Get to know nurse Jody Lori, as we focus on maternal and child health this month on Nursing Notes Live. Jody Lori is a certified nurse midwife and is senior director of Global Affairs and director of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Jody specializes in safe motherhood, human rights and community-based interventions. Here’s that interview.

—-

Subscribe to the MP3 Audio Podcast

 Facebook

Jamie Davis: Hi, Jody, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you here on the show and we’ll start off with my traditional first question for our Get-to-Know Nurse each month, and that is, tell us a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse.

Jody Lori: Thanks, Jamie. I decided to become a nurse at a very young age. It was probably mainly the influence of my mother who, for very practical reasons, told me that I should consider a career in nursing because I would always be able to find a job. So she was raised in the Depression Era and she was very cognizant of the need to be able to support yourself. So it was for a very practical reason that I went into nursing at a young age.

Jamie: So tell us a little a bit about your educational background as a nurse, how you got started in nursing and progressed to the point where you are now with the PhD and all of the other certifications and qualifications.

Jody: Sure. It was a very circuitous path. My first degree was from a community college where I attended for one year at the time and I became an LPN, which is a licensed practical nurse. I wouldn’t recommend this route to people these days. I then obtained an Associate degree, which is a two-year university degree. Then I completed my Bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan. I practiced all along through those years. I then went into midwifery and received a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Maternal-Child Health and was certified by the certifying board for the American College of Nurse-Midwives. Finally, I finished my PhD at the University of Arizona in 2009.

Jamie: That’s amazing. It’s one of those continuing themes I hear from the nurses I talk with is that continued drive to seek more education either formally or through an additional degree level or at least through continuing education and advanced certifications in your specialty. Why do you think that’s so important in nursing?

Jody: I think that the field is ever-changing. I think there are so many opportunities, that continuing your education just continues to open more and more doors for you as a nurse. There was always sort of the next thing that I was interested in pursuing or the next area that I was interested in looking at that often included returning to school to further my education.

Jamie: Now you’re working in collaboration between the University of Michigan School of Nursing and the World Health Organization Maternal and Child Health, how did that come about?

Jody: So the University of Michigan School of Nursing is one of the WHO Collaborating Centers that’s been designated in the Americas. There are 18 schools of nursing in the Americas that hold this designation and actually 10 in the United States. So it’s not a very common designation. There are many kinds of collaborating centers for the World Health Organization. We belong to the PAHO region or the “Pan-American Health Organization” region so our work for WHO is within this region. There are different kinds of collaborating centers. One is in Nursing in Midwifery. You can be a collaborating center for WHO in Occupational Health for insta...