Nursing to debut in fall

This fall North Lake will be among a handful of district colleges to offer nursing.

What does this mean for NLC students? They can take nursing courses on campus, but at the end of two years they will get their nursing degree from El Centro, according to Charlotte Green, program director of Health and Legal Studies Division at El Centro College.

But why El Centro? Because instead of Brookhaven, NLC will be the new remote (satellite) campus for El Centro’s nursing program. Brookhaven will start its own nursing from fall 2004 and will stop being the remote campus.

With NLC as the satellite campus, El Centro’s 460 nursing students will have increased flexibility in campus location and lab and classroom space. Consequently, about 50 newly admitted students and 50 second-year nursing students will attend North Lake this fall, said Green.

What differentiates nursing from other programs is the competitive admissions, said Martha Hughes, vice president of instruction at NLC. There are four pre-requisites that students must complete with a minimum GPA of 2.5 before they are eligible to apply. Those pre-requisites, which are offered at NLC, are: anatomy and physiology, college algebra, freshman English and introduction to psychology.

Once students finish the pre-requisites, they can then apply with the help of an admissions specialist who will be available at NLC. However, the complete application will be sent to El Centro for the student selection into the program.

To provide information about nursing, El Centro will hold orientation sessions on campus next month. Green explained that these sessions are for those who will enter the nursing program in spring 2005.

Hughes said that anyone who thinks he or she might like nursing is encouraged to attend these sessions.

So what’s involved in the program? Nursing classes are offered only in fall and spring. There are no summer courses but Hughes pointed out that students can take support courses like additional science and humanities in summer.

Under this program, students will not only gain classroom information, but also perform clinical work at area hospitals. They, accompanied by a professor, will visit these hospitals in groups of ten.

“It’s not just the book part or practicing giving shots. It’s a total experience in what it takes to be a good nurse,” said Hughes.

But students beware. Nursing is a difficult program and the dropout rate is high. “Students must be very dedicated to rigorous schedules for the two years that they are in the program,” said Green. Frequent reasons for the high dropout rate are financial and family issues, she said.

Hence, to reduce this attrition rate, Green said that students will be offered scholarships, counseling and enrichment activities.

Despite the program’s challenges, enrollment is high in nursing because of shortage of nurses. “The hospitals want more nurses and need more nurses,” Hughes said. “It’s certainly a high demand career. It pays well.”

The nursing program will also require some physical changes to the campus. Space in the T-building will be altered to accommodate skills labs that will have beds and dummy oxygen setups. “We are going to try to have three labs with four to five beds each,” said Marilyn Mays, the interim division dean of Math, Natural Science and Sports Division.

The faculty for the nursing program will come from El Centro. In addition, El Centro will appoint a director of nursing, a skills lab co-coordinator and a lab assistant, all of whom will report to the math and science division, Hughes said.

So how will the performance of nursing be measured? A few success measures for the program will be: program completion rates, number of students passing the registered nursing exam and student performance at the hospitals.

The biggest challenge for the NLC administration is getting the T-building ready. But for now the nursing program is on track. “It’s real, it’s happening and we are going full steam ahead,” said Hughes.