Earning a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) degree online at Walden University gave Donna Lovestrand the knowledge and training she needed to achieve her career goal of becoming a nurse educator. But online learning opened other doors for this Philadelphia-born RN, too.
Lovestrand, certified in perianesthesia nursing and working in the postanesthesia care unit (PACU), scoured internet databases for research on how to address this postsurgical condition, which occurs in approximately 5% of the general population.1 In the Army hospital setting, Lovestrand says, they linked it to individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“I was looking for information but there was nothing there to help me assist these people, and we could not fix it. But it was because I was able to use the databases, look for research, and do process improvement, that my co-authors and I have published articles on how to handle this,” she says. “I would not have done that if I didn’t have Walden, because I wouldn’t have had the ability.”
Lovestrand and co-authors Steven Lovestrand and Steven Phipps published “Emergence Delirium and PTSD” in the AANA Journal (the journal of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists) in 2013. In it, the authors concluded that “best practice includes a proper identification of patients at risk of emergence agitation, a minimally stimulating environment, intraoperative sympatholytic therapy, and patient and staff education.” 2 Steven Lovestrand is a clinical psychologist and her brother-in-law, Lovestrand notes.
In 2017, Lovestrand and co-authors Steven Lovestrand, Denise Beaumont, and Jonathan Yost published “Management of Emergence Delirium in Adult PTSD Patients: Recommendations for Practice” in the Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing.
Lovestrand was published in the AANA Journal again in 2021. She co-authored “Simulation Training Exercise to Improve Outcomes of Emergence Delirium in Patients With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder” with Col. Denise Beaumont, Maj. Sean Calder, Melissa Schmidt, and Reynaldo Calaro.3
“Walden has given me the opportunity to be a part of this,” she says. “With what I’ve learned and what I’ve done with emergence delirium and PTSD, I’m making a difference in a lot of peoples’ lives, and that’s overwhelming to me sometimes, that I’m able to do that.”
The Value of Nursing Education
Now a faculty member in the Pennsylvania College of Technology’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Lovestrand is considered a subject matter expert on emergence delirium in PTSD patients and speaks globally on the topic.
At Penn College, she teaches courses on topics such as leadership and management, surgical nursing, and process improvement. Students in the BSN program get the benefit of her research, decades of direct care nursing experience, and the MSN degree with a specialization in Nursing Education she earned from Walden in 2014. As a result of her work, Lovestrand received the Commanding General’s Award at Fort Polk and the Patient Advocate Award from the Pennsylvania Association of PeriAnesthesia Nurses.
“Without that education, I wouldn’t be doing the things I am doing now,” says Lovestrand, who committed to earning her MSN degree when she was 54. She was an RN with a bachelor’s degree and thought she was “pretty much done with school.”
“But then my husband and I went down to work at Fort Polk, and education is a big deal in the military,” she says, noting that they were civilian employees. “All the military nurses around me were getting higher degrees, and it just motivated me.”
Initially Lovestrand thought she’d have to choose between working full time or earning a degree. But she saw that online nursing programs made it possible to do both and she thought, “Oh, I could do that.”
From her first contact with an admissions advisor, Lovestrand said she found the Walden experience respectful and accommodating: “It was, ‘OK, that’s what you want? Let’s see how we can fulfill that.’” Her faculty members were invested in helping students succeed: “If you needed help, you got it.”
Lovestrand graduated when she was 57, and she and her husband flew from Louisiana so she could attend commencement in National Harbor, Maryland. “I wanted to walk, meaning it was a lot of work working full time and going to grad school.” An added draw, she says, was commencement speaker Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor.
Though Lovestrand lives in Central Pennsylvania now, she still gets back to Philadelphia to visit family. “It was a wonderful place to grow up,” she says. “I lived in the city, in a row house. I went to school, nursing school, just three miles from where they filmed the Rocky movies. The history of our country is there.”
She’s not a fan of Philadelphia’s traffic, though. She says not having to commute is another advantage of online education: “You can go to other schools and get a degree, but it was all that experience online—which is where everything is now—that has equipped me to be good at my specialty, and good in education.”
Change Lives With an Online Nursing Degree
When you earn a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) online degree from Walden, you can choose the specialization that meshes with your career goals. If you want to provide direct patient care, there are five options that prepare you to pursue certification and credentialing as a nurse practitioner:
- Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) Primary Care
- Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
- Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
- Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner
- Family Nurse Practitioner
Or, like Donna Lovestrand, you can position yourself for advanced leadership or educator roles by choosing one of the four specialty practice choices:
- Nurse Executive
- Nursing Education
- Public Health Nursing
- Nursing Informatics
When you are ready to pursue an online nursing degree, Walden gives you other choices, too. There are two master’s in nursing degree completion options: a traditional, course-based learning format or Tempo Learning®, a competency-based learning format that lets you move at your own pace.
In your MSN nursing degree program, you’ll learn from didactic faculty who all hold doctoral degrees and have real-world experience.4 You’ll build and hone skills using top technology. And throughout your nursing school journey, your master’s degree program will always be at your fingertips, in a flexible online learning platform that travels with you.
These are just some of the reasons why RNs pick Walden, the No. 1 conferrer of nursing master’s degrees in the U.S. Contact Walden for information on nursing programs that can help you find your niche and prepare you to use your education and talents to improve patient care.
Walden University is an accredited institution offering a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) online degree program. Expand your career options and earn your degree in a convenient, flexible format that fits your busy life.
1Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28739068/
2Source: www.researchgate.net/publication/255705112_Posttraumatic_stress_disorder_and_anesthesia_emergence
3Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34042568/
4Source: 100% of College of Nursing didactic faculty are doctorally prepared; clinical faculty are either doctorally prepared or are experienced, licensed APRNs.
Walden University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission, www.hlcommission.org.