Edilma Yearwood

Associate Professor of Nursing
Hometown: Bronx, N.Y.
Education: B.S. University of Connecticut, Nursing; M.A. New York University, Nursing; Ph.D. Adelphi University, Nursing
Area of Research: Mental health of immigrant youth
Time at Georgetown: 12 years

What do you think is the most fascinating question in your field of research?
When will we begin to allocate enough resources to treat children who have behavioral and psychiatric challenges? That is my question. When are we going to put those resources in place to help these kids?

What do you think is the greatest challenge in your field today?
The number of children who need services, and the fact that we’re actually cutting services to children. So that’s a huge challenge.

So how did you narrow your focus to what you study today?
I saw a lot of children who were victims of abuse and different kinds of trauma — physical trauma, not necessarily have been abused, but kids who were medically fragile because they’ve had other kinds of trauma like being in fires or falling out windows. They were very, very in need of more than just the medical care and I really got very, very interested in providing more of the emotional support kinds of care that these kids needed. So the trauma attracted me to these kids and wanting to sort of provide services for them.

What do you think right now is the best option to get to that stage?
I think the first thing is we have to assess early. We have to pick these kids up early. I think that one of the things is I co-wrote a text book on behavioral health and part of what we said is that we need to get these kids early in their primary care when they are going to their pediatrician, because most kids have to go to a pediatrician, so we pick up those kids early on and start treating them then. I think that’s important.

What’s the most memorable encounter you’ve had with a student?
I think I had one about three weeks ago that really kind of touched me. I was very tearful about it. A student emailed me and just thanked me so much for being her mentor, and I hadn’t even put that in my brain that I was serving as her mentor, I was just being my usual self. But for her, she saw it as really important in her development at this point in time. So it just touched me that she labeled it and reached out and told me she felt good about it.

What is the Hendrix Award you just won?
Dr. Hendrix died in, I think, 1998, and she was a faculty member at the University of Kentucky. And one of the things she was well known for was her mentoring of her graduate and Ph.D. students. And also just her passion for working with vulnerable populations and so that was what she was really well-known for. Her ability to touch the lives of so many people, not only the patients that she served but also her students. And she worked in rural Kentucky and did some real good stuff with people who didn’t have easy access to mental health services. She was a psych nurse so she worked in the far-out places of the state where they didn’t have as much access to services.

How do you balance teaching and research?
That’s a hard question. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have balance. I’m very passionate about my work with kids and immigrant kids and vulnerable kids. I’m very passionate about it so I always make time. I really put myself sometimes on a strict schedule on what I need to get done when. So I’m always trying to write proposals, I’m always trying to write about my experiences because I think it’s really important to get that information out. So you know, I just consciously make a decision that this is important so I have to focus on it.

What’s the main thing you want your students to take away from your classes?
I talk with my students a lot about valuing each patient that they take care of. Every patient has strengths and I remind my students all the time that it’s our job to uncover those strengths and use those strengths to help the patient become very actively involved in their own treatment and their care. Because I really like the whole issue of empowering patients to participate in their care. I don’t like that we tell people what to do when they’re sick in the hospital. You know, they have choices and we need to work real hard to help them understand that they’re in control and they have the choices and they need to let us know what they want us to do more for them.

Interview by Michelle Xu