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When Han Su was in junior high in Taiwan, her classmates noticed that she could take one look at a person and know when they were feeling a little off or were about to get sick. No one else could see anything unusual and even Su couldn’t put her finger on what signals she was picking up, yet she was invariably correct. Her friends suggested she should go into a caring profession, and she listened. As an adult, Su went to nursing school and became an intensive care nurse.
Her mother, who was also a nurse, was thrilled, but Su wasn’t initially sure she had made the right choice. It took a few years into the job before “I realized I really loved nursing,” says Su, PhD. During the decade she spent in the intensive care unit (ICU), Su noticed that patients who were on ventilators to assist with breathing often developed ventilator-associated pneumonia and other problems as a result. She was searching for interventions in the medical literature and discovered something she hadn’t been looking for: She loved research.
I realized I really loved nursing
HAN SU, PHD, RN
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Su decided to pursue a doctorate degree in nursing science. She wanted to go to the U.S. where she had spent two months in high school learning English. She chose the University of Washington in Seattle, a top nursing school. Her dissertation looked at factors associated with post-ICU syndrome, which includes physical ailments like muscle weakness, cognitive problems such as brain fog and mental illness like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her focus was whether ICU survivors were able to return to work. Getting back to work after a critical illness was a sign the patient had made a good functional recovery and was an important indicator of their future economic stability, Su found. Those who were unemployed experienced reduced incomes and higher levels of poverty, which was associated with a range of health inequities.
Much previous research about employment outcomes for hospital patients dealt with people who had experienced stroke or injuries to their spinal cords or brains and had undergone rehabilitation.
Su’s research found that there wasn’t one thing that predicted whether someone who had spent time in an ICU would go back to work. There were “multi-level risk factors,” she says, including gender, race and socio-economic standing. Workplace policies and co-worker attitudes also had an impact. “I realized I needed more training on how to measure risk factors at the community level,” she says. “That’s why I needed a post-doctoral position.”
Han is an incredibly ambitious and goal-oriented post-doctoral fellow
ALLEN HEINEMANN, PHD
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A Google search turned up a post-doctoral program at Northwestern University and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab that was a perfect fit with her interests. And the COVID pandemic made her research focus even more relevant as millions of people emerged from ICU stays with severe physical, cognitive impairments or PTSD. Su started her two-year fellowship in January 2021 and has become a key player in several ongoing studies at the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, including one looking at employment barriers for people who acquire a disability.
"Han is an incredibly ambitious and goal-oriented post-doctoral fellow,” says CROR Director Allen Heinemann, PhD, one of Su’s mentors. “She has sought out funding independently and seizes opportunities to contribute to manuscripts reporting original research.” Adds another of her mentors, Anne Deutsch, PhD: “She is genuinely interested in helping ICU survivors by understanding the facilitators and barriers associated with them returning to work. In thinking about her research plans, she is both curious and practical.” Su’s hard work recently paid off when she accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor from Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing.
On a personal level, though, the last two years have been tough. Before COVID, Su would typically make two trips home to Taiwan to see her parents and other family members, but she hasn’t been back in two years. She has spent the time with her cat, Baby, whom she adopted in Seattle during the pandemic and brought with her to Chicago. Baby turned out to be great company when Su was poring over medical literature in the evenings. She acknowledges her life is mostly focused on work. “Some of my friends think I should have more fun,” Su says. “But for me, sitting with my cat and reading journals is fun. I mean that.”