service-learning
Sexuality
Southeast Ohio
Technology, communication
Technology, patient simulation doll
Two-year degree
Winter term
Women in Miami administration
Final Transcript: Eugenia Mills, May 6, 2017
Donation record #_Mills.E. 5062017.1_
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 7/18/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha R. Robinson 9/16/2018
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Eugenia Mills as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on May 6, 2017, at the Levey Hall. Professor Mills, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
EM: Yes.
MRR: Thank you. Can you tell us about how you became associated with Miami Middletown campus?
EM: I came to Miami University in a teaching position back in 1971. I had just completed a Master’s in Nursing degree and recently had lost my husband in a tragic accident and I wanted a job not too far from where I had family. And I suddenly discovered there was a place here in Ohio and I lived in Indiana. It wasn’t that far away. So, my first job was at the Hamilton campus and I stayed until, with Miami University until 2006.
MRR: So you’ve seen many thing change with the campus. Can you tell us how the nursing program has changed?
EM: The nursing program has changed in many ways. It has, I would say it has moved with the times. At the time the nursing program started at Miami University, most nurses were educated in diploma programs. Diploma programs were hospital-based programs, usually three years in length and the student graduated with a certificate and they were eligible to write the state board exam and, upon passing, were a registered nurse. Nursing was beginning to change worldwide, well, I should say nationwide. And, there were what were called “associate programs” popping up across the country. These were academic-based programs rather than hospital-based. They were two-year programs. And Miami decided they would bring nursing to the university and it would be the associate degree program. In the surrounding area here, there were a number of diploma nursing programs and specifically Middletown Hospital had a nursing program and Mercy Hospital in Hamilton had a diploma nursing program. So Ruth Ann Basald, who was hired to start the nursing program at Miami, worked with the two diploma programs. And the agreement that Miami went with was that as a diploma program closed in that city Miami would open an associate degree program so that, well, to cut the competition but to work together. And Mercy Hospital was ready first to close out its program so the associate degree program at Miami began at the Hamilton campus in 1968. And then two years later, Middletown Hospital closed their diploma program and the associate degree program was opened here. As time went on, Miami continued to make changes that would benefit nursing. I believe it was 1970, I can’t remember it was ’76 or ’77, I believe it was ’76, Miami opened its RN-to-BSN program. So that wasn’t too much after we opened an associate degree program. This was meant to serve all of these nurses who over the many years had graduated from diploma programs. And we were beginning to get some graduates in the workforce who were associate degree program graduates, as well as our own associate degree graduates, who would like to have a Bachelor of Science and Nursing. The traditional baccalaureate program-- which is where you start as a freshman, go through graduate as a senior, get your Bachelor of Science in Nursing and then be eligible to write your state board--were not too friendly to finding a way to move that diploma grad into their program outside of starting over. So Miami set up a specific program to help the nurse that was a diploma or associate degree graduate to go on and get their Bachelor’s of Science degree in nursing. It was tailor-made for our graduates in that our graduates with the associate degree fit right in to the junior and senior year. And we attempted to work diploma nurses or associate degree nurses from other programs in as easily as possible, depending on what courses they had taken other places. So, Miami’s friendliness towards these other graduates made us popular. They could find a way through. And our RN-to-BSN program started as an evening program since probably the largest number of nurses employed at the time were on the day shift. Now, there certainly were nurses on second and third shift but nurses on those two shifts were in lesser numbers than that day shift. So we started as an evening program so that nurses could at least work two of the shifts. They could work first or third shift and fit into our program. At later time, since I’ve been away, we’ve had the traditional baccalaureate program.
MRR: You mentioned that our nurses had usually been to work when they were doing the completer program. Can you talk about that population? What were they like? What were their ages? Were they diverse? Who was coming back?
EM: The nurses who came into our RN/ BSN program were a wide age range and they were a variety of AB and diploma grads. And they made fascinating students partly because of the age range but mostly because of their nursing experience. And they challenged the instructors. We weren’t teaching people, for instance, how to do the first steps most nursing students learn: making a bed, giving a bath, how to assess their patient. We were getting students who already had that background, who already understood a lot about nursing, about patient care. This was a real challenge then to the instructor, a fun challenge, because you had students who could ask exciting questions. I recall one time a student called me, well actually this was later years, she sent me an email on the weekend, asking a question about something I had said in class because she didn’t see that in her textbook and she was having a hard time fitting that together. So I answered to her by email but it made me think if she had that question, surely others did too. So I took time at the next class period to explain that the instructor in writing the, well probably wasn’t a, yeah she probably was an instructor, but the lady who wrote the book was trying to keep it a little on the simple side so that she wouldn’t confuse us and I had dropped in something that was a step ahead and therefore was not in the book. So we went through and I explained that to the students. But it’s just fascinating to have students constantly at you with questions and suddenly here they keep popping up in email, more questions, but this is the sign of a working nurse. He or she is out there working during the week. When they get a day off or they have a free evening, they’re doing their studying. And when that question pops up is not necessarily during school hours and they can sit down and fire off an email to their instructor. They haven’t forgotten their question and hopefully the instructor gets back to them in a timely manner.
MRR Well, that’s a change in technology and how that affects the classroom. What kind of technology changes did you see in your time here as an instructor?
EM: Oh my. There’s technology as far as education goes. There’s technology in the hospital. So much technology changed. To go back to what I just had talked about a little bit ago, students emailing, I taught a course on this campus here at Middletown. I forget now just what we called it but it was a sprinted course so they got the entire semester credit in about six weeks. This helped out some of the RNs because they would take a day off and we would have a full day of class and it met just once a week. We did a lot then by email. If they just happened to be a nursing research course and they were to look at certain types of articles and if a student had a question, whether the article fit the criteria for the project, I would get the whole email or the whole article in the email to look at. And we were just sending things back and forth to each other all the time. Changes in our lab. We now have simulated dolls. We used to have a, just like an adult size baby doll that we would give baths to or you know instead of having a live patient. Now, we have simulated ones and they’re run by a computer. And the instructor who runs the computer can have the simulated doll have different crises that you might expect to have in a patient and the student needs to respond to that. And however the student responds to that doll, they get feedback immediately that, you know this eased the pain or something else went wrong and they see another sign in that doll. And the instructor can control that through the computer and it’s a great learning experience for the student before he or she lays hands on a patient.
MRR: One of the things I’d like to talk about is the feeling of being an instructor here. What was it like to work with your colleagues? Do you have stories of colleagues you’d like to share?
EM: Miami has always been good to its faculty. If a faculty member was ill, as long as one of us other on the faculty could cover for that person, they were not charged a sick day. Miami was good to me in that over the years that I worked here, they gave me different jobs to do and it was all in nursing. But, you know I started out in the associate degree program. I got to teach in the baccalaureate program. I got administrative opportunities as chair. There was, I just felt like Miami stimulated the faculty to do their best. I like the idea that the university not only looks at whether you’re doing scholarly activities but also what are you doing to help fellow men in your service piece. I really appreciate the way Miami treats their faculty.
MRR: I’d like to talk a little bit about being a department chair. This was during the time period of the Women’s Movement. Was it unusual to become a female department chair?
EM: Being a department chair in nursing and being female was the usual since that department, it was mostly female. In the division or the school that nursing was in, which at the time I was chair basically was in the Engineering Department that had the computer technology courses and the engineering courses, and being the department chair was, a female, was unusual in that department. Now, eventually I wasn’t the only female chair. There was another person in computers who was chair who was female but to begin with I was the only female.
MRR: Well, let’s keep talking about gender then. Can you tell us about gender diversity among the students in the nursing program?
EM: Gender diversity, we, you know nursing nationwide has basically been a female occupation. However, from the beginning of nursing at Miami we have also had some male students. In the early years a very small number. I found out this week that the current class is about thirteen percent male which is a little higher than in the general population which is probably nearer ten to eleven percent. So the number of men in nursing has greatly increased. In my early years at Miami I sort of felt sorry for the fellas because there might only be one or two in a class. And I think if I were the only female in a class of men that, you know, I’d be a little uncomfortable at times. I only had a male student who had to work with his wife on and on because she had a hard time understanding his going off to study with a group of students and they happened to all be women. But the nursing students were very prone to study together. This was a common thing in nursing and he had no choice. But that had to be understood at home, too. And in the early days I was surprised to find out, I didn’t realize it until a student told me, that many times patient assumed all men who went into nursing were gay and that may or may not have helped them with the patients they were caring for. And I finally asked one of my male patients [students] if this was presenting any problem to have that sort of perception among our patients and he just answered with “When I walk into a room I begin mentioning something about my family.” So it did bother him obviously but as time has gone by it’s been more acceptable to have men in nursing just like we have women in nursing and we have a lot more of them.
MRR: If one goes down the hallway and sees images of the graduating classes of nurses you’ll notice that there is an ethnic diversity and ethnic diversity has always been part of the Middletown story. Can you speak to ethnic diversity issues here?
EM: Ethnic diversity in nursing has been a struggle in that our population generally is white but we’ve made some efforts. And I think that over the years, that also is changing in that, as best as I can recall from my years here, we have had African American students. We’ve had students from other countries, usually one or two at a time. And of course, you know men in nursing is a minority. We also had a student who was a member of the Miami Indian tribe from Oklahoma. We have made, tried to make, effort in attracting minority students. I forgot to say we’ve also had Hispanic or Spanish students. At one point we called together a group of graduates who were minority students and asked them were there things that we could do that would actually make our program attractive to minority students. And they made a number of suggestions that we tried to follow up on. I don’t think we looked at whether that really worked or not but we put effort into it because we want a diverse population. Our patients are diverse and they have a right to have nurses that look like them.
MRR: Was this normal for a college to make this effort?
EM: I think that Miami was beginning to also look at that although Miami was a little slow. But I think it was a general feeling or trend you heard out in the world. It’s just that we jumped on it and tried to work with it. Nursing has for a long time had some minority nurses, not large numbers. But because that’s just been a part of nursing and we know our patients are a variety of types of people that we tried to bring that into our nursing program.
MRR: You mentioned about nursing over time. We’ve had some people talk about being patients at the old Middletown Hospital and there have been changes on caregiver- patient relationships in nursing over the years. Would you speak to how the structure of care delivery at hospitals with nurses has changed?
EM: Well, over the years hospitals, well doctors, everything connected to patient care, has become more specialized so that people learn, especially even nursing which at the baccalaureate or associate degree level prepares a generalist. When you get hired you’re usually hired to work a certain type of unit so you become a little more specialized in that area, whether it’s pediatrics, obstetrics, coronary care. Hospitals have also made shifts. The biggest shift I’ve known is that many hospitals hire what they call “hospitalists.” These are doctors hired by the hospital who manage patients while they’re in the hospital. And if I were to enter the hospital ill, the hospitalist would be writing the orders for my care. And then when I was discharged, I would be discharged back under the care of my private physician so that my private physician is not visiting me while I’m in the hospital. And that has its pluses and its minuses. If I should have a major change in my condition and they would need my doctor to change orders, write new orders to manage that condition, in the past that doctor would have to come from his or her office. And if the office was full, there’s a temptation to say, “As soon as I can empty my office and that might be five or six o’clock, I would be into the hospital.” Well, that’s a long time maybe to go if your condition has changed. So having a hospitalist right there in the hospital who immediately goes to your bedside, takes care of the issue, orders what’s needed is very helpful. But we’re also very specialized so the next thing you know a specialist is called in who sees you, who steps out. The hospitalist steps back in to take care of you while you’re there and there’s not always that conversation between all the doctors that also gets transferred to your home physician. Now, I think doctors think they’re trying to do that but my personal experience is that that’s been difficult.
MRR: How does this change the job of a nurse?
EM: The nurse should be in there and help be that middle person if at all possible. The nurse’s job is to educate the patient and as well as take care of the patient so that the patient understands what’s going on, how they’re to take care of themselves. And the nurse can’t do that if she isn’t also talking to all of those doctors so that she understands what’s going on or, if the doctors aren’t talking, to ask them to.
MRR: We’ve heard from some of the people in industry that we need to graduate students who have great interpersonal skills. How does that comment reflect upon educating nurses?
EM: Great interpersonal skills are important not only to relate nurses among nurses, but also to relate to your patients, as well as getting along with the physicians who are caring for your patients. In many ways I think it’s a little easier in terms of nurse-doctor today because even doctors are being better educated in the area of communicating. And I think there’s a little more respect between nurses and doctors and caring for the patient. So it’s better. Nothing’s ever perfect.
MRR: Have you ever taken nurses on field trips or has Miami ever taken nurses on field trips or trips out of the country or anything like that?
EM: Yes, if field trips are defined as to other places away from the usual healthcare facilities in our area. A few years ago a group of students went several years to, I think it was Zambia with…
MRR: Unrecognizable
EM: Sorry?
MRR: Which country?
EM: I think it was the Zambia, one of the African countries.
MRR: Ok.
EM: And Marilyn Anderson on our faculty was the one who put that together with a faculty member here at Middletown, Mel and right now…
MRR: Mel Cohen?
EM: Cohen, yes.
MRR: Would that be The Gambia trip?
EM: Gambia that was it. Instead of Zambia, Gambia, yes, yes. Near [unintelligible]. And they went several summers with a group of students. They found that to be quite an enlightening experience. And students got to do a little more there in some ways than here just because of what the country allowed nurses to do compared to here. They were where there was very few doctors and they got to do a little more. We also now have group who goes to the Miami Tribe in Oklahoma during the, I don’t know what Miami calls it now. it’s an intersession in January.
MRR: January Term.
EM: January term, ok now that. We would’ve liked to have done that sooner. But when they changed the academic calendar so there was this month of January, it really made it possible to put together the experience with the Miami Tribe, which has been very rewarding for our students also.
MRR: What happens on that trip?
EM: You know, I can’t tell you what all has happened because that’s happened since I retired. I’ve been there a couple of times but that was prior to the course.
MRR: Could you describe it? We have not had a description of what the location is like.
EM It’s in Miami, Oklahoma. The Miami people, they have tribal lands but Miami people are pretty well integrated throughout and they may or may not live on tribal lands. There are no full blooded Miami Indians anymore. They have a center where they have their government seat, you might say, because it is a tribe of its own. It has its own country, you have to say. They are ruled under their rules rather than the rules of Washington. They have a health service clinic there. Oh, and they have a library. They have their own businesses. They’ve set up a number of businesses and they have their own casino. When I was there, we got to visit with one of the festivals they were having at the time which was delightful. I loved it. I also remember a number of the tribe’s people set up booths with some of the artwork that they do. And I remember going to one woman who was doing some beadwork that I wished to purchase and I don’t usually carry a checkbook. I did have it with me but I rely when I’m traveling on a credit card. And when I presented my credit card she said, “Well, we don’t take credit card but I’ll take your check.” So, I wrote my check and I said “Do you want ID or something?” And she looked at me with my Miami t-shirt or sweatshirt on and she says, “I know where to find you, so I trust your check.” So, there was a good feeling there about Miami University and its relationship with the tribe. One of our graduates happens to have been a member of the Miami tribe and every time that I visited the tribe she was there to help escort me around. And I enjoyed it.
MRR: That’s wonderful. At another university I heard something called “frontier nursing for rural America.” I’m not sure what we do here at Miami about that but do you have any
information about rural healthcare needs might be like that are different from urban areas?
EM: I’m not, I don’t know that I can give you a specific example. Most of the area around Miami would not be considered the rural in the way that we think rural nursing because well, Middletown’s not a huge town. Neither is Hamilton. They’re of similar size but they’re not that far apart. Oxford’s another small town but it has a hospital. It’s easy for almost everybody to go to any of those sites and then north of us, it’s Dayton and south it’s Cincinnati. So we don’t have that wide rural area that maybe southeast Ohio would have. So I think rural nursing there would be a lot different than what we might do here. Now, at the same time we have a number of people in our southwest area of Ohio who have chronic illnesses, serious illnesses. And chronic illnesses mean that the family’s going to have to deal with healthcare on a regular basis. I mean every day, every week. That often makes them poor or really makes them struggle to meet financial needs, particularly when it’s a young child with a lot of years. Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati is one of the places that tries to address that but if you think about it, if I were the parent of that child and struggling to meet those medical needs and trying to stretch my pocketbook to meet it, I might not have a car so how do I get to Children’s Hospital? So, those were the type of rural needs that we might have in this area. And one of the things that we did in our community health program the instructor asked her students to go to the nearest bus stop to where they lived and take the bus to Children’s Hospital and just see what it meant for a parent with a child who was not well, who didn’t have transportation, who needed to- the only way to get there was on the bus. It took all day but it was quite an interesting experience so the students had some feel for what was being asked when, you know you want your patient, the sick person to attend regular clinics at Children’s Hospital.
MRR: Did we do any other community outreach programs or experiences for our nurses?
EM: You had your, in terms of outreach programs for our nurses you have to remember I’ve been retired several years so I speak to my period of time. I’m not sure what they’re doing now…
MRR: That’s what I need to know.
EM: But over the years with the baccalaureate program particularly, the RN to, it was the RN completion program in my day, there was a community health experience. And in the early days we had students who were a part of the Health Department here in Middletown and in Hamilton but overtime those Health Departments became smaller as there was less need for that and there were more Home Health Care agencies addressing that need. So our instructors did look for unique ways to help students gain that experience. Since most of those were already RNs many of them were asked to work with a particular community agency and develop a project that that community agency needed.
MRR: Thank you. Is there anything else that you’d like to enter into the record about your time here at Miami?
EM: It’s been exciting to see nursing change and grow. I talked about the two programs that were here when I was here. But the other sort of program that happened while I was here was we were able to streamline the AD program and the RN completion program so that our own students who wished could start as a freshman, two years complete the ADN program, write boards, become an RN, began working as an RN as they completed the BSN program. And this was when we began to develop more of the Oxford students coming through our program in that they could start with a couple of years in Oxford, come out to our Regional campuses and complete their bachelors and they did it in the four years that they were here. They were busier than most students because they spent summers working as an RN after the first two years. And so they graduated with their bachelors as an RN with work experience and the traditional student cannot get licensed until they finish that senior year. So that was also exciting.
MRR: That’s wonderful. Thank you for your time. Do I have your permission to discontinue this interview?
EM: Sure.
MRR: Thank you.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
African Americans
Africans
Anderson, Marilyn
Associate Program
Baccalaureate degree
Bachelor in Science and Nursing
Basald, Ruth Ann
Children
Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati
Cohen, Mel
College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Computers
Dayton, Ohio
Degree completion program
Department Chair
Diversity
Doctors
Engineering Department
Ethnic diversity
Family
Four-year degree
Gambia, West Africa
Gender diversity
Hamilton campus
Hamilton Health Department
Health Department
Hispanic Americans
Home Health Care
Indiana
January term
Mercy Hospital
Mercy Hospital, Hamilton, Ohio
Miami Indian Tribe
Miami, Oklahoma
Middletown Health Department
Middletown Hospital
Nurses, men
Nursing degree completion program
Nursing Diploma Program
Nursing Program
Oxford
Patient simulation doll
Physicians
RN-to-BSN Program
Service-learning
Sexuality
Southeast Ohio
Technology, communication
Technology, patient simulation doll
Two-year degree
Winter term
Women in Miami administration
Interviewer
Marsha Robinson
Interviewee
Eugenia Mills
Location
Levey Hall, Miami University Middletown
Collection
Citation
“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Eugenia Mills,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed May 4, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/1070.