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Primary care nursing residency pivots standard training to assist during pandemic

As COVID-19 protocols began taking effect in the Asheville area, registered nurses in a primary care residency and fellows program made a quick shift to assist an at-risk population while still continuing their training.  

Hospitality and Tourism students

Down, But Not Out: WNC Hospitality and Tourism Industry Expected to Bounce Back

WNC hospitality and tourism industry may be down, but WCU professor Angela Sebby believes they will bounce back in the coming months.  

Students in a surgical room

Faculty, Students with Chinese Ties Bring Much-Needed Surgical Masks to WNC

A chat room conversation between colleagues at Western Carolina University with ties to China led to fast action that is putting surgical masks into the hands of front-line health workers in the region’s smaller care facilities. Yue Cai Hillon, professor of management at WCU, said the effort began with the simple, but the oft-repeated question of “what can we do?”  

Nursing

The Humanistic Perspective of Nursing and Its Potential to Address the Opioid and Addiction Crisis

Nursing addresses the human response to health and illness and has very different philosophical underpinnings from the medical model, which predominates in the US health care system. The medical model is based on a biomedical perspective, which is often focused on disease and illness and involves the use of a systematic method of collecting evidence to support the diagnosis of a disease or disease state.20 The medical model defines health as the absence of disease or illness and is historically rooted in Rene Descartes’s dualism, which presumes that the mind and body are separate entities.  

Rosemary Yelton

Graduate student tabbed for Council on Collegiate Opioid Misuse

Since coming to Western Carolina University to complete her master’s degree in social work, graduate student Rosemary Yelton has seen firsthand the effects the opioid crisis is having on Western North Carolina. Wanting to help fight what has become a national epidemic, Yelton was excited to learn last summer that she had been named to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s Council on Collegiate Opioid Misuse.  

Driver Blythe

Blythe Ambition: Eastern Band Member Sees Higher Education as Goal for His Community

Earning an associate degree from Southwestern Community College after transferring there from Mars Hill, and a bachelor’s degree from Western Carolina University, where he graduated in December and gave the commencement address. He’ll continue his education in the fall at WCU, where he is enrolled in the school’s master’s degree program in social work. A member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Blythe is believed to be the first Native American to give a commencement speech at WCU — an unexpected honor that left him in awe and “like the weight of the world” was on his shoulders — but in a good way.  

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