Is there a nurse practitioner in the house?

Daniel Webster College hires Nashua’s Susan Thievon as director of health services

 

Susan Thievon recently joined the DWC community as director of health services, which is located in Townhouse 9. Who is Susan Thievon?

Susan lived in Wolfeboro, N.H., the last four years, working as a Nurse Practitioner in a Family Practice where she saw children, adults, and elderly patients for acute and chronic illnesses, minor injuries, and provided health education for disease prevention and healthy living. Her office also participated in a Dartmouth-Hitchcock research study that looked at the use of a PDA in the office to collect health behavior data from adolescents; it appeared that teens might be more forthcoming with a machine than a person. She also had a group of high school and college students that she saw regularly for their annual physicals and other illnesses. “This age group has always been fun and interesting to interact with,” she said.

From her home in Wolfeboro, she monitored the N.H. Nurse Practitioner Association’s job postings for a position closer to her husband’s Concord job. Nashua was not particularly closer for her husband, but the job was so interesting she decided to apply.

Through the application and interview process, said Susan, “I had nothing but positive experiences with the staff and leadership in Student Affairs. I think having a good relationship with the people you work with is one of the most important aspects of job satisfaction, so I just felt comfortable here. I still feel that way, and want to thank everyone for the warm welcome I have received.”

“My nursing background gives me a strong emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention, and we know that healthy behaviors can have a significant impact on quality of life,” she explained. “College students, because of their age and developmental level, are often more malleable and open to new ideas. I am hopeful that I might be able to assist some of our young adults in developing a healthy lifestyle. As I mentioned before, they are also a fun group to work with.”

As to what she thinks are the most important health concerns for college-aged students, Susan said that stress management is probably under-recognized as an important health concern. “Most adults in this society live stressful, hectic lives (though some certainly have greater stressors). I think in many cases a lot of our unhealthy habits — whether it be smoking, excessive alcohol intake, overeating, lack of exercise, etc. — are reflective of our poor stress management. In college, students are faced with busy academic and social schedules and the pressures that come with this. Learning the signs and triggers of our own emotional, mental, and physical stress may help us choose healthier responses to these stressors.”

“There is also a lot of risk-taking among college-aged students. Teaching those critical-thinking skills to assess risk and evaluate options is invaluable in making healthier choices. Critical-thinking is not an easy skill to teach or learn, as I am sure most of our faculty can attest to, but it does not make it any less important.”

Some of what Susan wants to implement at DWC is to develop a tracking system for the health-related data coming into the Health Center (i.e. what are the health needs and risk-factors of our students), which will help her develop and refine goals for her area. She is also interested in surveying students about their satisfaction with the Health Center and  identifying how the Center is meeting or not meeting student needs.

What types of things is she seeing in the Health Center these days? “By far, the common cold is what I have seen the most in my first three weeks,” she said. “On the more interesting side, I have had a few orthopedic injuries, migraines, stress, and fatigue, and I have had a few questions on sexually-transmitted infections.”

Susan graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.S. in Nursing in 1997. She worked as an RN at the VA  Hospital in Oklahoma City (OKC) and then in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital in OKC before going back to graduate school. She completed her Family Nurse Practitioner program and M.S. at the University of Oklahoma in 2001. “I moved from Oklahoma to Wolfeboro in the fall of 2001, where I worked at Abenaki Family Physicians.”

Susan lives in Nashua with husband, Ed. In her spare time, Susan loves to run and is usually training for one road race or another, “though I am not a serious competitor.”