Rachel Forbess, '05 MS in Nursing

Nurse Practitioner, Charter Extended Care, North Shore Medical Center

Nursing across cultures

When you're the daughter of a mental health worker and a junior high guidance counselor, you tend to grow up with an interest in people. "My parents were socially conscious," says Rachel Forbess, Simmons graduate nursing alumna Rachel Forbess. "They taught me to respect others' viewpoints, and that if you have advantages in life, you need to give back."

That's exactly what Rachel has been doing - even before she graduated with her B.S. in nursing from Humboldt State University in California. As a student there, Forbess participated in a transcultural nursing internship that took her to Nepal, where she worked in a labor and delivery "room" at a local hospital. "I had studied the culture and society before I left," she explained, "but nothing prepared me for what I saw. The health care there is like what our country experienced fifty to a hundred years ago. I worked alongside 19-year-olds, who had already been trained in nursing and midwifery, in a room where nine or ten women would be delivering their babies at the same time. More than once I witnessed the tragic effects of an underdeveloped health care system. I knew then I wanted to pursue a nursing career working with vulnerable populations."

At Simmons, Forbess obtained her M.S. in Family Primary Health Care Nursing. She admits she considered attending a larger, nationally recognized program, but instead chose Simmons for a number of reasons. "The nursing program here has an outstanding reputation in New England, and I know the clinical opportunities I have in Boston will be valued worldwide. I also wanted access to my professors, which I didn't feel was possible at a larger institution."

Forbess has certainly taken advantage of that access. She and some of her classmates approached Associate Dean and Professor of Nursing Judy Beal about having the program offer a Spanish class specifically for nursing students. "It's happening next semester!" reports Forbess.

Forbess says her Simmons course work was "academically rigorous" and credits the program for developing her knowledge of science, pathophysiology, and nursing care. "The program forced me to examine with a critical eye issues in nursing, and it brought back a lot of the ideals about nursing that I first had."