As the teachers in nursing programs age and retire, there are too few replacements.
The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor is doing its part to ease the problem by offering a master’s program in nursing. Classes will begin Aug. 18.
This effort by UMHB is to lure more nurses to teaching.
“The nursing shortage is well known, but I don’t think people realize there’s an even bigger faculty shortage,” said Dr. Margaret Prydun, associate professor at UMHB and master’s of science in nursing program director in the College of Nursing. “There can’t be an increase in nurses without an increase in faculty.”
A master’s degree is required to teach in a registered nursing program.
UMHB’s master’s program will start small, Dr. Prydun said.
Developing a master’s program doesn’t take place overnight. A needs assessment took place years ago, she said. Also, a number of regulatory agencies determine if the school can handle an additional program.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a primary regulatory agency, gave its OK for the program in fall 2007, she said. Accreditation is being sought from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, but that will take place after students begin class.
UMHB’s undergraduate nursing program has about 200 students. The master’s program will likely be limited to about 10, Dr. Prydun said.
It’s going to be a hybrid program - not totally online or totally in the classroom.
“Because UMHB prides itself on its personalized approach to education, it didn’t want everything to be online,” she said.
The students, who probably work full time, will meet once a month in the classroom, with the courses clustered on Fridays and Saturdays. The remainder of course work will be online.
“They can do the work at 2 a.m. if they want,” Dr. Prydun said. “I am going to tell them I won’t be there at 2 in the morning, because I’m not a night person - I’m in bed by 9 p.m. and up at 5 a.m. If they want to communicate with me at 5 a.m., I’m there; at midnight, not so much.”
The goal is to recruit younger nurses, in order to replace an aging faculty, but also to have a cohort of teachers who can relate better to the students who are 19 or 21 years old, she said.
A number of schools have master’s programs, but when the push came a few years ago to use the master’s curriculum to educate nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, the education side of the programs fell away.
Schools are beginning to regrow their nursing education department, Dr. Prydun said.
UMHB’s degree will be a master’s of science in nursing with a focus on nursing education and one of three service tracks - medical/surgical, maternal/child and mental health.
It is expected the program will take 16 months to complete.
A final six-hour course will include being mentored in the teaching role and will include classroom and clinical experiences with students as well as time in the simulation lab.
As a newly minted nurse, Dr. Prydun worked on a general medical surgical unit in New Jersey. She moved to Houston and worked several years on a neurosurgery intermediate care unit.
When Dr. Prydun began to feel she had already done everything at least once, she got her master’s degree.
Once she started teaching, Dr. Prydun would go back into nursing service in the summer. Most Houston hospitals were supportive of nursing faculty working for them during the summer months.
“I got a nice education in cardiovascular one summer and another summer in orthopedics,” she said. “Every year I would do that and it kept my skills up.”
It’s no secret nurses in hospital settings likely have higher salaries than nurse educators; however what’s overlooked is the nine-month contract that offers teachers a summer free or an opportunity to work elsewhere. Also, nurse educators get holidays off.
For those wondering why they should go into education, Dr. Prydun said she likes to reflect on the Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
“When I work as a nurse I impact that individual patient,” she said. “When I teach nursing I impact the world. Though I don’t know where my students will go, I know I will influence their practice as an educator.”
Nurses, no matter the location of their work - hospital, clinic or school- are teachers, Dr. Prydun said.
As technology and medical breakthroughs expand, the amount of information a nursing student has to learn and use is phenomenal, Dr. Prydun said.
“It’s 10 times what I was required to learn,” she said.
Luckily, many of the textbooks and reference books can now be downloaded onto PDAs, and technology such as smart classrooms provide students with immediate information and feedback.
Though small, the goal of UMHB’s master’s in nursing program is to reverse the trend in decreasing nurse educators and in turn increase the number of openings in nursing programs.
The number of qualified applicants who apply for admission to nursing programs has increased, according to the publication Professional Nursing Education in Texas Demographics and Trends.
However, the percentage of qualified applicants not admitted to initial RN licensure nursing programs range from 52 to 54 percent between 2004 through 2006. The reasons: lack of clinical spaces, budgeted faculty and qualified faculty applicants.
