SIMI VALLEY : Adult School Celebrates Nurses’ Day

Students and alumni of the Simi Valley Adult School vocational nursing class celebrated their instructors and the program during a ceremony commemorating National Nurses’ Day on Friday.

School officials said they were especially proud of the program’s director and assistant director, Lois Harrion and Adel Blanco. They are among a dozen nurses statewide chosen to help write questions for the national vocational nursing licensing test.

They spent four days last December in Chicago coming up with questions, and Harrion is scheduled to go again this summer.

“These nurses are certainly held in high esteem,” said Susan Woodward, from her office at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing in Chicago. “They are ensuring the protection of the public by writing test questions and keeping the test up to date.”

At Friday’s luncheon, Harrion praised her students, who include nuns training to help the sick in their order, a laid-off, middle-aged banker who is changing jobs, and young men and women just beginning their careers.

“Nurses do great things,” Harrion said. “For me, it’s more than just a job. It was a calling.”

Harrion pointed out that every student in the Simi Valley Adult School’s Class of 1994 had passed the licensing test, the first class at the school to achieve such an honor. She has set similar goals for the Class of 1995, which graduates in August.

Sister Mary Bernadette of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Thousand Oaks came back Friday to the school where she learned her nursing skills. She said events such as nurses’ day reaffirm the profession’s importance.

“The bedside and one-on-one care that a nurse provides will never be replaced by machines,” she said. “We’ll always be an important part of medicine.”