Coleen Saylor, RN, PHN, PhD;                          
Professor, School of Nursing

Hello! Welcome to Health Care Systems. I have been teaching this class for several semesters. We will spend some time orienting to the School of Nursing and the master's program, in particular. I really enjoy meeting and working with graduate students, and spent five years as Graduate Coordinator.

My background is as a Public Health Nurse. I still believe the community is an exciting, but challenging place to practice nursing because the client has complete autonomy. Nurses' professional relationships with clients are crucial to changing behavior and moving slowly, sometimes, toward more beneficial lifestyles and decisions. I have supervised nursing students at all of the Santa Clara County PHN offices over the past years. Most recently a colleague from Administration of Justice Department and I have been doing research on families in dependency court because of substance abuse, often because of evidence of drugs in a newborn.

In our intervention study, we found that Public Health Nurses were extremely valuable in following these children over time. The PHNs were experts at establishing relationships with parents and caregivers, identifying early evidence of developmental delay, and teaching early interventions as well as referring when appropriate.

I would love to have better community programs for new parents, high risk parents, parents of high risk children, well I guess....all parents. Isn't it odd that in a society that discovers incredible new technological advances, and already knows a lot about good parenting and what little children need, we as a society don't value families and children enough to really support new moms...and dads.

In addition to teaching, I love to go to the beach, read, jog, and play with my grandchildren. They are reminding me of the miracle of children. I also like  to travel. In 1999 I visited health care services for people with AIDS in South Africa. At the time the prevalence rate for sexually active adults was 24% and it has risen since then. There are some fascinating and horrible cultural, economic, and social issues there that provide barriers to reducing the catastrophe ahead.

I did my graduate work here at SJSU (master's degree) studying what we used to call compliance, now health behavior is a better phrase. I completed my PhD at Stanford University studying evaluation systems for nursing students. Currently I teach community health nursing for BSN students, health care systems, and some of the nursing educator courses. I also spend 40% of my time as Associate Director of the Institute for Teaching and Learning at SJSU, which has programs to help faculty maintain and enhance teaching skills. 

I hope you have a great semester. My goal is not that you will learn all the answers, but that at the end of the semester you will be asking better, more complicated questions. Please feel free to email me at any time at csaylor@email.sjsu.edu or leave a voice mail message at 408-924-1321. I look forward to talking with you.