#MeetUsMonday - Meet Clinical Instructor, Susan Goins-Eplee
MEET SUSAN.
Goat mom to “Dobby” and “Luna.” A skilled matchmaker. @UVAwomenshoops and @specialolympics superfan (her daughter Annie takes part) who can recite nearly every line from the movies “Moonstruck” and “The Princess Bride.” Former Habitat for Humanity staffer, long-time hospital chaplain, and a Spanish speaking community health nurse. In UVA’s very first class of CNLs who went on to work in general medicine, then as a home health nurse, then with Children’s Health Improvement Program. Now a community health clinical instructor and faculty member.
“It’s so fun to have that interaction with the students, the sites, the preceptors, and the community members....It’s cliched to say that students teach us as much as we teach them, but it’s true. If you really enjoy the lifelong learning part and are willing to look through students’ eyes and hear their observations, you’ll learn constantly.”
Susan Goins-Eplee, Professor and Clinical Instructor
HER PATH TO NURSING
“My husband and I were international partners for Habitat and got assignments in Peru and Mexico. I loved the work and how we were addressing a major need but doing it with communities. It was really about a hand up, not a hand out, solving crisis issues but with long-term solutions. It’s very much related to what I do now. I love that philosophy."
“I’d worked for 11 years at the cancer center at UVA as a chaplain and had really started thinking about working a little more broadly in healthcare, wanting to do something a little more tangibly skilled. One day, as I was driving to work, I thought, ‘I could become a nurse!’ Two years later, I entered the CNL program.”
BEST PART OF HER JOB
“Whether it’s Innisfree, the Virginia Institute of Autism, or some other community organization, it’s so fun to have that interaction with the students, the sites, the preceptors, and the community members. It feels really natural. And the best part is that I learn something every day. It’s cliched to say that students teach us as much as we teach them, but it’s true. If you really enjoy the lifelong learning part and are willing to look through students’ eyes and hear their observations, you’ll learn constantly. The world is changing fast, and our students have a lot to offer us that makes us keep thinking and growing.”
UVA SCHOOL OF NURSING IN A WORD?
“Bridge-building. That’s what the faculty, staff, and students are doing: building bridges to patients, between medical staff and patients, into the community, into the global community. Even when we volunteer with the United Way at the Day of Caring, we built a little bridge, going to CHS. I imagine the School with bridges coming out of it every which way. That’s the work nurses do!”