Chapter 10: Nursing Education, Nursing Research, and a Seat on the IRB
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Identifier
HilkemeyerR_01_20000523_C10
Publication Date
5-23-2000
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, Research Medical Library, The University of Texas Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Keywords
Building the Institution; Leadership; On Leadership; Education; On Education; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Critical Perspectives; Activities Outside Institution; MD Anderson Impact; MD Anderson Impact; Building/Transforming the Institution; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; On Research and Researchers; MD Anderson Culture
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
From the time you retired, if I can call it that. After looking at your resume, I hardly can call it retirement, but let's use the term, when you left the hospital, have you noticed any major changes in the nursing of cancer patients from the time you left, say, until the late 1990s?
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Oh yes, because there are a lot more people out there with education. One of the things that I did ... well, I started with the American Cancer Society in about 1940, and I was on the Nursing Advisory Committee. And then, from that, I started looking for education for nurses out in the field. Not just my nurses but nurses that were out there. And I was telling them the other day that when I went to the ACS, to the person in charge, who was a physician, and said, "We've got to get some money. We've got to get some scholarships for these nurses because we've got patients out there and the nurses are not qualified to take care of them," the answer was, "Well, what are you asking for? Nobody else is asking." I said, "I don't care who else is asking. I am asking for nursing. I don't care about the rest of you. You can do as you like." And so, it took almost 18 years, between the time they approved it until they got the first money and gave it, but we have been given over 400 scholarships in terms of master and doctoral degrees.
And then, I was telling them, when we got ready for the second go-round, and the committee decided they wanted to try to get doctoral programs, degrees, I had to go to the committee also because I was chairing it that year, unfortunately. And so, I knew it was going to be a struggle, because the doctors had already decided we had a master’s program was enough. We didn't need any more education. So, at the lunch break time, the person who was the executive director and I were making the rounds, just trying to say hello and how are things, and ready for one o'clock, you know. I would say, "Are you going to vote for our proposal?" "No. We gave you master's. You don't need doctoral stuff." I said, "Well, OK. " So, we got down to the point where it was getting to be meeting time, and the fellow that was chairing the committee, I said, "When that comes up, would you let me present it?" which I have to do. I said, "Then let me make the motion for approval. And would you get a second, and would you let me be the first person to speak?" So, he looked at me kind of funny and he said, "Is that what you want to do?" I said, "Yes." Because I figured if I had a yes before I had the nos, I would be in better shape. So anyway, we did it that way, and he took the vote. And we didn't have anybody against it. And the little doctor that was sitting next to me had been fussing all morning at this thing that was coming up. I said, "You voted for that? You told me you weren't going to vote for a doctoral degree any more than flying.” He said, “Well, by the time you got done, I figured if I didn’t, I’d be against motherhood, and I didn’t think I could get by with that!” So anyway, we got it!
I was doing that. I had people in London. We were trying to help them get their program set up. And they sent people over to spend time with us. And then, they had their first conference and some of us went over and gave papers and stuff like that. And I don't know, it just seemed like there was always somebody that needed something. And Dr. [R. Lee] Clark ... they don't do it anymore around here now. They charge to high heaven, I think, for anything they do, but he would not let you charge five cents ... if you had a Xerox paper, you might get charged for Xeroxing, but you didn't get charged anything for your talent. He felt that was our responsibility, to try to help other people. And we did an awful lot of helping to a lot of places. And I did an awful lot of speaking engagements, just a lot because people would want information and, you know, you would try to help them. And then I was on the Grant Review Committee for the National Cancer Institute, four years on that. And they had never had a nurse to chair that for some of the sessions, so they didn't know what to do with that either, but we knew what to do. So, it was just sort of, when you ask me what I do … Now, I do other kinds of things. I am still Emeritus Chairman for the Cancer Nursing Scholarship and Professorship program, because I had done it so many years. They tell me I can get off whenever I want to, or I can stay on as long as want to. So, since I don't like some days what they do, I just stay on. So, I figure, as long as I do my homework and go to the meeting, I am pretty well set up on that one.
So anyway, the only other thing I do over here… was one of the original people that Dr. [R. Lee] Clark appointed when he appointed what we call here the Surveillance Committee, but in other places, it is called the Institutional Review Board. And I have been one of the original members. There is Lignon. He is an attorney.
He has been on as long as I have. And I like to come to that meeting. It meets monthly. Because I can kind of keep my finger in on what is coming up in the research program. And that is something I am very interested in.
I do a lot of counseling on the outside. I have a lot of people who call who don't know what to do, don't know how to do something, don't know where to go, don't know what to say, and sometimes, it is friends, sometimes it is relatives, sometimes it is people I don't know from nothing, but I keep my finger in that one a little bit, too.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
Well, one of the things I read that I intended to ask you about was that you wanted your nurses to be involved in research. Is that a rather unusual approach?
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
Well, I set the research committee up at the time but that was very interesting in that the physicians were not too happy about the nurses doing research. They wanted the nurses to have to be under them for research. We didn't want that. That was not a good way to do... but research was not anything on many people's tables at that point. When you get back and you talk about those early days, that was something that wasn't there. It is just like education. They thought I was crazy when I am out here trying to get people with master's degrees because you did well to have a bachelor's, even if you were a director of nursing. That was just the way it was. I did get an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from my alma mater, from St. Louis University, in 1988 for my work in oncology nursing. So now, the table is this way. They've got a lot of research and there are a lot of people doing research. And that is fine but we didn't have ... first of all, I didn't have the kind of staff that could do it. And what I don't like is half¬baked research, and I have seen enough of it. So, they have people on the staff here now that are qualified that can do that. I had one person and she couldn't stay too long. We set it up. We tried to work with the university, and they weren't interested in doing it at that point. But if you look at the research in terms of cancer nursing, and I had done that while I was getting this thing ready because I had done it before 1975, you had one research report. You had eight papers on education and nursing. Nurses didn't write and they didn't do research and they didn't do a lot of things because that wasn't in the makeup. And it wasn't in the schools of nursing to teach them to do things like that.
Louis J. Marchiafava, PhD:
I suppose most people, when they think of research, they really think of medical or science specialists.
Renilda Hilkemeyer, RN, BS, Dr.P.H.:
What we were doing, as far as that was concerned, was a lot more valuable, because we were doing clinical research as teams with the physicians and the nurses. And if it took a pharmacist, that TM, or whoever it was, but we were doing program after program after program. And applying it at the same time. What we did in the laminar flow rooms, we applied that. All the stuff that we did with the chemotherapy program, with the long line catheters, with the portable pump machines, that was all research --not research like you do it in a lab, or not like research like you are thinking about, but it was ¬I never called it research. I would say we are doing a different study or something like that. But we were because it was good enough to get recognized at NCI and get funded for a lot of the stuff.
Recommended Citation
Hilkemeyer, Renilda RN, BS, Dr.P.H. and Marchiafava, Louis J. PhD, "Chapter 10: Nursing Education, Nursing Research, and a Seat on the IRB" (2000). Interview Chapters. 1604.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1604
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