My Scope of Practice: Nothing Reserved about This Nurse’s Care

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. — Maya Angelou  

   Michele (Shelly) Burdette-Taylor, RN-BC, MSN, CWCN, CFCN, PhDc, is a Lieutenant Colonel with the US Army Reserve Nurse Corps. She received a Diploma in Registered Nursing from Church Home and Hospital School of Nursing (Baltimore, MD), earned her Bachelors degree in Nursing from the University of Central Florida, and achieved a Masters degree in Nursing from California State University (Dominguez Hills).

Shelly currently is pursuing her PhD in Nursing at the University of San Diego; her area of concentration is Traumatic Limb Loss of Soldiers. She is board-certified in wound care management, foot and nail care, and professional development. She is also board certified-eligible in parish nursing, a fairly new specialty recognized by the American Nurses Association through which the nurse serves as a liaison between the church and the healthcare system. In this capacity, Shelly is responsible for a foot care ministry at her church.

     Shelly’s 30 years of extensive experience in wound care have made her a specialist in treating lower extremities and preventing amputation. She is currently CEO and curriculum designer of TayLORD Health, LLC, where she provides didactic and clinical hands-on instruction to help prepare nurses to sit for foot and nail and wound care board exams. Shelly also specializes in the use of evidence-based research for professional development in promotion of practice and programs. In addition to her current responsibilities at TayLORD Health, she facilitates personal and professional enhancement and growth by coaching staff in publication, education, and mentoring. Shelly has conducted workshops on “Health, Hope, and Humor for Health Care Providers” in Certaldo, Italy, and conducts medical mission trips to San Pedro Sula, Honduras to serve needy children.

     Shelly finds the autonomy of her work in the armed forces, church, and private practice a fulfilling perk; the most gratifying aspect of her responsibilities is building programs and services based on research and blending unique teaching strategies for clinicians and colleagues. “The most important aspect of my work is meeting needs to enhance healthier living in addition to creating/promoting productive members of our society,” she says. Her biggest challenge is the ever-changing world of technology. “Providing optimal care for patients in addition to managing your own business inevitably comes with significant barriers,” she says. “For me, those barriers involve communication. Trying to keep up, stay current, and stay engaged in technology without becoming frustrated is a work in progress. Life would be simpler if clinicians at all levels of care used email, voicemail, and mobile phone regularly, or maybe a little bit of Facebook. My approach to overcoming these difficulties is to offer education with a step-by-step procedure to elicit regular electronic interaction without undo fear or excuses among busy clinicians in alternate settings.”

     Shelly’s responsibilities with the US Army Reserve Nurse Corps include site director for the 9th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 100th Division, USAR, in San Diego. One of her many missions involves instructing army medics in the new Combat Medics Advanced Skills Training Course, which incorporates use of tourniquets, quick clot, and needle decompression for survival on the battlefield. The other course important for military efforts is the Combat LifeSaver Course, which Shelly says would be valuable for every person in the community in terms of battle, disaster, first aid, and life situations.  

     As part of her ongoing studies, Shelly continually seeks to enroll soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines who have sustained a traumatic limb loss in any combat or military training accident in clinical studies. The research she is completing for her PhD at the University of San Diego involves investigating the quality of well-being and impact of events after a traumatic limb loss. Currently, she is looking for 20 good men (and women) who have lost one or more limb/s more than 1 year ago and would be willing to participate in the doctoral study. Data collection comprises completing three short questionnaires that focus on demographics, quality of well-being, and impact of events. Please contact her at shelly@tayLORDhealth.com or go to www.tayLORDhealth.com; all relevant study documents are posted.

     Shelly’s professional responsibilities have changed through the past 10 years, with patients at a much greater risk of developing wounds or suffering from more severe injuries, increasing the need for overall wound care knowledge and resources. These changes have inspired her to take on large projects such as:

     • Building the foot and nail care school to prepare RNs to sit for boards and become board-certified by Wound Ostomy Continence Nursing Certification Board (WOCNCB);
     • Building the wound care didactic portion required of WOCNCB for RN, BSN to complete for board certification in wound care;
     • Developing a continuing education board prep course for RNs and BSNs to become board-certified in Geriatric Nursing by American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC);
     • Writing a foot and nail care textbook for nurses with lots of bells and whistles for fun information needed about legs, feet, foot care, foot wear, diseases, deformities, and business opportunities;
     • Developing a team and implementing a program to address the issues of Horizontal Violence in the Workplace per JCAHO requirements.

     Shelly hopes to market her services and capabilities with greater confidence, researching topics to augment her expertise and passions. TayLORD Health, LLC recently has gone global with an online lower extremity store to include much-needed compression socks, onsite lower extremity store, and approximately 10 foot and nail care courses in six different states and Honduras. Honduras was selected because a team from Penasquitos Lutheran Church, where Shelly serves as a parish nurse, visits Honduras regularly to do mission work. This is the first year a foot and nail care school will be conducted with US and Honduran Nurses and provide staffing, medications, counseling, and education for a pediatric clinic for children who live in a cardboard/plywood village.

     Shelly’s work has taught her many valuable lessons. “I’ve learned to always do what is right and what is good,” she says. “You should give more than you possibly can because it will come back ten-fold. Share, be a giver, promote your colleagues, and always look on the bright side of life.”

     Shelly anticipates her role as nurse and executive will continue to evolve and expand, helping her become a better mentor, facilitator, and educator. Her dream is to launch programs specific to nurses nurturing nurses, in addition to building and promoting the TayLORD Health Foot and Nail Care Nurse Instructor Package (TH-FNC-NIP). TH-FNC-NIP is designed to equip and promote confidence in nurses who are interested in conducting foot and nail care courses in their own community and state as entrepreneurs or within their facilities or institutions as intrapreneurs. The TayLORD Health Nurse Instructor Package will provide all of the tools, curriculum, props, case studies, photos, and continuing education materials to teach, be a course leader and teach, or be a course champion, The goal is to deploy more courses across the country to enable a greater number of enrollees and reduce the expense of travel.

     Shelly also has been brainstorming the concept of developing and marketing a foot and nail care continuing education newsletter that will offer current and cutting-edge information and evidence for readers to earn continuing education credits in lower extremity, foot care, wound care, and geriatric nursing.

     Shelly’s compassion for our military men and women, her business savvy, and her acknowledgment of the importance of ongoing education and training, keep her busy — but not afraid to dream — in her scope of practice.

This article was not subject to the Ostomy Wound Management peer-review process.