Dana Woody teaches about healing
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From a young age, Dr. Dana Woody assumed a role that would guide her life and career: caregiver.
Woody found her calling to be a nurse after seeing her father and grandmother experience chronic heart disease.
In her time working in the hospital, Woody was vested in pediatrics, cardiology and chronic disease management. This allowed her to float around the hospital and witness and engage in many aspects of health.
Working with heart failure patients in the hospital opened up the opportunity for Woody to develop the first chronic disease management clinic for heart failure in central Virginia. As a heart failure nurse, she realized a lot of patients and their families have a lack of understanding about the disease. This helped her choose her doctoral scholarly project: health literacy.
Woody graduated from Liberty’s inaugural doctorate program in 2016, and she now serves as a nursing professor.
Specifically, Woody explained that her doctorate focused on “looking at chronic disease patients in regards to health literacy and their understanding of the disease process.”
She has been able to apply vital insight from her experience and doctoral work to the classes she teaches to help her students engage with patients more effectively and thoughtfully. Her research and passion for addressing health not only impacts the future of how nursing is taught, but how patients receive care and how families perceive a chronic disease.
Aside from being a former heart failure nurse, professor at Liberty, wife and mother to five children, Woody spends her time serving in the community.
“I made an intentional investment in servitude,” Woody said. “I wanted to go out and serve others and still be a nurse, but do it in a way that I can give back to the greater good, and volunteering is part of that.”
Woody is actively involved in the local Salvation Army where she runs a hands-and-feet ministry. She also works alongside the outreach of Parkview Community Mission, is the disaster health services supervisor for the Virginia Region of the Red Cross, a regional nurse lead and an academic service-learning coordinator.
As a professor and faculty advisor for the Liberty nursing student association, Woody helps to develop nursing students.
“I have in my hands the future of a profession that has afforded me so much,” Woody said. “I have these students that I can plant the seeds of the knowledge as it relates to our profession in hopes that they can take that into the future and find the same passion that I have.”
Woody will continue to serve like-minded students and help them pursue their passion.
Auld is a feature reporter for the Liberty Champion