What is Faculty Practice?

At the WVU School of Nursing, we define faculty practice as direct patient care and other professional nursing services provided by nursing faculty, through formal relationships with individuals, communities, and other entities, as part of the assigned workload duties.

The mission is to integrate nursing faculty practice with the education, research/scholarship, and service missions of the WVU School of Nursing. It is a bidirectional relationship in which teaching makes us better practitioners and practice makes us better teachers and scholars.

Faculty Practice Feature: Aaron Ostrowski

Aaron Ostrowski's faculty practice is as a nurse anesthetist at WVU Medicine's Ruby Memorial Hospital in the Department of Anesthesiology.

Q: How would you describe what you do in a typical day of faculty practice to someone unfamiliar with your specialty?
A: In my role as a nurse anesthetist, I am responsible for the anesthetic care of our patients before, during and after surgery. We may work in teams with anesthesiologists, or we may work independently, but either way, my responsibility is to know the history of the patient, the type of procedure they are undergoing, and to determine a safe plan of anesthetic management, accounting for the patient's ability to tolerate the procedure. Planning includes making sure patients are asleep, free of undue pain, and have little or no recollection of events related to their procedure. The best days are when patients wake up and ask, "Is it already over?"

Q: Describe how your faculty practice enhances your other academic roles (ex. teacher and/or scholar)?
A: I am a firm believer in faculty maintaining practice, because I remain relevant to our students by sharing current information from the clinical environment. I feel that students appreciate seeing me in scrubs, either managing my own cases for the day or working with them as a clinical preceptor. The opportunity to discuss principles in class one week, then to practice them the next week in clinical with a student, is priceless.

Q: What is your favorite thing about your faculty practice?
A: Aside from the student interaction, which is my favorite aspect of faculty practice, I value the opportunity to get off my computer and actively work, doing a job I have loved from the moment I stepped into an operating room. As is commonly shared among CRNAs, while jobs may be less satisfying from time to time, the vast majority of CRNAs do not regret their overall choice of the career in anesthesia.