Volume 13, Number 4, 2005
A new course offered by the College of Health Sciences, in partnership with Bayhealth Medical Center, seeks to tap into what the course coordinator calls “an extremely valuable resource-nurses who have been out of the profession and want to return.”
In Delaware and throughout the country, registered nurses (RNs) who either have left the workforce for family or other responsibilities or have moved into other types of jobs represent at least a partial solution to the continuing nationwide nursing shortage. The new UD course is designed to offer those inactive nurses a convenient way to brush up on their skills, update their knowledge and reinstate their nursing licenses.
“The online RN Refresher Course is a way to reopen the field to those women and men whose careers have gone in other directions,” course coordinator Kate Salvato says. Salvato, CHS '83, '97M, also is director of education at Bayhealth Medical Center in southern Delaware, where, she says, “Like other acute-care facilities, we are living the nursing shortage every day.”
Madeline Lambrecht, director of the CHS Division of Special Programs, which coordinates the College's distance education classes and administers the online refresher course in conjunction with UD's Professional and Continuing Studies, says the University has offered a traditional version of the course for some time. But, she says, the new program represents a total revision, in both content and format. Offering all lectures, quizzes, written assignments and discussion groups online makes the new course convenient and flexible for students to fit into their professional and personal lives, she says.
“The content of our course is based on the Delaware Board of Nursing specifications, but we have gone well beyond the minimum requirements,” Lambrecht says. “We've reviewed other online refresher courses offered around the United States, and I feel that ours is right up there-if not at the very top-in terms of being the most comprehensive.”
Students who enroll in the refresher course receive access to its web site, in addition to a set of four CD-ROMs that also contain the course content, including a total of 36 lectures by UD faculty, Bayhealth nurses with master's degrees and other health-care professionals, such as doctors of pharmacy. Students purchase a textbook, which includes another CD-ROM that contains supplemental information.
“The online format makes it flexible for students, who can do the work wherever they happen to be,” Lambrecht says. “In addition, it's an increasingly technological world, and nurses need to use computers.”
For Sharyn Fagone, who hasn't worked in nursing since moving to Delaware from New Hampshire in 1985, the new course has more than lived up to her expectations.
“I enjoy the lectures, and I like the idea of managing my own schedule of when to study,” she said during spring semester, when the online refresher course was first offered. “The course is definitely a challenge for me, as so much has changed in nursing since I worked.” Once the academic part of the course is completed, students are required to complete 80 hours of clinical work under the supervision of a preceptor. Lambrecht says hospitals have been eager to participate.
“It's an excellent recruiting tool for the hospitals,” she says. “They can get to know the nurse during the clinical experience, the nurse can get to know them, and if it's a good fit, they can make a job offer. This is an important way to bring nurses back to the workforce.”
Plans call for offering the course three times a year, during fall, spring and summer semesters.
-Ann Manser, AS '73, CHEP '73