School of Nursing: Connections

Research: Learning across a lifetime . . .and around the world

Phyllis Schultz

Lifelong learning pays its own dividends. Just ask Phyllis Schultz, associate professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems. Schultz’ lifelong interest in the relationship between community health and the administration of health care systems led her to a year-long research leave to conduct eight cross-national case studies in the United States, England, Finland, Greek and Turkish-speaking Cyprus, and Australia. As part of this project, she applied for and received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to support her studies in Cyprus, the first member of the School of Nursing faculty to be so honored and the first Fulbright Scholar in health to study in the Cyprus community for over 30 years.

Attempting to answer the question, Is the health of a community’s population affected by its prevailing socio-political values? Schultz and her husband, Professor Robert Schultz from UW Bothell, collected political, economic and historical data from the troubled Mediterranean island in order to assess their public health practices. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the School of Nursing in Nicosia, Schultz set up two studies in the Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus and another in the northern sector of the island, which is Turkish-speaking. Since 1974, Cyprus has been physically and politically divided by a UN buffer zone, with armed guards at checkpoints on both sides. Schultz walked through the checkpoints each week to work in both the Greek and Turkish communities. And, in the five months that she spent on the island, she developed an intense affection and respect for people on both sides.

"There can be no health without peace, and there can be no peace without community," Schultz believes. "We have to be able to talk with one another and discuss our commonalities."

Believing that local public health nurses play a pivotal role in building community, Schultz and her husband organized a bicommunal public lecture in Nicosia, the capital city of the Greek-speaking Republic, and invited nurses and other health care workers from both the Greek and Turkish factions. "Some of these nurses had not been in the same room together for years and years," Schultz stated. "Others had never been with people from the other side." Schultz was presented with a book, The Trailblazers, which describes the lives of twelve pioneer women from Cyprus. One of these, a Turkish nurse named Turkan Aziz, was the Matron of Nicosia General Hospital before the island was divided. "Getting these nurses together again was a pretty heady event," Schultz recalls. "Fortunately, everyone was civil and things went well."Schultz believes that international encounters such as these are critical to today’s learning environment.

"Students are working in communities, building relationships among diverse forces. Being a community means we all have a voice and there isn’t one person with power over everyone else," she observes.

Her travel experiences have also served as a catalyst for everything she has done in her professional career — practice, education, and teaching. "It’s one of the benefits of ‘lifelong learning,’" Schultz explains, "I could draw on that, like an intellectual investment, in a way that was very gratifying." Because of her international background, Schultz further observes, she was able to "expand and diversify that investment" - a process that has also brought rich dividends to the students under her tutelage.