Dr. Maureen Vidrine: Teaching Clinician
Brenau’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program has changed Maureen Vidrine’s approach to nursing for good. The program’s focus on evidence-based practice made Vidrine, she insisted, more focused on applying the latest nursing research to clinical challenges she encounters among her patients.
“The skills and habits we learned were not just for getting a good grade or getting that paper done. They were a change for good,” she said.
Vidrine, from Monroe, Georgia, entered the DNP program already a part of academia. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Emory University and her master’s degree at Georgia State University, she has split her time between treating patients and teaching undergraduate nursing students, both with a focus on mental health. She began teaching at Brenau in 2007. Currently, she teaches a behavioral health nursing course for undergraduate nursing students. The course features student teams’ clinical case presentations of actual clients cared for in clinical settings.
“I’m a clinician who likes to teach,” she said.
Vidrine used her capstone project as an opportunity to combine her dedication to teaching and mental health. She worked with a treatment team at a mental health community center in Covington, Georgia, to provide education about the effects of trauma and maltreatment on the developing brains of children and how that neurological impact can affect children’s behaviors.
“These are children in our communities, in our public schools, in our social service offices,” she said. “The treatment team really needed to understand at the neural level what was responsible for some of the behaviors they were seeing. Often those behaviors are misunderstood or misinterpreted.”
With the DNP in hand, Vidrine plans to continue teaching and to focus on another passion: equine-facilitated psychotherapy. Vidrine is the director and chief psychotherapist of Horse Time, a Covington-based program that uses horse-human interaction for healing, wellness and growth. She said the DNP focus on making research a part of the daily practice of nursing has permanently altered her approach to patients.
“I have a lot of gratitude for the incredibly rich educational experience I got in the program,” she said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”