Fort Belknap college hires director of nursing

Havre Daily News staff

Aaniiih Nakoda College on Fort Belknap Indian Reservation announced it has hired a local nurse as the director of its “Grow Our Own” nursing program.

The college announced this week that it hired RN LaVerne Parker, MSN, as director of the program.

In her own words, her objective in joining us here on the Hi-Line on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation as the first American Indian director is “to provide leadership and to increase the number of American Indian nurses working in the state of Montana,” the college said in a press release.

The college presented Parker to the Board of Nursing in Helena Jan. 19, the release said.

Parker was chosen as the best fit for the indigenous program after the selection committee interviewed several candidates, the release said.

“She is a highly experienced professional, accruing many awards for nursing, and leadership,” the release said. “Ms. Parker has previously served as a director of nursing, as well as worked at the highest levels in the Indian Health Service to affect policy and change.

“Her vast experience also involves grant writing and research,” the release adds.

Parker earned a master’s degree in rural health nursing from the University of North Dakota and has rural health leadership and community health disparity training areas of expertise.

Parker, who comes to Aaniiih College from Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, is no stranger to the Fort Belknap college, the release said, having taught the Introduction to Nursing course at Aaniiih Nakoda last semester.

“As we are a frontier and a rural environment, her background in rural public health will be an asset to our new program,” the release said.

While teaching at Rocky Boy’s Stone Child College, she was heavily invested in teaching in the historical trauma curriculum, and will bring that to Fort Belknap as the director of nursing, the release said.

Aaniiih Nakoda College Nursing Program and Phillips County Hospital teamed up to “grow our own” registered nurses locally, saying the program would be a great model to help address the nursing shortages locally and regionally, but, more importantly, to help care for the people of the communities now and into the future by developing a collaborative partnership for registered nursing education.

Students from the newly developed nursing program at Aaniiih Nakoda College will be doing a portion of their nursing clinical rotations at Phillips County Hospital as well as at Fort Belknap IHS in medical, surgical, ER and clinic nursing.

“I can’t think of a better clinical experience for students than an immersion clinical in a rural community hospital,” Parker said in a press release. “Students will have an opportunity to exercise their critical thinking skills because, in a rural hospital, you are the best resource for the patient. You have to be ready for anything that walks through the door.”

Phillips County Hospital CEO Ward VanWichen said, “Phillips County Hospital is excited about this collaborative partnership with Aaniiih Nakoda College to be working with their nursing program, staff and students to help provide quality nursing education right here locally. It is exciting to be part of something new and creative that is really working to solve a problem and using local resources, expertise, partnerships and collaborations to do so. We both feel that this may be just the beginning of other work that we can do together moving forward.”

The first cohort of nursing students began an an orientation at Phillips Community Hospital Wednesday, and will start their clinical rotations from Tuesday through March 15.