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<\/p>\nAmy Zipf truly loves being a nurse.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs a job, it met the practical needs of my family, which is why I pursued it in the first place,\u201d she says, \u201cand while I didn\u2019t necessarily expect it, as a profession it has brought me great joy and personal satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy worked as a nurse in inpatient medicine for much of her nursing career. She\u2019s now a nurse educator at UConn John Dempsey Hospital, where she helps prepare and facilitate orientation for newly hired nursing staff.<\/p>\n
Her eldest child, Kenni Zipf, was 10 years old when Amy decided to become a nurse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had four kids already, a family,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat could I do where jobs are guaranteed, where I could work at night \u2013 I could swap with my husband, and we didn’t have to pay for babysitting. I never imagined that my practice choice would turn into such a wildly rewarding professional career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenni was 6 when the family settled in the North End of Middletown. While she\u2019s always loved art, she truly loves working with clay.<\/p>\n
She found clay in high school, and she\u2019s never looked back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always loved building things, but I\u2019d never worked with clay before,\u201d she says. \u201cTaking it as a junior in high school, I ran with it. I’ve been dedicating my whole life to it for the past six years, because I love it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenni has spent four of those last six years as an undergraduate at UConn \u2013 she\u2019s a senior, currently the only Bachelor of Fine Arts student in the School of Fine Arts\u2019 Sculpture\/Ceramics program who is working exclusively in clay.<\/p>\n
Amy has also been a UConn student these same four years \u2013 she\u2019s been working toward her doctorate of philosophy at the UConn School of Nursing.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, May 6, at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts in Storrs, both mother and daughter will graduate from UConn \u2013 each on their own trajectory, but each hoping to influence the world in their own important way.<\/p>\n
A Passion for Research<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe all get frustrated in our careers,\u201d Amy says. \u201cYou just think, there’s got to be a better way. Why do we do this? This doesn’t make any sense. And that’s the beginning of research.\u201d<\/p>\n What frustrates Amy is the struggle that new nurses encounter when they enter professional practice \u2013 often loaded with student debt for a degree they\u2019ve worked hard to obtain, yet unprepared for what it\u2019s like when they actually step onto the job.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we are working in the midst of a significant nursing shortage across the country,\u201d she says. \u201cThis shortage, along with my own experience working with newly graduated nurses, prompted my research.\u201d<\/p>\n When Amy got into nursing, she never expected it to be anything more than bedside work \u2013 administering medication, taking vital signs, working with doctors and other providers, and delivering patient care.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn’t even know there was something beyond that,\u201d Amy says, but along the way, she was encouraged to pursue her master\u2019s degree. \u201cAnd then I came in contact with people who had Ph.Ds., and it was just wildly fascinating to see people working in research. I’m first-generation, and I was never around any sort of research. I had no concept of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started to be around people who were conducting research, I realized there was a lot of work left to be done in the field of nursing, and it really intrigued me that I could be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n That intrigue \u2013 and her hope in what is possible \u2013 fuels her research.<\/p>\n For her Ph.D. study, Amy studied new grad nurses in their first two years of practice and asked what they encountered when they transitioned from school into their professional life.<\/p>\n She\u2019s hoping that post-graduation she\u2019ll be able to continue the work and develop a program of research, with the ultimate goal of helping to facilitate strategies and interventions that better prepare new nurses as they enter the field.<\/p>\n “I am hopeful that, with this new knowledge, we can work together to better facilitate the transition of newly graduated nurses into professional practice,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n