| Vernon College Texas schools need to double the numbers of nursing graduates,
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| Thursday
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Wanting to be a nurse and actually becoming one is tricky business for many students who start out in the ever-popular health care profession.
The shortage of nurses and the low graduation rates of nurses in the state’s nursing programs — including low rates in nursing programs at Vernon College and Midwestern State University — is today’s top local issue in health care, according to the dean of the nursing school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Patricia L. Starck described the problem at last week’s annual meeting of the Southern Regional Education Board’s Council on Collegiate Education for Nursing.
In her Houston-Galveston region, the nursing program showed a 67 percent graduation rate for students who began their studies in 2001.
That rate is higher than most, she said.
“We absolutely must improve these graduation rates if we are ever going to solve this nursing shortage problem,” Starck said.
A nursing program is difficult, especially for students who are still learning English or who need to work at a job or tend to a family while completing the program, she said.
Graduation rates tend to be low, whether a student decides to become a registered nurse and sit for her state exam by first completing an associate degree program, a diploma program or a baccalaureate program.
Records released by Vernon College’s Associate Degree nursing program showed a 60 percent graduation rate of students who began the program in Fall 2006. Sixty-seven began the program in fall 2006 and 40 of those students graduated in 2008.
This program begins with general education courses, then has four semesters of nursing coursework.
Licensed vocational nurse transition students who were admitted in summer 2007 showed a 78 percent graduation rate. Forty-nine LVN students started the program that summer and 38 graduated in 2008.
Vernon College’s LVN is a one-year certification program that begins in the summer session and ends with the following spring semester.
The two groups together showed a 67 percent graduation rate, according to information from Cathy Bolton, director of VC’s Associate Degree Nursing Program, and Lynn Kalski, director of its LVN Program.
Vernon College’s most recent LVN Program, with 91 students beginning in Fall 2007, showed 46 graduates as of August 2008. Of those, 37 have earned a license.
Midwestern State University, which offers a longer, four-year baccalaureate program, shows a current graduation rate of 32 percent for students who were new, first-time undergraduates in fall 2000 and signed up for the nursing program.
Of the 69 who began the nursing program in fall 2000, two graduated with a nursing degree in four years (3 percent graduation rate), nine graduated with a degree in nursing in five years (a 13 percent graduation rate), 15 graduated with a degree in nursing from the same cohort after six years (a 22 percent graduation rate) and currently 22 of the 69 have graduated from the Fall 2000 group, for a 32 percent graduation rate.
Classes have gotten consistently larger at MSU since then, with a fall 2001 group of 85 nursing students, a fall 2003 group of 105 and a fall 2004 group of 110.
Of the 85 students who began their MSU nursing program in fall 2001, 13 graduated after 4 years, 19 had graduated after 5 years, 27 had graduated after 6 years, and 32 have currently graduated, for an overall 38 percent graduation rate from that cohort.
“This is a subject of discussion, not only in our faculty, but at the state level and at a variety of different places. It’s a national issue,” said Dr. Susan Sportsman, dean of MSU’s College of Health Sciences and Human Services. “The shortage is huge. It is huge.”
Texas schools need to double the numbers of nursing graduates, which totaled 7,000 for the state in 2006-07, Sportsman said. “And this is after we have had a significant growth over the last six years. It’s an economic issue for the state. You have all us baby boomers who are going to need health care. You simply must have nurses to provide that level of health care.”
Sportsman said when she was hired by MSU 11 years ago, the university was graduating 40 or 50 nursing students a year. In May 2008, MSU graduated 120 undergrads. The school has about 260 to 300 students in its undergraduate program now, she said.
MSU has flexed, opening up the program to bring in students at two times during the year instead of just one. “It allows students who have to stop out for awhile not to have to wait a whole year to get in,” she said.
To retain its nursing students, Vernon College started faculty-driven tutoring sessions for interested students, particularly those who score lower than 78 percent on their module tests in any course.
The school also uses a simulated laboratory setting with manikins to help students master technical nursing skills.
VC increased pre-admission test scores for admission, requiring a 2.5 GPA, compared to the 2.0 it once required. VC also requires its students to pass the HESI exit exam prior to graduation and has increased its passing standard from 75 percent to 78 percent.
MSU also provides students with a simulated lab and created a program at its university academic support center to help nursing students with their early coursework.
One faculty member’s job is to provide exclusive help with applying the massive amounts of information into practical nursing skills, Sportsman said.
MSU nursing students complete two years (60 hours) of preliminary coursework, then apply and must be accepted to the five-semester nursing program, which usually takes two years and a summer session to complete. Then students must sit for the NCLEX test, the state’s ticket to working as a registered nurse.
MSU also helps students find scholarships “to encourage them not to work (at outside jobs) any more than they absolutely have to,” Sportsman said of the time-intensive major, “The amount of time they have committed to their course of study is significant: They must go to class, go to clinicals, go to the sim lab.”
According to Vernon College’s Christie Lehman, the greatest challenge to increasing VC’s graduation rates “is finding students who possess the discipline and willingness to meet the academic and time commitments that nursing education requires.”
Education reporter Ann Work can be reached at (940)763-7538 .source
Vocational Nursing schools in Texas |
posted by blogger @ 18:18
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Thanks for the great post, I started my career in nursing after finishing a associate degree in nursing from associate degree nursing schools