Honors in Nursing with AIDS Alabama: Introduction

My name is Staci Kaiser. I attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing. I am in the Honors in Nursing Program. This program has three main goals for their students: engage in purposeful civic learning, enhance academic learning, and to provide meaningful community service. Each student finds a community organization that they are interested in working with. Together they find and work towards meeting a need that organization has. This becomes the student's service learning project. Each student makes a blog to share what they have accomplished with their community partner.

My community partner is AIDS Alabama. I have been volunteering since January of 2010 with their Living in Balance Chemical Addiction Program. When I was asked to be in the Honors program, I was really excited to ask AIDS Alabama to be my community partner for my service learning project (SLP). Their main goal is safe housing for their consumers. The housing facility for their mentally ill clients is called Jasper House. There is 14 units in this facility, and it stays full. They have a great 24-hour staff and one nurse. She is my community partner supervisor. We worked together to come up with a fabulous SLP!

They really desired to start a health education class for their clients at Jasper House, but did not have the necessary resources to make this happen. So I became the extra pair of hands they wished they had. We agreed that one day a week for seven weeks I would teach a one hour class.  I created a course outline. The topics for the classes are: (1) foot care and oral hygiene; (2) preventing stroke, hypertension, and diabetes; (3)nutrition and cholesterol: boosting immunity and preventing cognitive decline; (4) exercise; (5) risks of smoking and the benefits of humor/improving mood; (6) improving memory; (7) men and women’s health maintenance.  



These are my goals and objectives:

Goal 1: Enhance academic learning.

Objectives:

Review of literature of each class topic and of HIV and mental illness. The student will learn about health education and promotion techniques.

Goal 2: Engage in purposeful civic learning.

Objectives:

Understand the needs of patients with HIV and mental illness in the community. Understand how nursing and public health can enhance and empower the patient population.

Goal 3: Provide meaningful community service.

Objectives:

The student will plan and lead 7 health education sessions at Jasper House.