[nursinghumor]

Blind Woman Will Pursue Her Dream of Becoming a Nurse:"With support from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), Melissa Resnick of Merrick, N.Y., will become the first blind nursing student at Nassau Community College (NCC). Admission to NCC's Nursing Department is highly competitive and the Department is widely respected for its academic excellence. The college confirmed her acceptance after initially expressing concerns over her ability to perform the required classroom and clinical work. Ms. Resnick will start her classes on Friday, January 21, 2005.
http://www.mysan.de/international/article27189.html

This is something you don't see every day. Think she'll end up doing telephone triage or something related to nursing using her degree?

Andrew Lopez, RN

[grapejam88]

It's difficult to say just what aspect of nursing she would do, but I think bedside nursing would be extremely difficult if not darn near impossible. The process of examining your patient can't be a long drawn-out process of seeing with the hands (though some of what we do we don't need vision for), you actually need visual inspection. The equipment isn't disabled friendly...no braille on the IV pumps or IV bags...etc. So that doesn't seem to be a possibility. However, she may be a major asset in the quality management area or like you said telephone triage or something like that. I am curious to see if she makes it through (heck, she obtained a couple degrees already...can't see her not doing this)and then to see what job she lands.

[nursinghumor]

I've got a feeling if she makes it through nursing school and her licensing exam, finding a job will be the easier of the tasks.

My guess is she'll end up doing patient education, or telephone triage, etc. I don't think we'll see her doing bedside nursing as we know it.

Andrew Lopez, RN
http://www.4nursing.com

[Aaron C.]

There's no way she could. How would she visually assess a patient? Seeing is not just "kind of" important.

Telephone triage would probably be a good call