A Saint Louis University dean has implemented a nursing school program that she says can ensure quality nursing education and produce confident graduates.
Teri Murray, associate professor and dean at Saint Louis University School of Nursing, said a hospital must dedicate a unit and specific, willing nurses to assist in the students’ hands-on learning. The hands-on learning is called “clinical education,” and the model Murray created is called the “Dedication Education Unit.” Murray adapted her model from a model used in Australia, she said.
Murray discussed the model’s impact at the sixth annual Missouri Foundation for Health summit this week. The theme of the event was “Health Care Workforce Development – Cultivating Missouri’s Resources.” The two-day event was held at the Marriott Centre in Town and Country. About 200 people attended the event and selected from several health-related sessions.
Currently, the nursing field is experiencing a severe shortage because of limited faculty and clinical educational sites, according to the American Association of Colleges. An association study says 40,000 qualified applicants were denied admission to undergraduate and graduate programs in 2007 for these reasons. Murray’s program encourages the creation of educational sites that are more intentional about helping students learn about the field of nursing.
Murray designed a Dedicated Education Unit at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in 2008 where students from SLU’s School of Nursing receive their clinical education. The Dedicated Education Unit at St. John is the first in Missouri.
A model similar to Murray’s is used at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon. It began in 2002.
“It’s a village helping educate these students,” said Susan Randles Moscato, nursing professor and dean of University of Portland.
She said within the Dedicated Education Unit, the faculty works with hospital nurses to assist students. The Oregon State Board of Nursing has accepted the education model because of its success, Moscato said.
Murray, who received a $35,000 grant from 2006 to 2009 to research ways to improve nursing education as a Robert Wood Johnson fellow, found that the traditional way of providing hands-on experience is not as effective.
Under the traditional model, a nurse is assigned eight students and they follow the nurse through the halls of the hospital. Murray calls this the “mother duckling model of clinical education” because of how the students follow nurses.
“It is confusing to the nurses, and the students don’t get what they need,” she said. “In no way does the mother duck approach work.”
She said this traditional model is a “sacred cow” of nursing schools. “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers,” Murray said. “We must spark innovation.”
Under this model, Murray said, about 20-50 percent of newly licensed nurses lacked confidence and felt unprepared to care for six or more clients or administer medicine to a group of clients. About 20 percent of them believed the typical patient assignments were too difficult or challenging, she said.
With Murray’s plan, nurses who want to help students are select to assist them.
“The key word is ‘want,’” she said.
Each nurse is assigned two students instead of eight and there is more training and collaboration between the professors and the nurses, she said.
Murray said nursing education has often operated on the “we have always done it that way” attitude. “Nursing education has a long history of squelching curiosity and replacing it with conformity and a non-questioning attitude,” she said.
Sara Floro, who graduated in May from SLU’s accelerated nursing program, said the Dedicated Education Unit was the best clinical class because it was realistic.
“Other clinicals you get one patient and you work with that one patient all day, but that’s not realistic,” she said. “But with this program you have one dedicated nurse who works with you and you may work with eight patients a day, which is realistic.”
Floro, who works as a nurse at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, said she was better prepared for her job as a result of the training she received. “We were further along because we were forced to be in there and help the nurses,” she said. “I feel that I graduated knowing better what it means to be a nurse.”