Heritage Snapshot: Part 226 Kerrie Kimbrow

LOMA LINDA>> Kerrie Kimbrow, RN, MS, with a master’s degree in nursing administration from Loma Linda University, became the Vice President for Nursing at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Hangzhou, China. It was a new concept in the country and it happened when the hospital was still an empty shell (no beds, no furnishings, no equipment and no supplies), about six months before the hospital opened to accept patients. The hospital was located on the edge of town in the middle of the countryside. On her first full day, Kerrie met 100 nurses. They not only got acquainted, but in time they also bonded and became “a nursing family.” There she met a half-dozen nursing directors, who already had studied at Loma Linda University for a number of months, and their English was very good. They already had a vision of how nursing would be different at this hospital. Planning sessions followed. “Together, we were able to make that vision into a reality,” she said. Only a small group of nurses (the nursing directors and few others) were experienced. The remainder of the new hires were newly graduated from nursing schools. According to a Chinese “rule,” people could not just change hospitals and go wherever they wanted to work. So, potential nurses at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital were assigned by the government. Although they were inexperienced, they were young and excited about learning. They were willing to grow and motivated to make change. But because they were inexperienced, Kimbrow and her staff started teaching them some basic nursing procedures to prepare for the hospital’s opening: sterile technique, including how to wash hands. These were simple concepts in Western-style medicine, but made a huge impact in China. Another challenge was to establish nursing service 24-hours-a-day. Because of their youth and willingness to learn, and because they were excited, the young nurses made the nursing service at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital unique in China. Kimbrow and her colleagues also taught basic care classes for the Intensive Care Unit nurses. Some of them came from different schools that had different standards. Classes were scheduled to assure that nurses were all thinking alike. Following the classes, nurses would go into the new hospital and help to clean it in preparation for receiving patients. One of her first challenges was to establish a nursing division that would answer directly to the president of the hospital. At that time, nursing in China was not a high-level profession. Nurses answered to physicians, not directly to hospital administration. That would change over time. Kimbrow and American hospital administrators worked to elevate nursing into a profession that was highly respected within the medical community. It was one of the first concepts of Western-style medicine to be applied at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital. Finally, the first patients came for several days of physical assessments. Although they were not sick, they were dependent on nursing care. The 14th-floor rooms were all full. It was an exciting time for the nurses who had worked hard to prepare for this time. They opened one unit at a time, according to need. That required advanced planning, so that when a new unit opened, adequate nursing would be available. Kerry’s challenge was to match nursing needs with qualified personnel. Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital immediately became a hospital of renown. Patients, acknowledging the presence of American physicians, came from little far away villages, and presented themselves with once hopeless conditions, including large goiters. For Kimbrow, it was rewarding to see that felt needs were being met. People throughout the city, including taxi drivers, started reporting how much they respected and appreciated what was happening at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital. “If we had not been here as a hospital, providing care for these patients, they would not have received the care they needed,” she said. Kimbrow and her nursing directors requested to extend her three-month commitment to help start the institution to six months. When she finally left, after five years, she said it was really hard to leave her new “Chinese family.”