Scientific method

School of Nursing science faculty find innovative ways to teach first-year students

By Sarah Richards
Photo by Erik Unger

Angela Mahaffey wants her chemistry and physiology students to have the same power she has: the ability to see science in everything.

It’s a key skill for nurses, she says, who are often the last line of defense against medical errors. “I’ve seen nurses spot things that other individuals did not,” says Mahaffey, an assistant professor at the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing. “Once you understand the science behind it, you can catch, ‘Hey, the physiology, the biochemistry in this patient’s body does not match the pharmacology, the organic chemistry in the medicine.’”

To do that, Mahaffey and other Loyola Nursing science faculty are finding innovative ways to teach first-year students the scientific expertise, skills, and principles they’ll need, not to mention the importance of cura personalis—the Jesuit value of caring for the mind, spirit, and body—to their work as nurses.

Bringing science to life

It’s all part of Loyola University Chicago’s commitment to training the next generation of nurses using state-of-the-art teaching tools and foundational science classes structured on nursing.

After joining Loyola Nursing in 2017, Mahaffey created one of the first virtual chemistry lab programs in the country for undergraduate nursing students, publishing numerous research papers on the topic. Within her program, she incorporates tangible examples that highlight science in everyday places, like having students role-play as baristas in a coffee shop to learn about the specific heat capacity of beverages.

“Chemistry in a cup of coffee explains the heat energy transfer,” says Mahaffey. “From there, I bridge to health care questions on where we see such heat transfers from chemical to thermochemical reactions, such as when patients receive chemotherapy or in the biomedical lab equipment sterilization process.”

Mahaffey frequently works with students on her research projects. Most recently, a joint effort with Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability focused on developing a sanitizer that can be used on both electronic devices and hands, without leaving a residue.

“I want students to be not simply practitioners, but investigators,” says Mahaffey.

That’s because today’s nurses face a complex health care environment. On a daily basis, they’re challenged with juggling care for multiple patients and maintaining the highest standards of patient and workplace safety, all while staying abreast of the latest treatments and medications.

“The Loyola model in which students start their four-year BSN right away is a great model because it helps students form their identities as nurses very early,” says Loyola Nursing Dean Lorna Finnegan.

Laying the foundation

Matt Bruder is another faculty member helping anchor those nurse identities in the foundational sciences.

On the first day of his anatomy class, Bruder draws a pyramid on his whiteboard and writes “anatomy” at the bottom. Moving up the pyramid’s levels, he writes in other disciplines pertinent to nursing, such as pathophysiology and pharmacology. It’s a simple message for his nursing students: anatomy is the foundation of success in medicine.

“Everything is based on anatomy,” says Bruder, an assistant professor. “All of their future coursework is based upon that of the relationship of structure—that of anatomy.”

Bruder is an expert at packing essential knowledge into his lessons, but he’s also well aware that most of his students were sitting in high school classrooms three months before first walking into his. Supplemental instructors—former students who excelled in his class and now tutor new students for free—and study groups provide his students with added support.

Bruder’s students benefit from computer-generated anatomy labs in which they come to class and perform virtual dissections of human cadavers using specialized software. Not only are these virtual labs safer (no finger nicks with the scalpel), but Bruder says they’re also as effective as traditional wet labs at the undergraduate level.

“In a traditional lab, you spend a lot of time cutting through the skin and fat of your specimen to expose the muscles,” says Bruder. “All of that tedious, mundane work is accomplished with a click of a button and students can spend their time appreciating anatomical relationships rather than digging through fat.”

The 'a-ha' moments

Capitalizing on those moments often means the difference between rote learning and active scholarship—something Assistant Professor Kevin Mazor knows all about. His love of science came from two very different influences: the critical thinking of his favorite detective when reading Sherlock Holmes novels and the quirky experiments of the Good Eats cooking show.

“With Sherlock Holmes, it was all about deductive reasoning,” says Mazor. “With Good Eats, it was all about the science of cooking, understanding the fundamentals, how and why things work.”

Today, Mazor taps similar skills and techniques when teaching microbiology and nutrition to second-year nursing students. His challenge, he says, is creating novel lessons that maximize knowledge, foster learning, and minimize stress.

Mazor strives to tailor his classes to his nursing audience, often focusing on disease and patient interactions.

In nutrition, that means a more robust examination of obesity and the impact bias has on long-term health outcomes; in microbiology, it means scrutinizing the overprescription of antibiotics, which students do in part by tapping into training materials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the end of every semester, one of his favorite things to do is to express pride in his students by showing them all of the material they’ve learned. “It’s that connection you make having those a-ha moments of knowledge and education that are always really, really fun and rewarding,” Mazor says.

It’s a feeling echoed by Bruder and Mahaffey.

“The most satisfying thing to me is when I reach the end of the semester and a student comes to me and says, ‘Dr. Mahaffey, I was reading about this medical case study on my own and this is what I think is happening,’” says Mahaffey. “They proceed to go over what we’ve learned in chemistry and physiology to come up with an educated critique or deduction—and I love it.”