Jessica Prothe is determined to use her personal experience to drive meaningful change.
Jessica Prothe
A nurse with over a decade of experience, Prothe was working in medical-surgical units, pediatric wards and on the front lines providing direct patient care. But after she had elective surgery, her health changed to the extent that working as a nurse wasn’t possible.
“I left my (nursing) position because I was having severe health complications from breast implant devices,” said Prothe. “However, I utilized my nursing knowledge to regain my health, and now I am using my nursing knowledge to help others.”
Breast implant surgery, also known as breast augmentation, is the surgical placement of breast implant devices into the human body. For Prothe, the surgery brought side effects that she never anticipated.
Prothe took control of her health crisis and reversed course. In 2021 she enrolled in NIU School of Nursing graduate program and used her personal challenges to do research, lobby, publish articles and make a difference.
“Our (first) article was born in Nursing 604, an evidence-based practice nursing research course facilitated by Dr. Jie Chen,” Prothe said. “We published an article that could potentially initiate a worldwide nursing practice change.”
Chen, a former cardiac surgical nurse, began teaching at NIU in 2009. She said it’s imperative that nurses can read research critically to determine whether the findings are trustworthy and unbiased, so that they can make ethical, evidence-based decisions when caring for patients.
“To achieve this goal, nursing research courses like Nursing 604 (Advanced Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing) are designed to provide students with practical skills to critique and integrate research evidence, for guiding improvements in nursing practice and patient outcomes,” Chen said.
Prothe and fellow NIU students Paul Rozovics, Robyn Sykes, and Michael Taccona dug in. They focused on breast implant surgery and asked the research question, “Do breast implant devices cause systemic illness and cancer? “
“In addition to quickly determining that breast implant devices do cause systemic illness and cancer, our group discovered that it is not standard healthcare practice to screen every patient at every healthcare encounter for the presence or absence of an implantable device,” Prothe said. “By not doing so, we noted that healthcare professionals and nurses might miss the opportunity to quickly identify systemic illness and cancer that could be related to an implantable device, specifically breast implant devices.”
Prothe said they also noted that evaluating patients for implantable devices is absent from the nursing process, specifically the nursing assessment.
“Our group determined this to be a significant patient safety concern, and we initiated a formal call for nursing action,” Prothe said. “In response, with the guidance of many nurses, we developed the screening tool called Universal Screening for Implantable Devices.“
Prothe said they define Universal Screening for Implantable Devices as assessing all patients for the presence or absence of an implantable device at every healthcare encounter.
Professor Chen said that Prothe’s resilient and courageous spirit is impressive – and it’s making a difference.
“Jessica is devoting herself to improving patient safety in breast implant surgery,” Chen said. “It is astonishing to see how quickly she transformed herself from a research-naive student to a nurse leader who excels in translating research evidence to guide practice. She is truly an inspiration for her peers.”
Learn more about NIU School of Nursing.
Check out two of the team’s published articles:
Breast Implant Surgery: An Overview of the Risks and Health Complications – PubMed (nih.gov)
