Investing in future care
A single nurse impacts thousands.
“I did some calculations. An average nurse takes care of 1,000 patients annually,” said Claudia Miewald, who’s been a nurse for 26 years. “If you consider the families, that’s quite a community impact how many lives a nurse touches. To have one person not complete (his or her nursing education) is quite a loss.”
Miewald, a nursing instructor at North Idaho College, and her husband, Bruce, a Coeur d’Alene psychiatrist, recently donated $10,000 to the NIC Foundation’s “Providing Opportunities – Fulfilling Dreams Community Campaign,” to raise money for equipment and technology for the new Health and Sciences building in addition to student scholarships.
“Not only are they helping people through their profession, they’re investing in the future care of others through their donation,” said Rayelle Anderson, NIC director of development and executive director of the foundation.
To date, the campaign has raised more than $1.5 million toward its $2 million goal, Anderson said. The building, which is slated to open in the fall will increase campus classroom space by 25 percent. Besides student nurses, students enrolled in science classes also will use the building.
“It will have a profound impact on student learning to have the same equipment as in the clinical setting … the equipment in the classroom will broaden opportunities for teaching in the classroom. We truly don’t have enough space in the classrooms sometimes. Not enough desk space,” Miewald said.
Miewald has taught at NIC for 10 years and teaches the fundamentals of nursing and psychiatric nursing, the latter of which is her specialty. She also supervises students who pair up with RNs in the clinical setting and shadow them on his/her shift.
The Miewalds have donated to NIC before. “We try to make different donations to different endeavors in the community. We like to support educational things in the community,” she said.
The campaign will “provide for state-of-the art equipment and technology that will match what’s out in the field,” Miewald said. Besides equipment, it will provide $1 million in new endowed scholarships for up to 50 additional students each year.
“I’ve seen students struggling to juggle a family, child-care needs and the rigors of academics. They’re not able to maintain a full-time job while in the program. Any scholarship really eases the burden for students. They have more time to study, more time to dedicate to academics,” she said.
If the Miewalds’ donation could be used for one thing, she said she would want it to go for scholarships. “I would like to see our money go in that direction because the need is so great.”