John Massie, the assistant director of sports medicine at the Student Health Center, unzips a suitcase holding the legs of SimMan 3G, a simulation mannequin shipped to Carbondale from SIU-Edwardsville. In fall 2010, 40 nursing students will be admitted to SIUC as an extension of the nursing program at Edwardsville. - - Genna Ord | Daily Egyptian
Susan Winters said she isn’t sure if she wants to call the university’s incoming nursing students “Cawgs” or “Dougars.”
They are hybrids, after all.
Starting this fall semester, 40 additional students will be admitted into SIU-Edwardsville’s nursing program — on the Carbondale campus.
Because of this, students will become a mix of the schools’ mascots, Cougars and Dawgs, said Winters, director of the SIUE Regional Nursing Program.
The students will earn their four-year degree through Edwardsville and pay Edwardsville’s tuition for the nursing courses, but they will also pay tuition and student fees to Carbondale for their general courses, Winters said.
“This was a great way to use both institutions’ strengths and pool their resources,” she said.
SIUE had to turn down between 120 and 160 nursing students from its program last year, said Marcia Maurer, dean of the nursing program at Edwardsville.
The program has more than 400 undergraduate students in nursing and more than 40 graduate students, she said.
Maurer said the university does not have to turn those students down for lack of faculty or resources, but because the clinics and hospitals in the Edwardsville and St. Louis area are too saturated to take any more potential nurses for clinical training.
If students cannot get enough real-world clinical training hours at a hospital, they cannot complete the nursing program, Maurer said.
There is a high demand for nurses, but it is difficult to provide places for students to train when they are all full, ultimately forcing universities to turn down potential students, Maurer said.
“It’s kind of heartbreaking in a profession when there’s such a shortage that you have to turn people away,” she said. “At least this way 40 more can find a home.”
Winters said she is expecting the program to allow 40 students in every year, eventually leading the program to hold up to 160 students in four years and hold steady.
Student applications for the program are already being reviewed and some faculty positions would be created in order to teach these students, she said.
The program addresses Edwardsville’s plethora of nursing students and Carbondale’s lack of them, but also helps the hospitals and clinics in the southernmost areas of Illinois, she said.
Most hospitals in the Carbondale area would like to hire nurses with more than an associate’s degree, Winters said.
“It’s a win-win-win, for Carbondale, for Edwardsville and for southern Illinois,” she said. “We would be able to fulfill that nursing shortage need down here.”
Maurer said hospitals like to work toward magnate — an award given by the American Nurses’ Credentialing Center to hospitals based on various aspects of their nursing quality.
Not many nurses in the Carbondale area can obtain four-year degrees, because only community colleges provide a nursing program in the area — and they only offer two-year degrees, she said.
SIUE is known for the quality of the nurses it creates, she said. It was reaccredited in 2008 by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
Ted Grace, director of the Health Center at SIUC, said he is excited the sister schools are coming together to accomplish a groundbreaking program.
“It takes a lot of money and a lot of expertise to get accredited in a new nursing program,” he said. “I’m afraid (the program) would have been put off for a long time before that happened, whereas this way it’s already in progress.”
Grace said the program would house most of its classes in the Student Health Center, while others will be broadcasted from SIUE to a classroom at SIUC.
State-of-the-art simulation mannequins have also been shipped from Edwardsville, he said. The mannequins simulate heartbeats, bowel movements and one even simulates birth, he said.
Winters said she is expecting the program to grow in the long run and hopes it will alleviate the hurt placed on nurses in their professions and in their schooling.
“There is so much potential in this program,” she said. “I really look forward to our graduates contributing to the health of southern Illinois.”
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