March 3, 2021 — For CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) Nursing student Rebecca Warden, helping vaccinate people during a global pandemic gives her exactly the kind of rewarding experience she was hoping for when she becomes a nurse.
“It feels huge — it does! It doesn’t seem like it in the moment and then you take a look back and it’s like, we’re doing so much for everyone,” Warden said. “I’m excited. Everyone’s excited.”
Warden is among about 250 CSUCI nursing students and faculty members who are helping out in Ventura, Santa Barbara and soon, Los Angeles County in any way they can during the massive COVID-19 vaccination rollout.
Nursing students in their second, third and senior year are going through training with either the Ventura County Public Health Department, Cottage Health, St. John’s Regional Medical Center/ Pleasant Valley Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, and soon, the Los Angeles City Fire Department and the City of Los Angeles.
At Ventura County Public Health, Nursing students are helping with telehealth, case management, health coaching, screening of new enrollees and following up with healthcare providers.
CSUCI Nursing students in Goleta, Los Angeles and at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and St. John’s Pleasant Valley in Camarillo, are helping with vaccine clinics.
Vaccinating the public has been an emotional experience for Class of 2021 Nursing student Aimee Proffitt, who administered the COVID-19 vaccine to her grandmother, 93, and her grandfather, 90.
“I was so excited, I could barely stay professional,” Proffitt said. “Not only were they isolated because of COVID and their age, my grandma is partially deaf and blind. A year ago I never imagined I’d be giving my own grandparents a shot to prevent this bizarre virus that came through the world.”
Working with Cottage Health, she and six other Nursing students from CSUCI’s Goleta campus are doing drive-through vaccinations in nine lanes set up with tents, laptops, teams of nursing students, nurses, physicians and nurse practitioners. During one of her shifts, Proffitt said the teams were able to administer about 1500 vaccinations.
“People were dancing as they waved the traffic through,” Proffitt said. “It’s amazing. We’ve come full circle. It’s like, finally there’s a solution and we may get back to where we can do things again. People are excited, they’re nervous, they’re afraid. All of them have been living in fear for a year now.”
Because the pandemic necessitated online classes, it’s been difficult for Nursing students to log clinical hours, which are hours in which they are actually working in a health care setting.
Volunteering to help administer vaccines or do other health-related work to ease the burden on overworked doctors and nurses allows them to gain valuable in-the-trenches experience and log the clinical hours they need to graduate.
“I look for any opportunity for my students to get clinical practice,” said Nursing Lecturer Nancy Mitchell, R.N. “The practice is great not only for their nursing skills, but for their personal interaction skills—being able to talk to patients, maybe put them at ease if they’re nervous about getting a shot.”
Program Chair and Professor of Nursing Lynette Landry, Ph.D., R.N., said she appreciates area hospitals and health agencies who have been great partners to CSUCI’s Nursing students, training all of them on how to vaccinate, educate or do health screenings during this extraordinary time.
City of Los Angeles Public Health will soon train CSUCI nurses so they can join the teams vaccinating at Dodger Stadium under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Nursing Charlene Niemi, R.N., Ph.D., and about 12 Nursing students are being trained by Kaiser Permanente with plans to put them to work with Kaiser’s vaccination program.
Because the need is so great, all but the first-year Nursing students are being given the opportunity, and Landry said she could not be more impressed with the students’ response.
“They amaze me,” Landry said. “They’re willing to jump right into the fire…they want to contribute. When most of us are afraid to go to the supermarket, there they are, right out on the front lines. I am so proud of them.”