Kathleen Halkins RN received Moravian University's Shining Lights Award in 2022 for all her work with the nursing department, it's faculty and students.
Kathleen Halkins, RN, has been caring for the Lehigh Valley community for more than 40 years—as a pediatric nurse at Easton Hospital, a neonatal intensive care nurse at St. Luke’s, a certified school nurse serving the Bethlehem Area School District in various capacities, and a COVID coordinator and lead vaccinator with the Bethlehem Health Bureau. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, the International Honor Society of Nursing, and is the recipient of the 2019 Health Care Heroes Award.
She’s been caring for the Moravian University nursing community as well. Kathleen has been a dedicated and tireless mentor to our nursing students. An innovative collaborator with our nursing faculty, she has helped create a multitude of valuable opportunities for students to gain important experiences in the Bethlehem community. Just take a look at what she has made possible for our students and faculty.
- Kathleen began recruiting Moravian nursing faculty to act as group leaders for pregnant and parenting teens as well as students in an anger management class at Liberty High School.
- She facilitated opening the Bethlehem Area School District as a clinical site for our students to gain experience in community health, and she created a list of activities for students to complete during their clinical experience.
- Working with Moravian faculty, she developed opportunities for students to teach health lessons and develop the curriculum for a hygiene program—H.A.N.D.S. This created opportunities for research and needs assessment.
- Kathleen collaborated with our nursing faculty on new classes for Bethlehem area schools, including sun safety, playground safety, and kindergarten nutrition, and our nursing students developed the programs, evaluations, handouts, and classroom materials.
- She helped develop summer enrichment classes, childcare classes, and special needs classes to provide opportunities for students to have clinical experience with children.
- Kathleen developed district-wide opportunities for students to complete mandated health screenings, including vision, hearing, and growth measurements. She created a training video for students to review before their clinical experience and provided the Moravian nursing department vision and hearing equipment so students could practice the skills needed.
- And Kathleen met with Moravian’s nursing, sports medicine, preschool, and education students to talk about school health services.
“This began as an opportunity to educate student nurses, because I firmly believe it is the responsibility of experienced nurses to help future nurses grow and achieve,” Kathleen says. “I also wanted these students to understand the specialty of school nursing.”
But as Kathleen became a de facto administrator and team leader for the BASD school nurses, she needed to find ways to support them. School nurses are spread thin with the state mandate of one school nurse to every 1,500 students, she explains. “There was no way the school nurses could complete the mandated services and direct healthcare including increased medication administration and skilled nursing services,” she says. “Resources are minimal, and Moravian University’s nursing students offered me a way to improve school services, which also benefited the nursing students.” In addition to the healthcare they received, BASD students had an opportunity to meet college students and learn about their career pursuits.
Moravian University is very fortunate to have Kathleen as our partner.