Nursing professor conquers Mount Everest
Dr. Patrick Hickey, clinical assistant professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina, doesn't just walk the walk.
When it comes to the issue of South Carolina's critical nursing shortage, he does more than walk; he climbs. All the way, in fact, to the top of Mount Everest, some 29,000 feet.
Hickey reached the summit May 23, culminating nearly two months of on-site preparation, climbing, and altitude adjustment at Everest.
“It was a great, great feeling,” he reports on his blog. “I can't describe how beautiful it was to stand on top, to know that I was the first nurse in the world to do the Seven Summits. Hopefully this is going to help a lot with the Summit Scholarship.”
Hickey is using the unusually high soap box of Everest—the last of the climbs he has made of the highest mountain on each of the seven continents—to raise money for the College of Nursing's Summit Scholarship. Statistics show a nursing vacancy rate of 18 percent in the Palmetto State, which recruits 40 percent of its nurses from outside the state. A lack of scholarship money to attract nursing students has been a problem.
“I've been an advocate for nursing all my life,” says Hickey, who also has three degrees from the University. “It's nice to be able to take advantage of this opportunity to let the public know about the nursing shortage.”
Hear more from Hickey in a series of video vignettes: Videos
