Published: June 30, 2007 01:53 pm      

PROFILE: North Tonawanda nurse garners international attention

A North Tonawanda resident’s proposed solutions for a national health care problem will receive international attention this July.

Theresa Arida, a registered nurse and instructor at Niagara County Community College, said her research proves that the transition from learning in a clinical setting to working as a nursing graduate is what discourages many new nurses from committing to the field, and allaying a projected national shortage of nurses.

“We really need nurses, and we need nurses that are going to stay,” she said.

For the research that she used to earn her master’s degree in nursing at Daemen College in 2005, Arida was selected, from more than 1,300 applicants, to present her work at the 18th International Nursing Research Congress in Vienna. The four-day conference with a focus on evidence-based practice is hosted by Sigma Theta Tau, a nursing honor society. Arida is the president of the society’s Daemen College chapter, Pi Zeta.

Arida said her role as a teacher and as a nurse receiving recent graduates in a clinical setting helped her to understand the challenge new nurses face.

“I saw both ends. I was the person who had my students who would be in their last semester on the floor, and I also precepted,” she said.

Registered nurses comprise the largest portion of the health care workforce, with 2.4 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A report in the January/February 2007 issue of Health Affairs, an industry journal, claimed the shortage of RNs in the United States will reach 340,000 by 2020.

“I saw a lot of new nurses going into the hospitals and having a difficult time adjusting, and research said that 50 percent of new nurses will leave their first job with the first year,” she added.

By interviewing recently graduated nurses and working with established theories in nursing, Arida identified ways in which instructors, hospitals and legislators can work to improve the transition from classroom to workforce. Mentoring programs, practice drills for emergency codes while organizational support can help to maintain a new nurse’s professional passion.

“Graduate nurses when they first come out are very enthusiastic. They have positive feelings about nurses and nursing, we need to find a way to help that excitement stay alive,” she said.

Arida began her career in nursing in 1997, shortly after her father died. She said her experience caring for him with hospice workers inspired her to take up nursing. She credits her mother, Sandy Hannold, with her success in nursing.

“She was there the whole time. She watched the kids the whole time. Without her and my husband, I couldn’t have done it,” she said.

Although Arida teaches full-time during the academic year, she takes assignments in hospitals throughout the summer, working about two days per week as a nurse in surgical departments.

“I love the teaching, because I love teaching and I love nursing so it’s a great fit for me. But, I also really have a great passion for being in the hospital and taking care of patients. There’s nothing quite like doing that,” she said.

The trip to Austria will be Arida’s first to Europe. She will travel alone and meet up with colleagues, leaving her husband, John, and children Christopher, 16, Thomas 13, and Elizabeth, 5, at home.

The Arida family is proud of Theresa’s work and excited for her presentation.

“I’m very proud. I love to travel and I’m very happy for her,” Christopher Arida said of his mother.

Arida said she had doubts about submitting her research abstract for the conference, but a warm reception to her work at a local research conference and encouragement from her colleagues got her out the door and on her way to Europe.

“I think I probably would have backed out if it weren’t for my colleagues saying, ‘Oh no, you have to go.’”