(Posted 9-25-00)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News Service Contact: Laurie Gengenbach, 336-334-5371

 SCHOOL OF NURSING OPENS SENIOR WELLNESS CLINIC AT HAMPTON HOMES

GREENSBORO -- Health care and house calls usually don't go together, except when the School of Nursing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro gets involved.

Under a project organized by the school and the Greensboro Housing Authority, nine students of Community Health Nursing at UNCG will be offering free nursing care to the approximately 60 elderly residents of Hampton Homes starting Monday, Sept. 18.

The School of Nursing Senior Wellness Clinic will operate out of the Police Neighborhood Resource Center on Ogden Street.

Student nurses and registered nursed from the School of Nursing faculty will be available to conduct blood pressure and blood sugar screening, counseling, referrals, and other nursing services for walk-in patients every Monday, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Residents unable to get there on their own can request transportation from the housing authority, or take advantage of the home visits nursing students are prepared to make.

Students spent part of August and September setting up the clinic, and have been door-to-door, distributing flyers and explaining the new service to residents. Because the health care system is becoming increasingly community focused, nursing students must be prepared to work where the population resides, says Jayne Lutz, a registered nurse, associate clinical professor of nursing, and coordinator of the School of Nursing's Senior Centers Wellness Clinics  Program.

"It's an unusual concept, isn't it?" she said.  "Nurses, out in the community on their own, without a doctor. Well, what we're doing is nursing, and that means taking care of the whole person. We want to keep these senior citizens well, regardless of how many chronic illnesses they might have."

Sometimes community health care means responding to needs not typical in traditional health care, she said. For example, child care became an important component of the new clinic.

"People were telling us they couldn't come unless they could bring their grandchildren," Lutz said. So the School of Nursing purchased toys and some students agreed to supervise children while others provide nursing care.

Hampton Homes' Senior Wellness Clinic is the fifth the School of Nursing has opened in the past 14 years. Hall Towers, Gateway Plaza and Morehead-Simpkins retirement centers all have well-established UNCG School of Nursing wellness clinics on site, as did Village Green before closing this summer. The latest clinic is the first the school has attempted at a Greensboro Housing Authority family community.

 Funding has come from a variety of sources over the years, including the Evelyn Sharp Foundation, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and Moses Cone-Wesley Long Community Health Foundation, and the School of Nursing itself.
 But additional funding is urgently needed to staff the clinics through the summer months, to purchase supplies and to serve elderly residents from other Greensboro Housing Authority communities, Lutz says.

"The vision is to get a firm foundation at Hampton Homes, and then to provide transportation from the other family communities," she said.

The housing authority shares that vision, and plans to provide the transportation, said Tina Akers, deputy executive director for operations. The community building is slated for renovation, which could provide space for the clinic when completed, she said.

"This has been a wonderful resource for the elderly in our senior communities," she said.

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