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| Nursing Retention Specialist Carol Rodi tutors Reynolds nursing students. |
Carol Rodi sits among a small group of JSRCC nursing students at the College’s Academic Support Center. You can tell by the discussion that these students are nearing graduation. You can sense their anxiety too. Rodi’s throwing out “what if” scenarios of a patient presenting cardiac symptoms. And she’s asking for quick answers.
“When do you defibrillate? And what about blood thinners? What do you need to know?” she asks.
Many of these students are gearing up for final nursing exams. Rodi, the College’s nursing retention specialist, spends most of her time tutoring nursing students so they are prepared. It’s clear she’s good at it, since so many graduates have thanked her personally at their pinning ceremony.
“For some students, I guess I do help them study for and pass that final exam,” she says. “But for most of them, I really think I give them a broader understanding of caring for their patients…I put what they’ve learned into real situations. If their patient is in trouble and they’re having certain symptoms, what do they [our nursing graduates] do?”
As one tutoring session ends, Rodi makes her way down the hall from the Academic Support Center to a classroom, explaining that the next session needs a larger room to accommodate the group. Before she can unlock the door, a student shouts, “Please say you’ll be tutoring us today.”
Rodi has a master’s degree in Nursing. Before Reynolds, she worked as a critical care nurse in a burn center for a large healthcare system. However, she believes the associate degree level of nursing education is the most important. For her, she says, it was the most difficult. She received her RN from a college in a small town and says that Reynolds students are incredibly fortunate to complete their clinical requirements at VCU Health System.
“This level is so important because this is the level we put it all together,” she said.
Rodi’s position is grant funded through the College’s Academic Support Center. She was initially hired through a grant aimed at increasing nursing graduation rates.
