A year ago, Indianapolis-based Marian University announced a partnership with Saint Thomas Health to bring an accelerated nursing degree program to Middle Tennessee to address workforce shortages by educating highly skilled professionals in a concentrated 16-month period.
Amy Stauffacher, who joined the program in February as site manager, said the inaugural class launched this past May. “We have three starts a year – January, May, and August,” she noted, adding there are 24 students in each class, which means Marian and Saint Thomas Health are helping launch 72 new nursing careers annually.
A secondary bachelor’s degree program, most students earned degrees in other fields and are coming back to school because they’ve discovered a passion for nursing. “Students are very attracted to the flexibility of online classes,” Stauffacher noted. “One of the nicest things about online learning is you can go back and listen to a lecture again. You can’t ask a professor to do that,” she said of traditional classroom settings.
Samantha Montagno, director of Community and Corporate Relations for Marian at Saint Thomas, added, “This program was created for people who didn’t do the traditional route into nursing. This is a nice, quick way to bridge over and utilize their non-nursing degree.” She said the majority of students enrolling in the program are incredibly focused. “We’re very excited about the caliber and quality of students in our program,” Montagno said.
While the nursing degree takes 16 months, students often must take prerequisite courses before beginning the main program. “We work with them from the initial phone call forward,” Stauffacher said of the personalized approach taken with students. “We offer all our prerequisites in an accelerated eight-week online format.”
After beginning the actual nursing coursework, students work online and come to Saint Thomas Hospital West twice a week for testing. There is one clinical faculty member for every eight students, and the groups make good use of the nursing resource center at Saint Thomas West. Based on the premise that people learn by doing, students utilize the center to add context to didactic classes and make the jump from theory to application. Hands-on skills include taking vital signs, operating medical equipment and transferring patients.
“Once clinicals start, which is the second eight weeks of the first semester, they come to their clinical site, and those are typically twice a week,” Stauffacher explained. “That’s when you begin to think of it as a hybrid program … you’re doing half online classes and half clinical rotations.”
She added the rotations include pediatrics, adult health, behavioral health, obstetrics, community health, and more. “They get the opportunity to really see all types of nursing so they get a feel for what type of field they want to go into but also so they can be a well-rounded nurse.”
Montagno said the university’s location at Saint Thomas West is another unique aspect of the program with students immersed in the hospital setting from the very beginning. For clinicals, she noted, “We use all of Saint Thomas Health and also go offsite.”
Although new to Nashville, Stauffacher said, “We brought in a program that was extremely successful from our main campus.” The accelerated BSN she continued, began as a traditional classroom setting in Indianapolis before being moved to the online format in 2009. The depth and breadth of expertise behind the program has been instrumental in the growth and development of partnerships in Middle Tennessee.
“We’ve heard such an overwhelmingly positive consensus,” Montagno said. For the healthcare community, the program offers skilled graduates. For the students, she added, “This offers them a second chance to go into a profession they’re passionate about.”
