A total of 64 USC Aiken student nurses participated in a hands dedication in February - a washing ceremony to symbolize the healing and comfort they would provide to hospital patients before beginning their clinicals.
Dr. Julia Ball, a USCA professor, created the ceremony about 10 years ago.
Earlier this month, she took the program to the University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg, Germany. Ball taught there three years ago.
She was joined for the event by Dr. Thayer McGahee, USCA's School of Nursing dean.
"It was a very moving ceremony, and we had a beautiful time," Ball said. "They really wanted to do this, and the president of the college attended. No parents were invited - only the nurses. It's a different culture, and they didn't want a show, just the spiritual experience."
The ceremony has other meaningful components.
Years ago, Ball learned about an initiative created by Jean Watson, a prominent theorist. Watson's work concentrates on human caring, which includes a worldwide "chain of light" in honoring the nursing profession.
During the USCA dedication service last month, Professor Dr. Maureen Bravo noted a lighted candle that had been passed on to the USCA nursing school by Dr. Sylvia Lufkin, a former head of nursing at the Francis Marion School of Nursing.
Lufkin brought the candles to USCA from Watson.
The candlelight symbolizes "the unity of nurses all over the world to each other and to our commitment to human caring," Bravo said. Ball continued the chain by taking a candle to the nursing ceremony in Germany.
As the German graduates learned, "The hands dedication gets students to think about their hands," Ball said.
USCA's students have been working with manikins for many months. The hands dedication and the chain of light at the ceremony "makes it real, where they can focus on the heart, mind and spirit," Ball said.
Senior writer Rob Novit is the Aiken Standard's education reporter and has been with the newspaper since September 2001. He is a native of Walterboro and majored in journalism at the University of Georgia.