Millette's eagerness to talk about the School of Nursing is tinged only by her worry that she might shortchange or overlook someone or something. These days, there is plenty to talk about. The oldest publicly supported nursing program in Massachusetts, SON maintains an array of often innovative offerings. And a Ph.D. program, instituted in 1994 and offered collaboratively with the UMass Medical Center at Worcester, has just produced its first four doctors of nursing. In nursing, firsthand experience is essential.
SON offers practica in Northern Ireland, London, Ghana, and Jamaica.
Closer to home, the school runs a health clinic in Springfield's Putnam High School, with nursing students as staff. I want to see what's going on down there. For Millette, the Putnam project encapsulates the current story of nursing, and where the profession is heading. The clinic is the only available health care for many of its patients, and the needs it serves are many and diverse a far cry from the days when school nurses mostly swabbed mercurochrome on scraped knees. That example, though, doesn't convey the scope of contemporary nursing.