Letters to the Editor

A Success by Every Measure

What a wonderful feeling to see my mother’s beautiful face gracing your article “Happy Un-Retirement” [Fall 2004]. Her dedication to Johns Hopkins for these past 42 years has been nothing compared to her dedication to her five children.

My mother was widowed at age 37—left with five children from ages 2 to 16. She decided that it was time to go back to school. She had been a caregiver her entire life and nursing would suit her to a T. There were times that Mommy was a blur to us…. leaving early for school and rushing down to Maria’s Italian Restaurant to wait tables until the wee hours. However, she was driven.

In a time when life was hard, my mother not only kept our family together but raised five of us with love, compassion, and showed more strength and determination than any person I have ever encountered in my life. It has been our honor to share our mother with Hopkins. More, we are blessed to have her for our mother.

Karol Hensley-Thompson
Miramar, Florida


“Wow!”

I received the Johns Hopkins Nursing magazine yesterday and was beyond thrilled at the wonderful job you did [“Church Home and Hospital Nursing Alumnae Secure a Future for Their Past,” Winter 2005]. It is truly a masterpiece!

Deb Kennedy
President, Church Home and
Hospital Nursing Alumnae Association


Corrections

In “Uniform Measures” [Winter 2005], the caption under the Maltese Cross pin on p. 20 should have correctly noted that the alumni pin is worn by Johns Hopkins nursing graduates who are members of the Alumni Association. In addition, the photo captioned “Members of the Class of 1941” (p. 20) was mislabeled, and the alumni pin worn by contemporary model Nadia Irani on p. 21 should not have appeared on the collar of her uniform.

In “Looking Forward, Looking Back,” there were several inaccuracies in the section “Some arsenic a day…” that featured faculty member Diane Aschenbrenner. She notes that digitalis has never been used to aid digestion, as we mistakenly quoted her as saying. Moreover, there was some confusion surrounding our use of “primary caregiver.” Aschenbrenner’s intended point: For most drug therapy today, patients or their families are the primary source of drug administration, not nurses in the hospital. Finally,
in the section “Just like the real thing” on pp.16-17, we included misinformation about “SimMan” that was erroneously attributed to Aschenbrenner. For a corrected version visit the web edition at:www.son.jhmi.edu/JHNmagazine.

The magazine regrets these errors and offers our sincere apologies to Professor Aschenbrenner.