Area nursing schools are using the Internet to allow practicing nurses to obtain advanced degrees while remaining at work in their nursing jobs.
Last month, Trinity Medical Center announced a partnership with the University of Alabama's Capstone College of Nursing that will allow nurses to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Nursing or a Master of Science in Nursing degree.
Through the use of the Internet, student nurses can complete the required nursing courses for the BSN degree in one year, without facing the restrictions of being in class on a specific time and day. Instead, RN students have the flexibility of choosing the best time to go online and complete the requirements. Clinical activities are designed on an individual basis, and efforts are made to arrange locations and times convenient to students.
UA received a $750,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services for 2004-2007 to expand the RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing track. The grant provided state-of-the-art laptop computers that can be loaned to students while they are enrolled in the program.
"At a time when the national nursing shortage is creating more demand for working nurses, it is also providing additional opportunities for them," says Jeanette VanderMeer, DSN, RN, assistant professor in the Capstone College of Nursing and coordinator of RN mobility. "It's imperative that we offer as much convenience as possible to those interested in earning advanced degrees."
Nurse anesthetists are the target of a new master's degree program at Samford University's Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing.
"We are planning to offer a mobility program for practicing nurse anesthetists who do not hold a master's degree in nursing," says Nena Sanders, DSN, MSN, Samford nursing school dean. In the past, she explains, nurse anesthetists did not have to hold a master's degree to be certified to practice. But that's changing. "The discipline is requiring that a master's be the standard in the future, so we're going to help those practitioners acquire their master's in a quick manner."
While the program is still being finalized, these students will get credit for their nurse anesthetist course work and for the nursing degree already earned. Graduate courses will be streamlined and will be offered online, so practicing nurse anesthetists can do the coursework at home and accommodate their work schedule. The school hopes to start admitting students to the new program this fall.
Samford also uses the Internet in its RN to Master of Science in Nursing program.
"This program's unique in the state because we do not require that the student earn a baccalaureate degree in order to get a master's degree," Sanders says. Practicing nurses who have an associate degree or a diploma can enter the program and graduate with a MSN in five semesters."
The program is three years old but was revamped last year to include a portfolio aspect, where the skills and knowledge nurses already have learned on the job are evaluated and built into the program. "Because as you know, people don't want to take a course to learn something that they've been doing for 20 years," Sanders says.
UAB's School of Nursing has increased the number of students in its graduate program by sixfold over the past five years by using the Internet to allow working nurses all over the state to get their degrees.
"In an attempt to really support nurses to learn where they live and work rather than removing them from their positions — because that doesn't really help the nursing shortage — we have developed a number of Web-enhanced courses that students can take," says UAB School of Nursing Dean Doreen Harper, PhD, RN, FAAN. Students come to campus at scheduled intervals for competency-based testing. For the clinical requirements of the degree, the school developed clinical contracts with agencies and hospitals and healthcare facilities in the area that they work and live. Faculty go out and "work the state," she says, to work with those students in the clinical environment.
Harper notes that in UAB's family nurse practitioner program, students have class delivered through a "chat" system that allows them to converse with their classmates and their instructor live through the computer. "It is not just online work, it is interactive," she says. "The truth of the matter is there's more participation [than traditional courses], because every student interacts, rather than sitting in a large lecture where only a few students raise their hands."
May 2007
