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Nursing program hits Metro
National nursing shortage leads to new bachelor degree at Auraria
by Jenni Grubbs
The Metropolitan
On Feb. 8, 31 students entered uncharted territory at Metro.
They became part of the first semester of Metro’s
new Accelerated Nursing Program.
The program allows up to 32 bachelor’s degree-holding
students per semester to become registered nurses in one year.
There is already a waiting list to get into the program.
“(Starting this program) was important to both Metro
and the nursing program,” Metro Director of College Communications
Cathy Lucas said. Due to the national nursing shortage, she said, it is
important to allow students who already have a degree and want to become
nurses to do so more quickly.
Metro is partnering with Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital,
Kaiser Permanente and Colorado Permanente Medical Group to offer the accelerated
program.
The three partners donated $394,000 for its launch, part
of which paid for a state-of-the-art lab with a training tool called Sim-man,
which can talk and breathe, has a heartbeat and pulse, can show pain by
moaning and can receive injections.
“We know that it’s our job to train the next
generation of caregivers,” said Barb Wertz, vice president of patient
services and chief nursing officer at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital. “We
hope to give these nurses not only a good science background but also
the art of caring.”
The cost of the program for students is about $22,000, which
includes tuition, lab fees, books and health insurance, Lucas said.
Each student who goes through the program receives a $500 scholarship,
and if students agree to work at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital after graduation,
they can receive up to a $15,000 loan guarantee.
The program requires that a student already have a bachelor’s
degree from an accredited college or university, but that degree can be
in virtually anything.
There are three prerequisite classes, however: Anatomy and
Physiology I and II and Microbiology.
During the program, students will perform eight to12 weeks
of clinical rotations, both at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital and a Kaiser
Permanente facility, which, Lucas said, will be integrated with classroom
work.
Metro’s partnership with Colorado Permanente Medical
Group, which is a physicians’ organization, is the first of its
kind, said its director, Dr. Jack Cochran.
“Physicians don’t have a very big say in the
nursing shortage,” Cochran said.
He said his organization decided to “get off the sidelines”
and do something about it.
One of the ways in which they did this was through donating
to the new Metro program.
“It’s time for physicians to get involved in
the nursing shortage instead of watching it happen,” he said.
He said the program is a great source of pride for himself
and his group.
Cochran’s goals for this program are to challenge
other physicians into action and “at a local level, we hope that
every place there is a Permanente Physician that there are great nurses.”
Wertz said Exempla St. Joseph Hospital wants the end result
to be an ease in the nursing shortage.
Lucas said the three partners got together and formulated
the program over eight months of intensive work between Metro and its
partners.
Working together was what made the program happen, Wertz
said.
“If we can do this together, we can come up with a
program that will really help,” she said she remembers thinking
during the planning phase.
The program has now left the planning phase and started
working toward achieving Cochran and Wertz’s goals.
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