For Christina Palmer, nursing was always about kindness in addition to excellent care. As the granddaughter of two nurses, she saw it firsthand.
“I knew they were nurses, and I noticed that the way they treated people was the way I wanted to act and treat people too” she says. “And I just knew that nursing was the right route for me.”
Years later, Christina realized that kindness is a skill she feels is just as important to teach as nursing duties. While working as a patient care tech and pursuing her bachelor's in nursing (BSN) from Webster University, she dreamed of ultimately teaching nursing at the collegiate level. She believed that by teaching her students to lead with kindness, the excellence in patient care they were learning in their classes would naturally follow.
“It fueled me to say, ‘I want to make this profession better,’” Christina explains. “And I want to show that compassion to my students.”
That’s why after five years in nursing and receiving not only her BSN but two associates and a master’s degrees, Christina is back in the classroom at Barnes-Jewish College Goldfarb School of Nursing in her first term of the Doctor of the Nursing Practice (DNP) program—her fifth degree. The DNP program is for MSN-prepared registered nurses interested in pursuing advanced leadership roles in nursing practice. The goal of the program is to prepare graduates who provide quality health care to patients, families, and communities by assuming a leadership role in health care.
But ever the educator, she’s not just taking classes. Christina has also been an adjunct faculty member at Goldfarb for two terms, with previous experience teaching in the health assessment lab. She also oversees the clinical group that meets on weekends. She says her love of patient care led her to teaching health assessment, and that’s ultimately what she’d like to do as a full-time professor.
“I can read you a PowerPoint all day, and I can tell you what to do all day. But until you actually get up and do it, that’s how you learn,” Christina says. “Feeling the stethoscope in between your fingers to listen to how a patient’s heart sounds, conducting a head-to-toe assessment on an actual person instead of reading about the steps.”
Christina hopes that as students are learning these important tasks from her that she’s also an example to them.
“I hope they learn compassion from me as well,” says Christina. “I want them to see me and think, ‘If she can get up and do it and make patients smile, I think I can. I can take care of them like that. I can show compassion. I can show love like she does.’”
Learn more about Goldfarb’s Doctor of the Nursing Practice (DNP) program.