The skills Professor Kirsty Digger applies in treating patients in the emergency room today will make up the lessons she teaches tomorrow.

“My students know I apply the same information I present to them in my own clinical practice,” she said.  

Digger, who has been teaching nursing at New Paltz for three years, continues to work as a full-time nurse outside the classroom. The demanding job allows her to maintain her clinical skills. She says the experiences allow her to have the best of both the educational and medical worlds.

“I love being a nurse,” she said. “I feel like I make a difference in people’s lives.”

In the emergency room she gets to help people through crises. Digger says she likes the excitement of not knowing what is coming through the hospital doors. In the classroom, she encourages discussion so that her students, who are licensed nurses pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing, feel comfortable sharing their own knowledge and experiences.

“I encourage my students to bring their experiences into the classroom,” she said.

Digger, who received her master’s degree in nursing from New Paltz in 2004, is planning to begin working on her doctorate at Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., this fall where she will focus on how technology enhances the classroom experience. Digger already uses an audience response system to gauge if a lesson is successful. She teaches a graduate level course where students learn how to use personal digital assistants (PDA), equipped with pharmaceutical and diagnostic software including information on drug resources, disease processes and differential diagnosis, in clinical classroom settings.

Digger says the use of technology in the classroom allows her to keep her classes student-centered, not teacher-centered.