Hospital Partners With Bacone College To Nurture Nursing Program
bacone college, health care, muskogee, muskogee regional medical center, nursing, workforce development,
If you need to get something done, do it yourself. That’s the premise behind a new partnership between Muskogee Regional Medical Center and Bacone College that will result in more nursing students at the college and more nurses caring for patients in the community’s largest hospital.
Diane Fulton, MRMC chief nursing officer calls the new program “a win-win.”
“We know that there is a shortage of nurses, and one of the big reasons is that there is a shortage of faculty,” she says. “Instead of waiting for somebody else to solve our problems, we, the hospitals that need the nurses, need to work with the schools to produce more nurses and make sure that they’re successful when they graduate, which will benefit the hospital.”
On June 1, 2009, Stephanie Jett began her new job as MRMC associate chief nursing officer, a half-time position. The other half of her time is spent as department chair of Bacone’s Billie R. Tower Nursing Program. While Jett was already director of the Bacone program, she vacated that job for the new position, paid for by MRMC. In exchange for funding the chair position, beginning with the 2009 fall semester, Bacone is providing 20 tuition scholarships each year for full-time nursing students selected mutually by MRMC and the college. For each semester that a student accepts the scholarship, the student owes six months’ of employment to the hospital. The MRMC-Bacone partnership is initially for three years, with an automatic three-year renewal.
With Jett sharing her time between the academic and clinical settings, Fulton says the college’s curriculum will be stronger, and the tricky transition for nursing students to the world of hospital care will be easier.
“A majority of nurses right out of school end up leaving their first job within a year,” she says, adding that one of the new program’s goals is “to give them lots of support and mentoring as they embark on their new career to make them successful.” In the future, Fulton says she’d like to see a “nurse residency program,” bringing first-year nurses back to the classroom periodically for instruction and encouragement.
Muskogee Regional is a 329-bed hospital that employs more than 200 nurses, and Fulton says the hospital continually recruits additional nurses at all levels. With 23 medical specialties, the hospital’s services include a Cancer Treatment Center, Rehabilitation Center, emergency services and the Pavilion, a comprehensive mental-health program.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
