Whether it be helping families cope with the loss of a loved one, connecting homeless patients to community services or providing drug-addicted mothers with treatment options, social workers all work toward the common goal of facilitating positive change in the lives of patients and families.

Laura Jarosemich, MSN, R.N., is always teaching. It’s the role she had as a nurse educator, as an instructor at Nashville State Community College and now as a nurse at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital (VPH), both to patients and fellow nurses.

People who have problems with their sense of smell or taste and don’t know the cause have a new treatment option at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center.

Kathie Krause, MSN, R.N., Chief Nursing Officer for Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, was recently named to the board of directors of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Nashville.

Last fall, the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center became the second facility in the country and third in the world to use a fully endoscopic surgical technique to remove an acoustic neuroma, a rare benign tumor on the balance and hearing nerves.

Patients are coming to the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center from around the globe, discovering the center’s world-class services through social media. One such person is Sophia Pafitis, who traveled to Vanderbilt last year from the Australian island of Tasmania.