Page 49 - University of Martland Nursing Forum - Winter 2017

worked in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Georgia in both large tertiary teaching referral centers and mid-sized community hospitals. In early 2016, she returned to bedside nursing, where she began her career.
She has been practicing nursing for 42 years.
Kathleen Deska Pagana, PhD, BSN ’74, RN,
has written the second edition of The Nurse’s Etiquette Advantage: How Professional Etiquette
Can Advance Your Nursing Career, published by
Sigma Theta Tau International; it received a 2015 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. She is
also the co-author of Mosby’s Diagnostic
and Laboratory Test Reference, edition 12, and Mosby’s Manual
of Diagnostic and Laboratory Tests, edition 5. Almost 2 million copies of these books have sold worldwide with translations in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Korean,
and Chinese.
Debra Vilendrer Ashcraft, BSN ’75 (WRAIN), RN, is a retired Army major, Army aviator (helicopter pilot), Army registered nurse, and disabled veteran. She began as an Army nurse for 10 years and then attended the Army Rotary Program
at Fort Rucker, Alabama, where she was awarded her Aviator Wings. Ashcraft had been a helicopter pilot for nine years when she was injured in a helicopter crash and had to leave aviation. She returned to the Army Nurse Corps in which she was promoted to the rank of major before retiring a short while later. Ashcraft was also a certified SCUBA diver. She studied real estate and obtained her license to sell ranches
in Southern Colorado. When she was not nursing in military facilities, she worked as a forensic nurse in a large prison, then in the Colorado
State Mental Health Institute, and finished
up as a psychiatric nurse in a local hospital. She found her nursing niche
in psychiatric nursing.
Dolores Peters Davis, BSN ’75, RN, is a telephonic registered nurse at CareMetx in Bethesda, Maryland;
she advises patients regarding specialty medications related to their health conditions. She earned a Master of Science in Nursing in nursing education and administration from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Mary Flannery Nadolski, BSN ’75, RN, has been employed as
a registered nurse for more than 10 years at
the University of Virginia Medical Center.
Sharon McCaig Watts, BSN ’75, earned her Master of Education in Guidance and Counseling from Loyola University and is a certified childbirth educator
and CPR instructor.
Barbara Parker, PhD ’86, MS ’76, RN, (left) presented a paper, “Promoting an atmosphere to support nursing research,”
on Sept. 24 at Dalian University in Manchuria, China.
Claudette Jacobs, DNP, BSN ’77, RN-BC, clinical education and program manager, was featured in the 2015-16 Nursing Annual Report, “Faces of Caring,” for Howard County General Hospital (HCGH) in Columbia, Maryland.
UMSON Alumni Association Elects New Members
CONGRATULATIONS to Carmel Anne McComiskey, DNP ’10,
MS ’96, who was named president- elect of the University of Maryland School of Nursing Alumni Association, effective July 1. McComiskey is the director of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) in Baltimore.
Congratulations, too, to the following UMSON Alumni Association members-at-large, who began serving two-year terms last July 1:
Linda Jasek Dewberry, MS ’11, BSN ’84,
nurse practitioner, UMMC-Midtown Surgical Vascular Center
Malinda Peeples,
MS ’97, RN, CDE,
vice president of clinical advocacy, WellDoc; adjunct assistant faculty, Division of Healthcare Informatics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Carrie Jacobs, MS ’09, RN, CNL, registered nurse, University of Maryland, College Park University Health Center
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