Bedford Foundation to Support Nursing Student
Left to right: Kerry Gateley, Bedford Community Health Foundation trustee and director of the Central Virginia District; Kim Carter, director of the Radford University School of Nursing; Robyn Porterfield, executive director of university advancement for Radford University; and Amy Halterman, award recipient.
The Bedford Community Health Foundation has awarded a grant of $2,000 to Radford University nursing student Amy Halterman to support her studies.
Halterman, a Huddleston resident, is in the family nurse practitioner track at Radford University’s School of Nursing in the Waldron College of Health and Human Services. She is studying chronic illness across the lifespan and hopes to complete her doctorate of nursing practice degree in 2012. She is in the Family Nurse Practitioner track, and she anticipates graduating with her Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree in August 2013.
Professor Kim Carter, director of the university’s School of Nursing, and Robyn Porterfield, executive director for advancement, accompanied Halterman to receive her grant at the May meeting of the Bedford Community Health Foundation Board.
“We are grateful to the Bedford Community Health Foundation for support for our doctoral students,” Carter said. “We are confident that the Bedford area will benefit from the education and skills that Amy will bring back to the community.”
Halterman is doing clinical work this summer at Carilion Clinic’s Physician Associates of Bedford in Huddleston and at a rural health care clinic. “I chose these locations because they see a wide range of groups by age, socioeconomic status and background,” she said. She plans to use the foundation’s grant to buy textbooks and reference materials.
Halterman’s background is in emergency care in Bedford County, where she and her husband manage a farm. She has a special interest in injury prevention and health in the agricultural community.
She said her clinical experience “will allow me to have insight into the struggles that local individuals and families face when trying to obtain primary care. My passion is rural health care, and since Bedford County is 85 percent rural, I feel this is an ideal location.”
“The Bedford Community Health Foundation hopes that the experience the student receives will encourage her to seek employment in the county, thus increasing the available pool of competent health professionals providing service to Bedford residents,” said Donna Proctor, executive director of the Bedford Community Health Foundation.