SU nurse earns state ‘Student of the Year’ recognition

Southern University graduate student Angela Dykes has received the “Nurse Practitioner Student of the Year” award from the Louisiana Association of Nurse Practitioners at its recent conference held in New Orleans.

To earn the award a nursing student must demonstrate excellence as a nurse practitioner; utilize critical thinking in the promotion of high quality care, and must provide significant contributions to the improvement of nursing care for individuals, families, and communities.

Dykes was nominated for the award in her final semester in Southern’s nurse practitioner program.

Dykes was nominated for the award by Interim Nursing School Dean Cheryl Taylor and Dr. Sandra Brown, a professor in the nursing school. In their nomination, Taylor and Brown described Dykes as “an exemplary nurse practitioner student who possesses excellent clinical and interpersonal skills and is a role model for other nurse practitioner students.”

Brown and Wade have been inspirational in developing her confidence, Dykes said, not only to work proficiently “but also to make significant differences in the community.”

Dykes is the mother of a daughter and three sons. One of her sons is a student at Southern.

She has been a registered nurse for 19 years. The past five years she has worked at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. She works with long-term, as well as acute care patients. Dykes has worked as a patient safety nurse and conducted research on the effects of white noise and music on pain and anxiety after surgery.

The veteran nurse says she has always wanted to “help and care for people who need it the most.” It’s a service, she said, is a medical professional’s responsibility to the community.

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