“Nurses are very valuable and in great demand these days as we all know. There aren’t enough of them working in the IDD field. One factor that can contribute to this, aside from salary, is lack of education and training on how to care for our individuals with IDD. Thus, we developed a partnership with the Adelphi University College of Nursing to overcome this barrier and established a clinical rotation for their nursing students at ADAPT” said Dr. Vincent Siasoco, Medical Director at ADAPT.
ADAPT has partnered with Adelphi University’s nursing program to provide internship placements. The university has developed a history of working collaboratively with leading health-related organizations, like ADAPT, to provide crucial clinical experience for their students.
Thanks to this partnership, nursing students Danielle Romano and Shianne McGreachy, were able to learn from and participate in our compassionate and patient-centered healthcare approach. Therese Olivencia, one of our Nurse Case Managers who supervised the students said, “ADAPT is a great option for students to learn about community nursing, our approach humanizes our profession.”
During their internship with ADAPT, the students spent 100 hours rotating in between our Education, Residential, Day-Habilitation programs and our clinics, having the opportunity to gain experience in diverse learning environments. “It has been a great learning experience, I feel very prepared” said Shianne McGreachy.
Since most of our patients are under our care long-term, our healthcare workers have the opportunity to connect and better understand the people they care for beyond their clinical work. Danielle Romano said, “Normally, I would only learn about the patient’s current condition, and they’d be gone in a week, but here, I been able to connect and truly get to know my patients”.
At ADAPT, our commitment to health and wellness drives everything we do, we offer a broad spectrum of health care services to individuals with disabilities. Our patient-centered approach involves comprehensive, continuous, and well-coordinated care. “We hope the students’ time at ADAPT helps them to see the person behind the diagnosis. This internship teaches nursing students how to best support individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and provides them the opportunity to work with children and adults across all our programs. We hope they carry this experience and the tools and knowledge they learned with them into their professional careers so they can continue to provide quality, person-centered care to people with disabilities,” said Rose Wargo, Vice President of Nursing.
We believe that personal health is essential to feeling good, reaching goals, and leading a happy and fulfilling life, we are proud to be a part of the training and education of our future healthcare workers.
