My Scope of Practice: A Pioneer in Distance Learning

If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. — Albert Einstein

Sharon A. Aronovitch, PhD, RN, CWOCN (photo) has been a registered nurse for more than 40 years. For 38 of those years, she’s been a certified wound, ostomy, continence (WOC) nurse, an impressive accomplishment, given that it usually takes years of clinical experience for a nurse to decide on an area of focus.

 But Dr. Aronovitch wasted no time — a testament to her passion for the specialty. Her desire to enable others to pursue WOC nursing helped shape her career and accomplishments.

Dr. Aronovitch earned her Associate of Applied Sciences degree from Middlesex County College (Edison, NJ) in 1975 and subsequently worked as a staff nurse in the surgery units of 2 local hospitals before earning her BSN at the University of the State of New York (New York, NY) in 1984, her Masters in Nursing as a Clinical Nurse Specialist medical-surgical nursing with a focus in Gerontology from Russell Sage College (Troy, NY) in 1987, and her PhD in Nursing from Adelphi University (Garden City, NY) in 1994.

“As a young nurse, I wanted to better manage draining wounds and ostomies,” Dr. Aronovitch says. While attending a month-long program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY) on cancer nursing, she met an ostomy nurse, which piqued her interest in the specialty; coincidentally, she read an article that discussed the field of enterostomal therapy. After researching the specialty, she became further intrigued. She earned Enterostomal Therapy Certification at Harrisburg Hospital School of Enterostomal Therapy (Harrisburg, PA) in 1977.

Dr. Aronovitch says back then students were told not to wear gloves when providing ostomy care, with the rationale it would embarrass patients and make them think they were unclean. Educational programs also required students to stay onsite and attend school for 6 to 8 weeks. There have been major changes in WOC nursing protocols since Dr. Aronovitch was a student (obviously, nurses now wear gloves when dealing with ostomy patients), and prospective WOC nurses now also have the option to be educated offsite, thanks in part to Dr. Aronovitch.

 In the late 1980s, Dr. Aronovitch saw a need for a distance-based educational program that would ultimately help increase the WOC nurse population. “I developed a program that followed the curriculum and criteria established by the Accreditation Committee of the WOCN Society,” Dr. Aronovitch says. “The program was designed to educate BS or MS registered nurses who wanted to pursue a career in WOC nursing. Tuition included educational materials and required books for the student, who completed established assignments, tests, and required clinical experience with a preceptor. The student could complete the program where and when it was convenient; there was no stipulated time in which to complete the program.”

Because this was a distance-based program, students from around the country enrolled. Once the student completed the program with satisfactory grades, he/she was eligible to sit for the Wound, Ostomy Continence Certification exams. Now, a number of distance-based WOC nursing education programs are available. “I was a trend-setter,” Dr. Aronovitch says.

Today, Dr. Aronovitch continues to perpetuate the benefits of distance-based programs as the Lead Faculty Program Director, Graduate Nursing at Excelsior College, a distanced-base college in Albany, NY. She also maintains 2 clinical positions and a small practice as an expert witness in medical malpractice cases within her skill set. Her clinical practices are in a level-2 trauma center as a WOC nurse (1 evening per week) and as the consultant ostomy nurse in a small community hospital. “In both clinical practices, I function as a clinical nurse specialist for WOC nursing,” Dr. Aronovitch says. “I see patients based on the consult ordered by either the physician or nursing staff. I assess the patient’s health status and needs and prescribe the appropriate care, whether pre-op teaching and stoma siting or wound care management.”

Dr. Aronovitch knows that through the educational programs she helped initiate, she will continue to impact the WOC community by producing much-needed nurses. Being in the forefront of distance-based WOC nurse education programs allowed Dr. Aronovitch to open the doors of this small specialty to countless nurses who otherwise may not have been able to attend an onsite program. Her advice for all the nurses considering this area of practice is simple: Participate in an accredited WOC nursing program and become certified in all 3 specialties of the practice. Certification in all 3 areas of the specialty, Dr. Aronovitch says, will make you a more valuable employee, as well as increase your scope of practice.