CONHI Retiring Faculty: Ruth Brooks

The first thing you notice when speaking with Ruth Brooks is that she rarely refers to herself.  Whether discussing her accomplishments within the College of Nursing & Health Innovation, or how she started her career in simulation education, Ruth prefers to stress the importance of her team, not herself.  "Nothing over here happens as one person," Ruth emphasizes as she describes her work in the Simulation and Learning Resources (SLR).  "That's one of the most incredible things about this place, is how creative we all are and have to be.  A few people might start something, but then others will keep on adding to it and improving it."  After 16 years of service, her enthusiasm for creating a culture of teamwork and quality simulation experiences remains boundless.  Ruth will retire by the end of April, and she is confident that her team will continue to enhance the preparation of future health professionals through simulation instruction.​

This culture of teamwork has grown steadily since Ruth joined ASU in 1999, when she was brought on to develop the university's simulation program. "When I came here, there wasn't any simulation," says Ruth.  "There was no such thing.  The lab was one big room, and it was dark and empty.  They were changing the curriculum, and they wanted to use the lab a lot more."  After seven years on Tempe campus, the Nursing program was moved to Downtown Phoenix.  "Within two weeks of moving in, we had to have everything ready for school, because classes were going to start.  And the minute we were in, we already needed to expand."  To manage the rapid growth of simulation, Ruth began assembling her team, which grew from one part-time sim nurse to a 12-person team of nurses and administrative staff. To expand her team's strengths in curricular aspects and simulation integrity, Ruth oversaw the addition of Beatrice "Bunny" Kastenbaum and Dr. Debra Hagler as faculty champions, resulting in relationships that would last through her entire tenure at ASU.​

Ruth's insistence on creating a team with multiple strengths and viewpoints developed early in her career when addressing patient wellbeing. "I'm a pediatric nurse, and I taught in a program in a very small town that didn't have much pediatrics," said Ruth.  "So some of my students would be in the doctor's office, some of my students would be in the physical therapist's office and some of them would be in the hospital.  And they might all see the same patient in all those places.  So when the students would have conferences, they would get to find out what happened after they saw their patient, because there's a next phase and a next phase for care.  I wanted to see more of that sense of contained response here because they might not have the opportunity in the community." 

Ultimately, years of her team's dedication to providing these kind of quality simulation opportunities to their students resulted in two of Ruth's proudest professional accomplishments.  The first was her contributions to the steering committee tasked with qualifying the college's BSN, MSN and DNP programs for national accreditation.  "When we took on this job, we each had to write a self-study, develop all these policies and procedures, document everything, where before it was all in our heads.  It was a lot of work, but well worth it."  The second, though, was her team's involvement in a grant agreement between ASU, SCC, and the Arizona State Board of Nursing to use simulation as a way to assess nurses.   The impact of this agreement was nationally acclaimed, with Ruth's team being part of the honorees by the 2014 President's medal for Social Embeddedness.  "I never thought I'd ever be part of something like that," recalls Ruth.

As Ruth closes out her years of academic and nursing service, her advice to incoming nurses reads like a thesis for her career.  "Work as a team.  Network.  Learn something from every place and every person.  If they're 25 years old, learn from them.  If they have a beautiful new research center or an old office, just keep learning something from everyone."  With another expansion for CONHI's simulation labs on the horizon and more opportunities for ASU students than ever before, Ruth's team has accomplished something remarkable.  And while nothing over here happens as one person, Ruth Brooks has certainly left her mark on the future of nursing and health care for years to come.