Jeanne Leffers

Jeanne M. Leffers, PhD, RN, is the graduate program director in the university’s College of Nursing and an associate professor in its department of Community Nursing.

 

As a small child, I had been influenced by people who where nurses, but it wasn’t until high school that I saw how my love of science and working with people could be combined through a nursing career. Additionally, in high school I was still thinking I might want to be an English major, so I chose to attend a college that would provide those options. Today I continue to be  grateful I chose nursing as a career.

 

At Simmons College, where Leffers earned a BA with a major in nursing, she was able to pursue the arts as well as nursing.  She then completed a master’s of science degree in nursing from the University of Rhode Island, and an MA and PhD in sociology at Brown University.

 

While her education and work have taken her to many places, she finds herself at home at UMass Dartmouth.

 

My hometown is Needham, Massachusetts but I also lived in Tennessee and Virginia before returning to New England.  I have lived in Swansea for nineteen years, and now I live in Warren, RI. I taught at SMU  [a predecessor to UMass Dartmouth] in the 1980s before I went on to get my PhD at Brown.  I then spent about nine years teaching at URI but I came back to teach at UMass Dartmouth because I felt like it was my community.

 

Leffers (pictured here with her husband and two of her former nursing students) received the university’s 2005 Drum Major award, given to a member of the community who exemplifies the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as described in his sermon on the Drum Major Instinct.

 

I feel passionate about social justice and respect for diversity.

 

Leffers was a multicultural fellow for three years at URI where she also taught for ten years. She was also a volunteer staff member at the Genesis Center, a multiservice center in the west end of Providence that provides English classes for speakers of other languages, job training and access to care services to immigrant and refugee populations. Leffers notes the importance of integrating diversity training in nursing education, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

 

It’s about learning to be non-judgmental. In the healthcare system we often find that ethnic and racial minorities, women, older adults, GBLT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered] persons, and  people with disabilities are often underserved or not treated respectfully. Professor Andrea Klimt teaches an anthropology course SOC 350, called  Cultures of Healing, that is a marvelous resource for nursing students. Those who have taken it find it very valuable because they learn to examine diverse  healthcare practices and issues. These are not just ethnic issues, but cultural differences. For example, our healthcare system is a culture unto itself, constructed and defined by our social norms.

 

Leffers cites a novel that anyone interested in diversity, not just nursing students, would benefit from reading. It illustrates the potential culture clashes in healthcare.

 

There’s a terrific book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. It’s about an immigrant Hmong family in California. One of the children,  Lia, has epilepsy as defined by western healthcare standards, but from the  family’s perspective her sickness is caused by a dab or spirit.  There were cultural clashes that affected the care provided for Lia, and the story illustrates how important it is for health care providers to understand and respect diversity.

 

Patient advocacy motivated Leffers to choose public/community health as her field.

 

Advocacy was fundamental to the early origins of nursing. More than a hundred years ago, most nursing care was not delivered in hospitals. Living conditions for the  poor and for immigrants caused poor health outcomes and disease spread easily. About 110 years ago, Lillian Wald spearheaded what is now known as public health/community nursing. She worked on the Lower Eastside of New York, providing healthcare options for immigrants and underserved populations who faced health problems due to conditions such as overcrowding, unsanitary food and water and communicable diseases.

 

Public/community health focuses on populations and specifically advocates for the care of the underserved such as the homeless, victims of violence, groups vulnerable to health problems such as immigrants the refugees, low birth weight  infants, the elderly, those who are substance abusers and the poor. In the past it was called public health, now it’s often called community health, but the focus is still to protect the public’s health.

 

All UMass Dartmouth undergraduate nursing students must take community health courses in addition to other specialties of nursing such as medical surgical nursing, care of beginning families, pediatrics, psychiatric/mental health, gerontological nursing and community health nursing, in order to be eligible to sit for the nursing licensing exam.

 

To broaden student's perspectives, Leffers offers students the opportunity to gain community health insight from firsthand experiences. For the past five years she's encouraged UMass Dartmouth nursing students and faculty travel each winter to the Dominican Republic to participate in a two-week experiential service learning nursing mission.

 

Intercultural Nursing Inc. was founded about twenty years ago by Evelyn Gaudreau, a nurse who had served in the Peace Corps. She wanted other nurses to gain a similar experience for a shorter amount of time and began the organization that brought hundreds of nurses to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. To date about twentyUMass Dartmouth nursing students have participated.  We have strong support from the college. Other nursing faculty--Jean Maher, Leslie Frost, Alicia Curtin and Diane Martins--have gone, and Deirdre Healy and her husband [who is] a nurse volunteered with us for a week in January 2005.

 

Some students go solely as volunteers on the trip, while others apply for independent or elective credits. I’ve worked on my Spanish and can conduct a medical interview, but an interpreter can really enhance the experience. Last year a student volunteer who was a  Spanish major came with us. It was helpful, given our limited resources.

 

Students who elect to go generally already have a strong desire to help those in less developed countries. The experience resonated with one student who removed the sneakers she was wearing and gave them to a pregnant teen. Most students are profoundly affected by the poverty they see. However, they also learn to respect the warm, caring and hardworking people they meet there.  The students return transformed by their experience.  In addition, they return having learned how to better serve people who migrate from that area to this country.

 

That student’s act of generosity reminds Leffers of her own immersion experience during a community health opportunity she had while in college.

 

During my public health nursing course I was able to do an alternative volunteer experience. Two Simmons nursing students were invited to spend a month working with Project REACH and a former nursing faculty member in upstate New York, in very rural area near Perkinsville, New York about fifty miles south of Rochester. At the time the region was heavily involved with potato agriculture to be processed as potato chips.  Migrants from Florida worked their way up the east coast until they got to upstate New York during October to harvest the potato crop.  During the time that my fellow student and I were in upstate New York, we were able to learn a great deal about healthcare for the underserved.

 

I had a pivotal experience there. There was a daycare center for the children of migrant workers as well as a volunteer-run clinic provided  by the project. One day, we decided to bring the children  to the clinic center upstairs  to introduce them to what a clinic visit would be like.  As part of the visit we let the children listen to their own heartbeats. While the helping the children with the  stethoscopes, we discovered that one little boy had an irregular heartbeat. We contacted doctors from the volunteer clinic and then took him to the University of Rochester Medical Center for follow-up. Those specialists then referred the child to Miami Children’s Hospital once he returned home, where he had surgery. If we hadn’t gone to that daycare center and taken the time to examine these children... the boy might have had a serious heart complication before he was able to have surgery.  I learned to treasure the importance of early intervention that is a part of public health. In addition, I wanted other nursing students to have such an immersion opportunity while they were in college.

 

Now Leffers seeks ways to make a difference on campus. While she is a nursing professor, Leffers believes strongly in a university-wide diversity initiative, which is why she works with a small, but dedicated group of faculty and staff to promote an inclusive atmosphere for teaching, admissions and learning.

 

Beginning in 2003, Anthony Baird, Norm Barber, Carlos Benavides, Anne Foley, Andrea Klimt, Arlene Mollo, and I represented UMD at the UMass Boston NECIT (New England Center for Inclusive Teaching) conference.  Since that time we have met regularly to promote similar initiatives here. Since spring of 2004 the group has facilitated five workshops for faculty and staff to support social justice and diversity.

 

As part of the University Strategic Planning Committee, Leffers worked with Julie Parker of the Women’s Resource Center with the group seeking to “build community and campus spirit”. In 2001, faculty from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) asked her to coordinate some faculty workshops on strategies in inclusive teaching. She helped to coordinate three series of workshops for CTL over a period of two years.

 

You have to promote an inclusive climate on a whole campus, not just in a single class or at an event.  Students must know that they are valued in all aspects of their campus experiences.

 

Leffers notes that campus resources and organizations like Pride, Unity House and WRC are important:

 

Students gain support and the ability to speak freely without concern for whether their disclosures can affect their classroom performance. 

 

She also mentions why she loves programs like Upward Bound and College Now.

 

In my years of teaching, I have been fortunate to know and teach many students who immigrated to this country. Despite the challenges they faced, I learned so much from them and celebrated with them when they became nurses. In addition, there are many students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who offer a great deal to our college and to the university. They enrich our profession. I want to make sure we are attracting diverse students, including those who come from disadvantaged high schools, into nursing. Unfortunately such students often are less prepared to take the SATs and other measures of their academic potential.  The nuances of taking exams in English if it is your second language are pretty serious. I never want to ignore the talents of potential students solely because of language skills.  Additionally, as Graduate Program Director, I seek to encourage students of diverse backgrounds to feel welcome at UMass Dartmouth.  Diversity is about looking at each student for his or her unique talents. Every student has potential. 

 

 Last Updated On: 11/7/05