Ten Albany Tech nursing students to be honored at virtual pinning ceremony

ALBANY – The Albany Technical College Practical Nursing Program will hold a spring 2021 virtual pinning ceremony on Tuesday beginning at 4 p.m., via the college’s YouTube channel.

Ten Albany Technical College students will recite the Nightingale Pledge in honor of the sacred ceremony. Pinning candidates include:

♦ Felicia Battle

♦ Nierial Bennett

♦ Valeria Hernandez

♦ Bernice Kabiro

♦ Angela Marshall

♦ Danielle McNeil

♦ Kaysha Moultrie

♦ Shanice Pyles

♦ Monica Quiroz

♦ Yulia Roach

Six additional students will be capped to commend them on reaching the halfway point of their goal, including:

♦ Adrinne Brown

♦ Kitano Cromartie

♦ Vanzolla Davis

♦ Tiffany Edmonds

♦ Clara Norton

♦ Shakerria Tullis

“We are always so proud to see these nursing students graduate,” Albany Tech President Anthony Parker said. “They were able to complete the necessary clinical hours and graduate with an associate’s degree. The need in our community for qualified nurses has never been so important, and we celebrate their success.”

Guest speaker for the ceremony is Anita Edenfield, practical nursing instructor at Albany Technical College. A native of Florence, Ala., Edenfield became a nurse aide on a labor and delivery unit at a Valdosta Hospital early in life. It was then that she knew that she wanted to be a nurse. She first obtained her LPN license from Valdosta Technical School. She later moved to Albany and attended Albany Junior College to obtain her associate’s degree in nursing.

Edenfield continued to work in labor and delivery and went on to Maternal Outreach Education for the 6th Perinatal Center in Georgia. During that time, she got her BSN from Thomas University. After seven years, she traveled the east coast with Philips Medical Systems, working with training for OB traceView and other informatic systems.

After coming back to Georgia, she lived and worked in Moultrie, where she became an obstetrical manager at Colquitt Regional Medical Center. Edenfield came back to Albany, worked for Phoebe Putney Health System as an appeals and denial coordinator for years until she obtained employment with Albany Technical College in 2013 after retiring from Phoebe. She retired from ATC in December 2020 and has continued with the college as an adjunct instructor.

A distinctive feature of the pinning ceremony is always the Nightingale Pledge. According to the Museum of Nursing History, this tradition goes back to England and the Maltese Cross, which crusaders wore as a symbol of service to Christianity. As a result of Florence Nightingale’s influence, the importance of nurses training was recognized, and hospitals began developing programs. The Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London designed and awarded a badge with a Maltese Cross to the nurses as they completed their program.

By 1916, the tradition had migrated to the United States. Eventually, all schools of nursing were awarding and designing custom pins. The nursing pin and ceremony are meaningful to the graduating classes. It is a symbol of the completion of educational requirements that enables a nurse to sit for state licensure exams and eventually practice nursing.

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