ANA Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation® Spotlight: Catherine Stubin PhD, RN, CNE, CCRN
Published
Nurse’s research and teaching strategies embolden students to embrace wellness
Sometimes, events occur in life that ignite something within. You discover a passion that propels you in a new direction.
For Catherine Stubin, PhD, RN, CNE, CCRN, that catalyst came when she was already deep into her career as a nurse and nurse educator. The combination of these two potent events spurred something inside her:
- The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the fragile mental health and increasing burnout rate of the nursing population.
- A college-aged loved one survived a suicide attempt after struggling with mental health issues.
“That suicide attempt was the spark that woke me up, and I thought, ‘I can’t have this happen to anyone else,’” Dr. Stubin says. “I realized that all college students are under a lot of stress and pressure. But nursing students have the added load of patient care.” *
Dr. Stubin has been a registered nurse for 40 years and in nursing education for 25 of those years. As an assistant professor at Rutgers University School of Nursing–Camden, she considers herself lucky because she teaches the profession she loves. She has the best of both worlds: teaching and nursing. But she also realizes she’s uniquely positioned to affect young nurses and the nursing profession.
“I began to understand the importance of self-care, wellness, and resilience when I worked at the bedside,” Dr. Stubin says. “As a nurse educator, I see how nursing school affects students’ mental health daily, in the classroom and the clinical area. Nursing students are up all hours and struggle to take care of themselves. The COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated existing mental health problems, making them more prevalent and severe.”
A Plan for Wellness
Dr. Stubin felt a strong desire to help nursing students become mentally healthy nurses. She drew upon her clinical background and teaching experience to create a plan that included research and practical execution. She’d uncover what was happening and develop a solution nursing professors could apply in the classroom.
So far, she’s been successful in gathering information and finding ways to improve the wellness of her nursing students. Her efforts have included:
Taking the pulse of nursing students
Dr. Stubin knows that to solve a problem, you need to truly understand it. She’s always enjoyed research — she’s been involved in studies and writing articles for years.
To better understand the mental state of nursing students, Dr. Stubin and her team surveyed almost 1,000 of them nationwide about stress, mental health, resiliency, and perceived faculty support. The study, Promoting Nursing Student Mental Health Wellness: The Impact of Resilience-Building and Faculty Support, revealed that undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students are more likely to have lower rates of depression, anxiety, and stress if they have access to:
- Resilience strategies
- Faculty members who support them psychologically and functionally
“I have an extensive research agenda and scholarship program focusing on the self-care, wellness, and resilience-building of undergraduate nursing students,” Dr. Stubin says. “And I have a lot of support from both the faculty I work with and national organizations.”
Implemented wellness practices and programs
Dr. Stubin often tells her nursing students, “We need to be 100% ourselves to give 100% to our patients.” But she knows that being 100% healthy and well doesn’t just happen. Her students need guidance and the tools to find balance and resilience now, and once they are registered nurses.
In addition to conducting emotional check-ins and deep breathing exercises with her students, Dr. Stubin introduced self-care and wellness initiatives, including:
- Nursing alumni panel discussions: Young alumni working as RNs come back to share resiliency and wellness practices that worked for them as nursing students and now in the workforce.
- Wellness speakers: Non-nursing wellness experts share and educate nursing students about valuable self-care practices and habits.
- The University of Utah’s “Wellness Wheel”: This visual tool helps students understand that many factors influence mental health, including your emotional, social, intellectual, and physical well-being. At the beginning of the semester, students choose one category from the wheel (see image at the bottom of the link). They commit to making a positive change in that aspect of their lives. At the end of the semester, students write a reflection paper.
Securing a national grant
In 2023, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) awarded grants to 10 schools of nursing. The grants help recipients pilot a curriculum for use in the AACN’s Developing Nursing Well-Being and Leadership Toolkit. Dr. Stubin’s nursing school was chosen, and she was the principal investigator for the grant.
“We piloted numerous self-care and wellness strategies throughout our curriculum,” Dr. Stubin says. “We assessed students’ perceptions of the strategies to learn what they felt was the most helpful.”
Empowering nursing students
Dr. Stubin has also encouraged and supported student-led wellness initiatives with the Rutgers University–Camden Student Nursing Association (SNA). The association schedules wellness speakers and offers yoga sessions and pet therapy to relieve stress for nursing students.
“I prioritize wellness, self-care, and resilience with the SNA,” she says, “and I remind the Association that little things can make a big difference.”
As the newly appointed faculty co-advisor for the SNA, Dr. Stubin will continue prioritizing student mental health wellness. She hopes to further these self-care and resilience initiatives to be a potential model for other schools of nursing.
The Road Ahead
Dr. Stubin is far from finished in her quest to improve wellness among nursing students. Plans are underway for implementation of a peer mentoring program. It will include faculty in-service training focusing on fostering nursing student self-care and wellness.
“It all starts from the top down,” Dr. Stubin says. “We have a lot of support from the school’s nursing leadership, and our faculty has received my initiatives well.”
Dr. Stubin says she also needs to continue practicing what she preaches. She now closes her computer at 5:00 p.m. and makes time each week to go golfing — a pastime she loves but put on the back burner for a while.
“The secret to success in any career is work-life balance,” Dr. Stubin says. “And instilling that in nursing students now will create happier and healthier nurses later.”
Catherine Stubin PhD, RN, CNE, CCRN, is an assistant professor at Rutgers University School of Nursing–Camden.
*Important: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. These connect to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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Blog #healthynurse Spotlight
08/17/2024 9:15am CDT
The #healthynurse Spotlight is a shout out to nurses who are making changes in their lives to improve their health and wellness. You can too! Read their stories for inspiration here.
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