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Nursing opened door to teaching
YOUNGSTOWN
Dr. Patricia McAllen, associate dean of the Mercy College of Ohio, and recently named Ambassador for the National League for Nursing, grew up wanting to be a teacher.
But one summer while working as a counselor at Father Kane’s Camp at Lake Milton she was so impressed with the “compassion and level of confidence” of camp nurse Anne Grena, now Anne Cartwright, who was a senior student at the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing, that McAllen came home and told her mother she was going to be a nurse instead.
Another major influence in her nursing career was Julie Nohra, her first nursing instructor at the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing.
“Julie displayed that combination of the art of nursing — tremendous caring and compassion for patients — with the science of nursing — the high level of intelligence and knowledge needed to deal with a nursing curriculum heavy in science,” McAllen said.
With those influences in her life, McAllen blended her two passions and became a teacher of nurses.
At 22, she joined the faculty of the St. E’s nursing school and was there in 1996 when it was closed. She also was affiliated with the nursing programs of Youngstown State and Kent State universities but “always kept my foot in the door” at St. Elizabeth.
So when the decision was made to affiliate with Mercy College of Northwest Ohio, McAllen was tapped to help establish the St. Elizabeth Campus of Mercy College and has been its director since 2002. The two-year program opened in January 2003 and has graduated eight classes with a total of 217 nurses.
As of Monday, Mercy College of Northwest Ohio changed its name to Mercy College of Ohio to better reflect that there are two campuses in Ohio, the main campus in Toledo and the St. Elizabeth Campus, and the increasing growth in online classes, said John Hayward, college president.
McAllen, 59, began her nursing career working in medical intensive care at St. Elizabeth, and moved back and forth between education and critical-care nursing until she became associate dean of the Mercy College nursing program at St. Elizabeth.
In recognition of her body of work and achievements, McAllen was named an Ambassador by the NLN, established in 1893 for the “establishment and maintenance of a universal standard of training” for nurses. It is a leading professional association for nursing education.
“For those of us who know Pat’s passion for nursing education, we recognize this elite NLN assignment is a perfect fit,” said Molly Seals, senior vice president of human resources and learning for Humility of Mary Health Partners.
As an NLN Ambassador, McAllen said her goals are to bring back to Mercy College information about “cutting-edge educational techniques” and grant opportunities. The NLN also is a lobbying organization, and she plans to advocate for more federal funding for nursing scholarships for advanced degrees for nursing faculty.
She said advanced degrees for nurses are important from patient-care and respect viewpoints.
Nurses are the managers of patient care, and they need additional education because they are taking care of people with multiple diagnoses who are much sicker. The scientific background to deal with modern technology has grown exponentially, McAllen said.
She said nurses also need to have the level of educational credentials to put them on a par with the rest of the patient’s health-care team.
McAllen also has a personal reason for advocating advanced degrees for nurses.
“One of the things that I’m extremely proud of is the talented faculty members at Mercy College St. Elizabeth. They love the students and have a tremendous passion for education,” she said.
And she said would like to see one of the faculty members, such as Lorraine Coalmer of Canfield, an assistant professor at Mercy College of Ohio, who is studying for her doctorate in nursing, put themselves in a position to run the program someday.
“I have so much of my life invested in this program, I want to leave it in the hands of someone who loves it and values it as I do. I need someone to run this place when I leave,” McAllen said.