 So, my name is Barbara Irvin and I started in the nursing program on the SOC campus. Back in August of 1971, when the associate degree program was just about two years old that Betty Halgen had started that had come down from the operating room at OHSU in Portland. And she started that associate degree program, which was amazing in itself in lots of ways. And when I applied and came to work, I was taking the place of someone who was a specialist in the mental health area and the program, the curriculum as it had been adopted was called for integrated program. And so everybody had to be sort of a jack of all trades. So I ended up taking that person's position. I had been at Rogue Valley Hospital before that. So we were using a pretty innovative curriculum that had been adopted by various schools across the country. And one of the questions that Betty Halgen, who was chair of the department, asked me and asked all the other faculty that she hired any time on the years after that. If I would, starting with myself, would adhere to this curriculum because one of the issues that people have or faculty have is if somebody comes and is hired and doesn't follow the curriculum because they've got other ideas and they just sort of weave their way and their ideas into the thing. It makes it really difficult for everybody. And so that was something that was really important to Betty and became really important to the rest of us who got really involved in it. And that program was very creative in that the authors of that curriculum wanted students to have experiences of sort of playing at things so that they could learn some stuff without all the stress and anxiety that nursing students tend to have. So there were lots of little things like having little small doll beds and things to try to practice things on. In a sort of a miniature scale, that is something that moved over the many years till the more recent past where the students act out things according to scripts in nursing labs now and that things are videoed and things are prescribed so that students get more experience in lab setting and about making them as real as possible. So the beginning of that, as I see it, was way back then in the 70s, perhaps for the authors of the curriculum starting then they were in Florida, that they started that in the late 60s then I would say. So back in those days when I was hired, I became one of six nursing faculty that we had here and our offices were actually in rooms in the cottage up behind the science building where a parking lot exists now and we had a little cottage there and we had two faculty in the bedrooms that we had two that were in the living room and then I shared with another faculty on what was like a sleeping porch or a sun porch type thing. But anyway, so we all had, we had two in an office and it was such an interesting thing. We had our faculty meetings in the kitchen and Betty, our shared office was down in the science building. We taught our nursing labs in what is now one of the anatomy physiology labs. In fact, it was before we started with nursing and there were a lot of bargaining that had to go on over a number of years where there was competition between science and nursing for space and for dollars where it was like really important for the nursing students to have science courses just like they also needed psychology courses and English and speech and sociology and anthropology. There were various courses from all the other departments because nursing was always a conglomerate of all these many things, sciences and the arts and so there's often we talk about the art and science of nursing and both are really, really important. So anyway one of the things that stayed with the nursing faculty probably even till now but although I have not been active in the more recent past but as long as I was there way up until 2007 we had many interactions that went on in the kitchen of building even up in Central Hall because when we moved from the cottage that got moved to another place so that the parking lot could be built we moved to Central Hall and over the years we were on the first floor of Central Hall and then well not in the basement except well actually we did have a couple people in the basement in an office but we were on I guess would have been the ground I call it first floor and second floor so we shared on the second floor when we were up on the second floor we crossed the hall from math and down the hall from English and so we formed really great relationships with people in these other departments and many of us or several of us I should say at any given time we're very active in anything from the building committee on campus with everybody else or the faculty Senate different things so we were really a part of the main liberal arts college campus and many of the student the parents of students who sent their sons and daughters to our program here were very they liked the idea that we were on the liberal arts campus and and that there was such a close relationship with faculty in all the departments it wasn't just in nursing so that was a real strength of our department and then associate degree students didn't needed to be any clinical a lot so one of the things that we had to compete for space in the community both in Jackson County and Josephine County were with road community college for units for pediatric experiences and obstetric and maternal medical and surgical nursing things and times out in the community and clinics and so forth so that was only something we always work these things out but that did take you know effort sometimes unfortunately there weren't any thing that wasn't was too hard to work out you know we could always manage to do that so there were a lot of these facilities that were shared and we would have certain days one of the solutions was to have certain days of the week that we would have students in clinical and right road community could have those floors at the hospital on different days that we were in stuff so all that impacted how we implemented a curriculum so one of the other thing in the early days was looking for mental health facilities for the students in the early days we had a pediatric unit on the second floor at Rogue Valley Hospital where the mental health unit behavioral health unit as they called it eventually got built and so pediatrics went to a wing outside you know that projected out from the hospital into that circular wing that they still have now at Rogue Valley and there was some pediatric place experience with opportunities for experiences with babies and and children at Grands Pass also and so and then we used the clinic so we did a lot of things that would have students in places where things were less acute than in the hospital and so they would have a chance to interact with families more and things along the way we ended up feeling a great need to help nurses who were prepared at either at the diploma in a diploma school or at the associate's degree level to get their baccalaureate so that there would be more nurses in the community available for leadership and management experiences and and positions in the hospital then the clinics and also for there had to be a way for them to do that so we put we developed then a to what we call the two plus two programs so we had ended up developing a baccalaureate program that probably started in the mid 70s maybe in 1975 or so roughly the back that program allowed nurses to come in and get a pretty good amount of credit for what they had already done which was a change because people were kind of stuck and in the schools and the call at the collegiate level or university levels it was really hard to get any transferable credit and nurses had lots of years of experience sometimes but there was no way for them to progress without starting all over again and that's expensive and time-consuming and people have families and so having this develop a program where you could come in as an RN be given quite a bit of credit for what you already knew and then to have a coursework that was really focused on leadership and management and community health and and in some educational opportunities so because nurses were teaching for example myself when I started out teaching in 1971 I only had a baccalaureate degree I had a teaching credential from California but I didn't have a like a certificate type of thing but I didn't have a master's degree and it really wasn't required except in certain positions and in the universities it became much more in demand but even here over the years it became necessary for accreditation purposes to be able to teach with have your faculty prepared at the master's level so then many schools would have the faculty who were prepared only at the baccalaureate level they would be teaching in the clinical areas and those that taught in the classroom then or were trying to do research would have to be prepared at the master's level so there was always this staggered of figuring out what nurses needed to learn and what was going to take what kind of preparation was best both for them to work in a future setting but also to be able to teach the students who were going to be graduating and working in you know down the road in five ten fifteen years so it's sort of the same issues people in the faculty in other disciplines have is how to prepare the students to be good citizens in the world and and be able to earn money in and so forth but in a rapidly changing field with with technology the technology changing very rapidly and science behind things right or wrong as discoveries sometimes turn out to be disproved and you know the and science changes but those became it really was necessary for nurses to really not only keep up with their field but identify what the field was and because nurses the nursing discipline or profession draws from so many different disciplines so in order to develop a doctoral program for nurses for example for faculty to go to or researchers to go we had to figure out and identify this I say we this is nationwide it's global but it's particularly nationwide in this you know for us in this country had to identify okay what content from in throw and or sociology or English or biology and how necessary is chemistry and you know many of us because we all had chemistry we decided that's absolutely we got out chemistry in order to understand the pharmaceutical effects of medications things like that but at some point we developed a consortium and when we so that they would have more students prepared associate degree level who could then get their upper two program that for two years all over the state they didn't couldn't just be limited to coming here or to Clemeth Falls or eastern Oregon that there were a lot of places where they were they were able to get that first two years they should be able to get the second two years so it was always a matter of a kind of then determine what was necessary so if one of the associate degree campuses did not teach chemistry I mean it likes you know I could pick anyone and I don't want to really do that by name but it's just if one of the other schools the community colleges you know they didn't have a chemistry offered on their campus then we couldn't require it as part of the consortium so we had to give up things so we used to talk and faculty talk about the sacred cows of curriculum and chemistry had been one of them and we had to give it up at some point but we finally did come up people work really long and hard across the curriculum and some people from our campus in particular did that I really work make it work and it did work and so for a lot of years we were doing that our campus meanwhile was told we had to drop the associate degree program and leave it for the associate degree programs for the community colleges to do that level and that we would focus only on baccalaureate so these mandates come from higher authorities that are for decisions that are made on higher levels in Oregon so sometimes political things get in the way you know how much is cost effective to do this versus that you know so as is oh before I go on to the next little piece I wanted to say so that that worked and in the program it worked but while we still had the 2 plus 2 program we had an extended campus program what was developed so that our we had quite a few faculty who would travel then to a community college in Roseburg or up to the Dalles to Redmond to various places over to Cuspe delivering classes and when we finally set up some structure with where there was a an administrative assistant in Roseburg and one in Cuspe and associated with those community colleges there and then our faculty would go and we would and that we would teach classes in maybe an evening and then the students didn't have to come to to to our campus except maybe once or twice you know here or there they come for certain things but basically they could get everything they needed on their campus either by us taking it to them or them getting it on their own so the students started getting being able to do research projects and to teach but what was so wonderful is because of the independence of those students who had already we you know they were already independent nurses or I should say they had you know they were earning money as registered nurses and working in really good positions and so by having this set up similar to how many disciplines will offer courses for people on extended weekends and we did some of that where students would come and take an immersion for a weekend you know or several weekends during a term to get a course that needed to be taught from here only because the faculty couldn't travel or something and then we moved into distance education where things were televised and then we could they could just sit in class on their own campus and take a course and it could be delivered from Portland or from here or anywhere so around 1991-92 there was a lot of upheaval where things looked like they were going to assign their school of nursing or the department of nursing here to be merged with OHSU in Portland and in about 1993 that I think the year that actually happened and so that the use of the television or the distance for distance education became imperative at that point and when I earned a master's degree from OHSU school of nursing I had to commute and that was like to 77-78 and I think I finally finished that master's in about 82 but I had to do the commuting where by the time we got distance education going in the cameras and everything we've made it so much easier that we could we could enroll a whole class of masters students working on their masters and stuff which was actually a huge step forward in helping our community to have nurse practitioners and I mean that was wonderful and then that on down the road became that was the forerunner for the doctoral program that became possible for students to be able to get some classes down here and participate with a cadre in Portland at the same time so over the years and while I was still in nursing here in one way or the other at the baccalaureate level and the people were working I mean community local community people here could go ahead sometimes including our faculty could take courses in the doctoral program so we made that was a lot just um in 30 years you know 20 30 years it's just it's quite quite amazing at resources though I mean you know the money for all these things it's always hard to come by and and so over them those many years they're getting really good working relationships with the community agencies the hospitals the foundations just local groups of interest that we wanted to support wanted nurses in the community that were prepared at higher levels wanted well-prepared faculty in the state of Oregon you know there were a lot of contributions made that helped so that we could they would make facilities available to for our students to practice and he thinks that I mean sometimes it like was over above and beyond sometimes to make these things happen and certainly that was true in the outline communities like in Coos Bay and and Roseburg and and other areas Klamath Falls we had really good relationships usually with the faculty with Klamath Falls OAT and they would come over here they also were part of the OAH belonging to OHSU and so it was it was quite a wonderful time for developing leadership and and and great relationships among between faculty and leaders nurse managers at these hospitals and the health department and so forth when wonderful to see like one of our one of my first students in fact there were several of them from that you know they kind of stuck together through thick and thin and earlier you know how it's wonderful to have students buddy up together and and they really helped support each other through a program and and one of ours Gwen Bowman became director of the nurse of nursing over at the health department in Grants Pass and see these students from beginning all the way through you know to where we're they're providing clinical experiences for our students it's it's pretty amazing and very rewarding you know and even now in this community there are many many many nurses who started here and one or maybe both of the more basic programs and continued on so when we became part of OHSU there was a lot of resistance to that here because the nurses and faculty I mean we were all very very partial to having our own you know what was SOC and then it became SOSC and then it was SOU we always were proud of it and glad that we had right here on our own campus we had our nursing program and at some point the resources just became really so tight it's not much different nowadays sometimes departments have to be reorganized and the budget's always you know there's always the crunch time and our faculty going to be able to stay or the faculty have to leave because we can't afford that and so forth and so on so we went through many of those times and there were it's more than once that I remember Betty Hogan getting a a note sent to her and perhaps one o'clock in the afternoon or something to show up at three o'clock for a faculty senate meeting to to explain why we should keep nursing on this campus because the chemistry and biology and these other departments needed the money and and yet they needed our students to you know we fed them students and they prepared our students I mean it was a great exchange excuse me but but when money's tight there's a lot of balls in the air it's like okay house is gonna end play out so eventually we did end up going with becoming part of OHSU and while there was resistance and there was some resentment there was also some prestige that came with that for the students and more opportunity more money available which because of that we were able to develop research projects more because we had the facilities and the support from the Portland campus people could write for grants and and fund the video projects that started there you know we started with the for the nursing labs and so forth so that students could go to clinical and much better prepared and as the hospital environments became more and more acute it became more and more necessary that students be more competent as well as have a more confidence you know when they were there so that they weren't shaking and appearing so nervous to a patient who is being asked if they would be alright they would accept a student for today you know so there's it's just pretty amazing we have a lot of people to thank for having been patients but on the other hand most of them are really happy to have nursing students because they got a little more attention that way and I mean I can't say that was 100% that way but you know it was a good program and it's still a good program and and that's pretty awesome well we used to have a huge waiting list I mean like 300 maybe you and there was always that thing about we used to have interviews and then it was like there were all these things that would come out from seems like affirmative action that you couldn't ask for this and you couldn't ask that and but he said we did away with those interviews and at some other point we had them back for a while and so there's always that issue about fair admittance and that sort of thing but we would take trying to think we had 24 maybe at a time sometimes as facilities would change sometimes we could take more sometimes less but we tried to it used to be when we could take 36 because we could have 12 in a group and we could have three groups but that was hard to manage 12 students in the group as clinical facilities and the patients in them became more acute how it was harder to do the kind of supervision that nursing students needed to be safe and to be safe for the patients and for patients to feel like they were getting good care you know and the nurses that we would pair put them together with did not feel like they don't have time they don't have time for the students because things were so busy so we would get down to about eight students then in a clinical area that became much more doable more realistic and they were getting more preparation in the labs we there's always been things in the beginning when we always had a nursing skills or fundamentals left way back when I was a student in the dark ages you know but but it became with that students had to learn how to think on the feet and move faster and make decisions in a setting like this and not wait till we get into the clinical area to have them realize oh they couldn't function in that kind of environment they really wanted to be in a calmer setting and things like that which is how you sort out what area you might go into later we started out with all females and all female faculty one of our we did have a our token male student Rick Daniels who was recruited out of central Oregon he was an OHSU graduate initially he had and he had some background in the military so he's a great teacher the students loved him we did have more they have more male faculty I mean male students over time it wasn't always a really good match some one of the students I remember male students way back in the early 70s actually wanted to be an anesthesiologist but he came in through nursing and so he wasn't really wanting to be a bedside nurse and of course then I should interject here nurses went nursing itself went through a big change so in the public perception was finally able to catch up with that I think but as it did more people were willing to accept a male student we were always careful to be sure that a patient was willing and that during if during at any time a patient a female patient did not want a male student you know we accepted that or if they were did have a male student for a given period of time certainly during anything that was more required more privacy we would have a female student you know cover for that or have the the nurse that was assigned that patient I think some people it's like when I was in working in the south and initially when I was in school we had people come in who didn't want a black black nurse you know they oh no I mean I really we had to tell a patient she would have to leave I mean we had black nurses in that hospital you know and so that's the like in the now some of our best nurses really in the environments of like emergency room a lot of them are male nurses but a lot of times it's a personality that is coming along so it's not always a good match and with a patient and a student some students came in from forestry from the mills or other places where then they were able to adjust and do fine but but and largely that really didn't always work that well because of that what they came into nursing because they knew they could get a job and they get done and it didn't no fault I mean I'll blame it's just and the lumber industry here was changing there's a so you know everything affects everything else so but definitely some resistance about having a male student some people had ideas about gender orientation and so forth that may or may not have been accurate but you know it's always something that we just have to accept and work with you know of course over the years yes but to this day there could be somebody who wouldn't want a male student and they might or might not be able to get another one I mean you know it's like there's not that many different nurses to choose from on a shift sometimes so it depends we we didn't see not early on what we did do is work at the we had we took our students to the VA and I mean that's how where when I started out we would take our students out there to learn how to do insulin shots I mean we showed them here on campus and they could but that in order to get many injections just like now we will have students work flu clinics and things to learn injections you know we we went to the VA as to other community facilities for student experience but I didn't see until probably as they would come maybe in the baccalaureate level and I personally I'm not real familiar I just don't remember in particular we did have some we had students actually that would come like from cave junction and other places and so in those instances there would often be we might deal with things like that relative to vaccinations you know meeting the requirements for school for the young kids in their family the babies that they were had in tow going to have well baby checks or if they were sick a lot of times those could overload emergency rooms well I think for for some people it was just very shocking and hard to accept I know some families who lost sons to HIV to AIDS and hadn't even realized that that anything until it was like so late they just really you know hardly had time to try to repay our relationships before they want to die you know or anything so I mean it was really a lot of blind nonic just judgmental judgmental things that would keep people from trying to understand things sooner but in it did affect people in the hospital and so that we would be involved with our students taking have we have patients including children although many babies born with HIV you know everything it's just like it's just hard we always were having to deal with precautions for hepatitis always for tuberculosis was a big thing because people wouldn't take stay on their medications and so in the community focus became huge for making home visits to people to see if they were taking their medications and you know as the drugs got they became drug resistant you know the idea one of the things that was so helpful with with whole hiv thing is using combinations of drugs and to try to get at things and that was so much better but there were many many many years of trying to gain understanding of even how to care for the people and properly in the hospital and in the end to give them the support because anybody in a hospital with a communicable disease not in isolation so last thing they need is to be isolated from everybody socially you know and emotionally and yet it was necessary to keep the spread of things and that was way before Ebola and some of these other kinds of incidents so but anything that involves gender identity both whether it's staff or I don't mean staff of caucus but the nursing staff or medical staff I mean or patients or community visitors it's just really hard it's difficult to deal with and so over the years that I've been in nursing and that I work with students in different facilities including when I was working on my doctorate in Austin I had students in the hospital and we had lots of people with hiv and working through all the issues and keeping everybody safe all the precautions that we had to use it's you know we thought it was so tremendous at the time the effect the toll it took on everybody and at the same time the growth of us as a human society was was huge too because you know everybody started to learn you know oh once you know somebody that has this has whatever it is you know you realize that oh they're just like my family just like me just like just you know kind of thing and so there was a lot of social adjustment that I had to come along with it was not just the acute care and the community care that followed all of which was difficult in a lot of ways but so rewarding with the development of compassion that people could have for another human oh I do I remember in my own family I have sons there's a lot of there was a lot of denial about all of that but when I had to tell him one of his best friends from school had died is you know it's just he didn't believe there was such a thing you know it's just I know so but then he became more aware it's just one by one it's because I do remember very early on we were we had to discuss this about what happened when you have students applying to the program if they were known to be and not have that disease which did turn up when I was in Texas that was an issue there about protecting with affirmative action there with with the all of the rules for privacy that came up where you can't reveal any of this and that you have to keep everybody safe yeah that that was a big issue down there I was I was not here at the time but I was in Texas and down there people's parents were worried about well if you go there you might get TB because the the organisms had gotten more virulent at the time you know and so it doesn't it doesn't matter so much which communicable disease it's scary for parents it's scary for people in the environment and and and it's really a faculty where we had to develop a lot of policies and things around all of that but I remember before we were talking about HIV we were talking about gender identity and and about having a nurse perhaps who's a different orientation than you think they should be or something and and do do reactions in there so that we had to have discussions you know and about all of that just with relationships before we ever got to any disease things that and that will might be associated with these things more of it was with related to poverty and malnutrition and you know the damp environment that people lived in that was a would foster disease versus being out in the sunshine in the fresh air and you know some basic things people just didn't have you know you can't just we just take so many things I say we but you know many of us do take a lot of things environment that we have clean water and that it's safe to drink except when in so many communities that isn't the case so yeah it's just and look what I mean if you think about it's just different scenarios but now we have shootings in the school and we have do you know we have fires oh we have so many things that floods so many there's earthquakes that can affect school so when we would have students in the schools working which we did you know you have to think about that kind of thing as well you know so we're not setting them or us up as we go to make our rounds and visit with that one so so there's a lot of factors that involve definitely they're just different issues now and some of the same as many years ago but the importance really of having nurses prepared here in the way that we want them prepared so they can take care of us you know and our families we do lose some out to either they go on for further education or they go back to maybe where they had always wanted to go or their families came from or or whatever go travel the world and you know and they should do those kinds of things but we do keep quite a large percentage here and we gain some from other places who come here and because we have a nursing program here even though it's an OHSU program that we have here now people come here for the wonderful area that we've have here at all the outdoor facilities and all the the theater and and music we have wonderful facilities here I mean and tremendous talent in this community so people come here and realize what a great place it is to live here or to be here and they move here so we gain some from other areas too and but I do think that has been a key reward even is that we do have nurses in our community because we have this school here and starting with the original department so I don't know if that's that part enough but I do think it's been really important and I think it's worth putting a reason that's to put money into it and to put really high quality faculty into it and that really helps that we have it's not just a school of nursing by itself but that it's associated with this university you know and then the other the other thing you asked me about greatest reward for me I think as I was just starting to talk before I think for me it's just seeing the nurses that seeing the students that we had from way back in the beginning and then we see what great people they've turned and great nurses they've turned out to be and some of them return having gotten their doctorates and their teaching you know or things it's just it's so rewarding to see that and it's kind of not exactly the same but it's comparable I think fairly comparable how I feel as a parent I have three grown children love seeing them parent how they do things the decisions that they make relative to their work and the chosen things that they do but but seeing how they teach or the patients they have with their kids like the love that they have and how they live their life that's one of my that's my greatest reward as a parent you know and I feel kind of like that that you know there's a group of us a faculty that talked together for years and we get together regularly and that's one of the things we are always saying we was so grateful that we were nurses we would do it again in a heartbeat you know and it's just the greatest reward is just having been able to have been a part of the nursing profession