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As a nationwide shortage of the caregivers grows, the School of Nursing is expanding programs to help fill the gap. It’s a mission that has driven nursing education at Ohio University for the past 40 years.

THE CHANGING FACE OF NURSING

As a nationwide shortage of the caregivers grows, the School of Nursing

is expanding programs to help fill the gap. It’s a mission that has driven

nursing education at Ohio University for the past 40 years.

THE CHANGING FACE OF NURSING

By Jaclyn Lipp

A “perfect storm” of factors has converged in the United States in recent years, resulting in a

nationwide shortage of nurses that one study predicts will reach a quarter-million of the caregivers within 15 years.

The problem is even more acute in ru-ral areas such as southeast Ohio, home of Ohio University’s School of Nursing. Here, the incidence of diseases such as type 2 diabetes exceeds the national average, and health-care services are less readily available.

A major cause of the nursing shortage is demographic: Just as the massive wave of baby boomers begins rolling into retire-ment – a stage of life where they will rely more on the health-care system – the pool

of nurses available to help care for them is shrinking, since many of the caregivers are boomers themselves. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report in 2007 predicting that 587,000 new nursing jobs will open up by 2016, and a Vanderbilt University study has predicted that there will be a shortfall of 260,000 nurses by 2025.

“The average age of nurses is in their late 40s, and we haven’t been able to re-fresh the pipeline,” said Andrea Higham, director of Johnson and Johnson’s Cam-paign for Nursing’s Future, an initiative that the health-care products company launched in 2002 to help address the shortage. “Consequently, we have an aging workforce and an aging country that’s in need of greater health care. We also have a bit of a bottleneck: We cannot get enough

people educated because of a (nursing program) capacity issue and an educator issue.”

The Johnson and Johnson campaign is tackling the problem on a national level by trying to enhance the image of a nursing career and bolster recruitment, and by encouraging nursing schools to look into innovative ways to expand the capacity of their programs. So far it has raised $16 million for scholarships, faculty fellow-ships and grants for nursing programs.

At the state level, meanwhile, programs such as Ohio University’s are struggling to accommodate an influx of aspiring nurses at a time when state funding for education is dwindling. OHIO’s School of Nursing, for example, has seen its enroll-ment double in the past decade to reach 2,300 in fall 2009. In the past year alone,

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enrollment in one undergraduate pro-gram, the transitional RN-to-BSN degree, more than quadrupled to 1,400. Three new faculty members were hired last year to handle the increase, and the School is rapidly outgrowing its administrative home in Grover Center on the University’s Athens campus.

Back to the ’70sIn contrast to such rampant growth,

the beginnings of nursing education at Ohio University were modest. On the afternoon of June 21, 1970, the University graduated its first class of 29 nurses – all women. The two-year program, which was then offered only on the Zanesville regional campus, trained women in the basics of bedside care.

Friends Stephanie Westfall and Melo-die Rowles were members of that first class, and they have fond memories of a program just getting on its feet. Rowles, who now works part-time in pre-operative surgery at Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, joined the program straight out of high school and recalls sitting in classes with women of all ages, some of them mothers, and living in dorms with other nursing students.

Westfall, who works at Riverside Meth-odist Hospital in Columbus, recalls details

that reflect the times.“They had strict rules back then,” she

said. “You had to have lengthier hair and wear long dresses and white hose. No fin-gernail polish, no makeup, and you had to pull the bed sheets so tight that you could bounce a quarter off of them.”

As the Zanesville campus prepares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that first class, nursing education at Ohio Univer-sity looks markedly different than it did back then. Today, in addition to Zanes-ville, the School of Nursing has programs on OHIO’s regional campuses in Chilli-cothe and Ironton, as well as the main campus in Athens. Enrollment has grown from 29 to 2,300. And more than 130 of the students are men.

In addition to the Associate Degree in Nursing, today’s nursing students can choose among several other options, both graduate and undergraduate, that cater to both traditional students and those already in the workforce. The newest program, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing launched in fall 2009, is southeast

Ohio’s first four-year program in the field. Instead of learning how to stretch tight bed sheets, nursing students spend hours inside state-of-the-art simulation labs equipped with specialized manne-quins that can be used to demonstrate

procedures ranging from inserting an IV to giving birth.

Changing with the timesOver the years, Ohio University’s nurs-

ing programs had to evolve to meet the needs of the times. A few years after the Associate Degree program was launched, for example, the University began offering a transitional RN-to-BSN degree pro-gram through its regional campuses. The

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The Ohio University-Zanesville cam-pus is celebrating the 40th anniver-sary of its nursing program by hold-ing a series of events throughout 2009-’10, including the following:

May 11, 2009: Registered nurses Gloria Kieffer, Amanda Robbins and Becky Joseph gave a presen-tation titled “Nursing: A Caring Continuum” to nearly 300 nursing professionals, chronicling the laughs and tears they have shared during through their years of nursing.

July 30, 2009: Nursing students gave a presentation titled “So You Want to Be a Nurse” in Zanesville area elementary schools to intro-duce youngsters to the profession.

May 13, 2010: Alumni Weekend events will include a silent auc-tion, fashion show, dinner and a presentation by speaker Faith Roberts.

May 14, 2010: Tour of Zanesville campus, burial of a time capsule and an alumni picnic honoring the first class of nursing graduates.

May 15, 2010: Individual class reunion meetings, tour of Genesis Chapel and Power of the Purse fund-raiser for the American Red Cross.

For more details about upcoming events, go to:

http://www.zanesville.ohiou.edu/nursing40th

MARKING 40 YEARS

OF NURSING

program offers registered nurses through-out Ohio, who have a two-year degree, the opportunity to complete the course work to earn a baccalaureate degree. The program went online in 2005, a boon for busy students unable to travel to a physi-cal classroom as they juggled the demands of a job and family and.

The master’s program was introduced on the Athens campus in 2004 and offers three specializations: family nurse prac-titioner, education and administration. In 2008, the program received a federal grant of nearly $800,000 to launch a program called Grow Our Own that of-fers graduate students the opportunity to specialize as an acute-care practitioner through the nursing program’s partner-ship with regional medical centers.

The most recent program addition, the Bachelor of Science in Nursing, enrolled 207 pre-nursing students in fall 2009. This group is mostly traditional students – that is, they are recent high school gradu-ates mostly from Ohio. A hundred of these will be selected to advance into the core program once they finish their general-education and nursing prerequisites. The group will start clinical courses in spring 2011 and, if all goes according to plan, become the first BSN Class in 2013. The four-year program has filled a gap in the School’s educational programming and is expected to help ease the region’s nursing shortage.

“Ohio University developed the BSN program in response to the ongoing critical need for educating and retaining baccalaureate-prepared nurses to work in rural, underserved areas of southeastern Ohio,” said Mary Bowen, professor and director of the School of Nursing, and associate executive dean of nursing educa-tion for OHIO’s regional campuses. “Stu-dents now have the opportunity to realize their career goal of becoming professional nurses without leaving their community, and remain in their home communities to practice following graduation.”

Sophomore pre-nursing major Courtney Fort of Shaker Heights, Ohio, is among the first students to take classes toward the BSN. Having always wanted to follow her mother, a surgical nurse, into health-care, Fort switched into the new nursing program as soon as she heard

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SCHOOL OF NURSING MILESTONES1970

1975

1976

1980

1983

1990

2000

2004

Ohio University graduates its first nursing class when 29 students on regional campus in Zanesville receive an Associate Degree in Nursing.

School of Nursing is established in College of Education on Ohio Univer-sity’s Athens campus.

Ohio University graduates first three students from its RN-to-BSN program, which today operates on regional campuses in Ironton, Chillicothe and Zanesville. Program offers baccalaureate degree in nursing to registered nurses in southeast Ohio.

School of Nursing moves from College of Education to College of Health and Human Services, which had formed a year earlier. Total enrollment for all nursing programs on all campuses is 600.

School of Nursing receives accreditation from National League for Nursing.

Total enrollment for all nursing programs on all campuses is 900.

Nursing programs on regional campuses become part of School of Nursing on Athens campus. Total enrollment for all nursing programs on all campuses is 1,250.

Program granting Master of Science in Nursing launches on Athens campus, offering three specializations: family nurse practitioner, edu-cation and administration.

2005

2009

All courses in RN-to-BSN program move online as result of student input and data indicating comparable learn-ing outcomes for online curriculums.

School of Nursing launches southeast Ohio’s first four-year nursing program in fall, welcoming 207 pre-nursing students who seek Bachelor of Sci-ence in Nursing. Total enrollment for all nursing programs on all campuses is 2300.

about it. Like that first nursing class of 1970, she likes the idea of being a pioneer.

“Since it’s going to be the first year of the program, I thought why not be new and be a trailblazer,” she said. “They’re doing everything they can to make it the best that it is. They reached out and got great teachers. I love the nursing faculty – they’re very warm and supportive. I’ve met some of the best people.”

New faces, same missionDespite the national shortage of nurs-

ing staffers and educators, OHIO’s School of Nursing has managed to hire three ad-ditional faculty members in the past year.

Christina Nyirati, an assistant profes-sor who began teaching in the family-nurse-practitioner master’s program in January 2009, brims with excitement as she talks about the school and its future. When asked about her hopes for the school, Nyirati (pronounced Near-a-Tee) points to a sign on her door that reads “Center of Excellence for Appalachian Health.” She hopes there is a plaque with those words one day honoring her school.

A strong believer in prevventive care for families, Nyirati years ago worked in rural Adams County east of Cincinnati, where she helped create a program for underserved teens. She always wanted to return to rural Ohio and help a medically underserved population.

“Many of the family-nurse-practitioner students here are Appalachian,” Nyirati said. “They have such a deep desire to do what I want to do and bring good care to their community. I have this real passion and dream for what can happen here. We need to be leaders in culturally competent care.”

Another newcomer, Denise Ferrell, is an assistant professor who teaches in the BSN and RN-to-BSN programs. Before coming to Ohio University, she taught at colleges in Indiana, where she was honored with a nurse of the year award for developing a minority mentorship program. Connecting with students keeps her motivated in her profession.

“It’s those ‘Aha!’ moments that the students give you when they’re enlight-ened to something,” Ferrell said. “When you can see those light bulbs go off, it’s amazing. You know that you’ve connected

with the students and they got it. Then it’s all worth it.”

Selena Yearwood, the third newcomer, is an assistant professor who has been teaching for 18 years and knows it will be challenging to pare down the list of 207 pre-nursing students to the 100 who will advance in the BSN program.

“I’ve only been here a matter of weeks, but I see an awful lot of potential,” Year-wood said. “I am on the selection commit-tee and right now we’re trying to hammer out the requirements for admission (into the core BSN curriculum). We’re going to have our work cut out for us to select students.”

A promising futureBowen, the School’s director, is a rela-

tive newcomer to the program as well, having joined Ohio University a year ago. She and her predecessor, interim director Kathy Rose-Grippa, helped get the BSN program off the ground, and Bowen hopes to push the School past more milestones, including adding facilities. A nursing simulation lab is in the works for Grover Center, and Bowen expects it to be com-pleted by 2012, in time for the first BSN cohort to use.

“The lab will be able to help nursing students make connections between the classroom and clinical setting before they ever step foot in a clinical agency,” Bowen said.

The facility will be equipped with state-of-the-art mannequins such as SimBaby, a $28,000 technological marvel that can breathe, cry, cough and respond to human touch. The facility will also help student nurses master the use of electron-ic health records, Bowen said, and enable the School to meet increasing calls from both academia and industry that nursing students meet more rigorous scholarship requirements in science and technology.

In addition to the lab, Bowen has other strategic initiatives for the coming years. These include expansion of the RN-to-BSN program, finding ways to enhance the culture of philanthropy for the School, and building collaborative relationships within and outside the university.

One of those collaborations will involve a planned Ohio University Academic Health Center that is to be a working

partnership between programs of the new College of Health Sciences and Professions and the College of Osteopathic Medicine, as well as other health-related programs at the University. The center, which is expected to be launched later this year, is intended to align the clinical, academic and research efforts of all health-related programs at OHIO into a collaborative structure that will enhance the effective-ness of all its constituent units.

“Trends and developments in health education in the 21st century,” Bowen said, “have been impacted by demographic changes, technological and scientific advances, and continued cost pressures. We have been forced to reexamine how we prepare health practitioners, and the Academic Health Center offers expanded education opportunities and practice op-portunities.”

The School of Nursing is no stranger to change, having continually reinvented itself in the four decades since it turned out that first group of 29 aspiring nurses in Zanesville. Perhaps the only thing that hasn’t changed is the tendency of those in the School to constantly train their eyes toward the future and the growth it promises. An air of optimism seeps into conversations with current staff and faculty – especially among newcomers like Ferrell, the assistant professor who came aboard in the fall.

“I love this program,” she said. “I think if you have committed faculty and excited students, you can’t do anything but move up. We’re forward-thinking and looking at what we can to improve health care.”

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