School Notes: School of Nursing
July/August 2009

2009 YSN creative writing awards

Over 200 people attended the school's 2009 Creative Writing Awards, held at the Omni New Haven Hotel on April 28. This annual event is a celebration of "Yale nurses writing nursing"; the awards encourage nursing students to articulate what it is that they do, see, feel, and provide to their patients, families, and communities. This year's keynote speaker was author Anna Quindlen, who has written five novels and six nonfiction books, and was only the third woman in the history of the New York Times to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally syndicated "Public and Private," for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Quindlen currently writes the "My Turn" column every other week in Newsweek. Congratulations to this year's Creative Writing Award winners: Brandon Ko ’10, studying to become a pediatric nurse practitioner; Elizabeth Holt ’11, planning to be a women's health nurse practitioner; and Rachel Newton ’13, a burn nurse pursuing the school's dual program in advanced psychiatric nursing/divinity. View the CWA slide show, hear Quindlen's talk, and read the winning entries athttp://nursing.yale.edu/Students/CreativeWriting.

New Haven mayor delivers Bellos Lecture

New Haven's mayor, John DeStefano Jr., delivered the annual Sybil Palmer Bellos lecture on April 15. The mayor's talk, "The Health Implications of Common Exposure to Violence in New Haven," centered on the role of health care for Connecticut's neediest residents. Mayor DeStefano described patterns of mental illness and criminal behavior that exist within families, so that a cycle is created across generations. He is seeking to tailor a set of interventions to change these behaviors, so that criminal offenders might go on to make positive contributions to the community and to their families. DeStefano said that New Haven's size makes it "the best place to start constructing new models and new expectations."

Alumnus awarded Fulbright scholarship

Recent graduate Mark Lazenby ’09MSN has been awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral research scholarship for the academic year 2009-2010. Lazenby, who holds a master's in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a PhD in philosophy of religion from Boston University, has studied both the Islamic religion and the psychosocial aspects of cancer. At YSN his degree specialty was in oncology. Lazenby states that the role of religion and spirituality for people with cancer has been well documented, but Arab-speaking patients are hardly represented. The Fulbright will allow Lazenby to spend six months in Jordan researching the spiritual well-being of cancer patients in the Arab and Muslim worlds. He will look for a "common language" among religious cancer patients of all parts of the world. For more, seehttp://nursing.yale.edu/News/Features/lazenby_feature.html.