Get to know nurse and diabetes educator James Fain, associate dean for academic affairs at the Graduate School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass. Fain is also editor-in-chief of The Diabetes Educator. On Nursing Notes Live this month we examine how nurses help manage patients with chronic illnesses. In this episode of the Nursing Notes Live podcast, I got the chance to sit down and interview Jim. Here’s that interview.

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Jamie Davis:         Jim, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you here on the show with us and I’ll ask you our traditional first question for our nurse guest. And that is, why did you want to become a nurse?

James Fain:         Okay. My decision to pursue a career in nursing or, I should say, one of the health professions, really went back when I was in high school just thinking about leaving and going into college. I was very fortunate enough to have many friends of the family who were in the health professions. And I would say, in particular, one of them happened to be a nurse anesthetist. While that’s not a role I would be very much interested in going in, I learned that the opportunities to interact with patients and other healthcare professionals in the profession of nursing on a daily basis was something that was very appealing. Also enjoyed the opportunity to think about the many different types of career opportunities and the ability to advance the career while in the nursing profession was very appealing at the time.

Jamie:                   Yes, there really are so many different directions. I always point this out when this type of thing comes up is, yes, I didn’t know I was going to develop into a nurse journalist when I first went to nursing school but yet here I am. So there are so many ways to come about being a nurse.

James:                  Absolutely. Different educational areas, but pretty much once you’d become registered nurse, licensed, really the whole world is open to you for the tremendous number of opportunities or different careers you might choose within that nursing field.

Jamie:                   So what led you to become a diabetes educator nurse?

James:                  My career probably as diabetes educator began when I was in the Master’s program down at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which was the School of Nursing there. I went for my Master’s degree and at the time, back in the 80s – ‘79 was when I actually graduated – but in the late 70s, early 80s, the role of clinical nurse specialist was a very popular role. And I chose to go to the University of Alabama because they had a very strong clinical nurse specialist program in diabetes nursing. What that really meant was that as a registered nurse and then having the ability to become certified in diabetes education, I would have the ability to work either in an inpatient or an outpatient clinic as a diabetes clinical nurse specialist. When I was in teaching before that I was very much interested in the patient with diabetes. So I just found that this was a great opportunity to advance in the field of diabetes education. I knew if I could get some good clinical practice as an educator that eventually I would possibly able to think about my role as a researcher or a nurse scientist so that I could actually conduct research in the area of diabetes, self-management in particular. So again it was pretty much as I was a graduate student in my Master’s program, it was a wonderful program. At the time,