Page 28 - University of Martland Nursing Forum - Winter 2017

BY DAVID GINSBURG
PRACTICE
MAKES PERFECT
How an UMSON Faculty Member Finds Balance in Classroom and Bedside Roles
There’s really no such in five or six other courses each semester,
thing as a typical workday, Joan M. Davenport, PhD ’00, RN, will tell you. Davenport is an assistant professor at
the University of Maryland School of Nursing and a staff nurse in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). With these titles come great responsibilities—and the assurance that when Davenport wakes up
in the morning, there’s no telling what time she might return home.
Davenport teaches classes on Monday mornings and on Friday afternoons, including a third-semester Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) class, NURS 414: Complex Nursing Care of Comorbid Conditions, which students affectionately call “co-mo.” Davenport created the course as an elective several years ago, but it is now part of the core BSN curriculum.
“We’re trying to flesh out the complexities students are going to see when they get into a hospital and take care of patients,” Davenport says. “If I have diabetes, I probably also have hypertension and renal conditions and
I’m probably also going blind.”
Davenport also serves as a guest lecturer
26 WINTER 2017
tapping into her 40 years of nursing experience and covering topics such as advanced pharmacology for Doctor of Nursing Practice students, a cardiovascular nursing elective, and obesity
and mobility for first-
semester BSN students.
But that’s still only part
of her role as a faculty
member. As vice chair of
UMSON’s Department
of Organizational
Systems and Adult
Health, she also has
administrative duties
that include scheduling
classes, making teaching assignments, and providing guidance and assistance to aspiring nurses and new faculty.
“That’s my job on this side of the street,” she says.
Once a week, she ventures out through the iron gates in UMSON’s courtyard and across Lombard Street to her position in UMMC’s MICU. The School and the Medical Center are, as Davenport puts it, “two distinct entities with a very strong partnership serving some important goals.” While the hospital is a private, nonprofit entity separate from the university system to which UMSON belongs,
CHRIS HARTLOVE