NEWS
Doctor of Nursing Practice program graduated inaugural class
TCU’s inaugural Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) class graduated at Commencement ceremonies May 9. The 23 DNP graduates were the first to complete the groundbreaking program, which is designed to educate nurses at the highest level of advanced practice. The class was also the first DNP graduating class in the North Texas/DFW area and second in Texas, after UT Houston.
Launched in August 2007, the two-year DNP curriculum is designed specifically for working professionals and is completed entirely online. It was created to prepare advanced practice nurses to be leaders in solving intricate health care issues and generating new health care opportunities. DNP students are required to complete a minimum of 30 semester hours while maintaining a 3.0 GPA or better. Students are also required to maintain their advance practice recognition— as defined by appropriate certification and licensing boards — throughout the program.
The students came mostly from across Texas and from Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. The types of advanced practice nurses admitted include certified registered nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners and five clinical nurse specialists. A second class of doctoral students has been accepted to start the program in August 2009. (more)
Read about one of the graduates
Clinical Nurse Leader track offers better patient care training
Five consecutive years of declining enrollments and multiple reports of poor patient care. That’s the situation nursing educators found themselves in 10 years ago. It was then that the American Association of Colleges of Nursing began talks of a program that would bring a different kind of nurse to the patients’ bedside. Today this is known as the Clinical Nurse Leader Program (CNL). Now, TCU has become the first school in the area to offer this masters degree program.
The CNL program at TCU is a graduate-level curriculum that educates future nurses how to better care for patients and how to thrive in the current health care environment. In practice, a CNL supervises the care of a distinct group of patients. They are also educated to evaluate patient outcomes, determine risks, and coordinate care.
A CNL would practice as an advanced generalist as opposed to the specialized focus of advanced practice nurses like clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners. In order to qualify as a CNL, the students must pass a national certification exam at the end of the program.
The vice president for nursing at Texas Health Resources, Joan Clark, contacted TCU’s Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences in hopes of starting the program at TCU.
Dr. Kathy Baldwin, professor and director of graduate studies in the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences, said, “After the dean talked to Ms. Clark, she brought it forward to the rest of us to take a look at and we pretty much decided that it was something we could not pass up doing.” The program officially begins this summer.
The CNL graduate program in the nursing school is a two-year program. The introduction of the CNL program is expected to double the size of the original program. The students will take several graduate courses that deal with issues such as leadership in clinical microsystems and financial concepts in health care.
Currently, more than 70 schools in 35 states have a CNL program. Support and recognition of the position of CNL is increasing nationwide as more and more health facilities are reporting positive outcomes thanks to CNL participation. For more information, contact Dr. Kathy Baldwin or Sybil White in the Harris College www.harriscollege.tcu.edu.
TCU nursing at 30,000 feet
A post-finals vacation in Las Vegas turned into a life-saving event for TCU nursing student Leah Joslin this week. The 21-year-old rising senior was on a flight back to DFW when another passenger suffered a medical emergency, losing consciousness. Joslin jumped up to help, pushing a passenger sitting on the aisle out of the way.
The man’s lips turned blue, a sign Joslin recognized that he was oxygen deprived. She asked the flight crew for oxygen, a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff and started administering the oxygen and taking his vital signs. Within about 10 seconds, she detected a faint pulse that grew stronger.
“We finally did get a blood pressure reading that was within normal range,” she said.
The passenger and his wife were Italian and did not speak English, but after she revived him, she was able to stabilize him by mimicking what she wanted him to do. Joslin stayed with the man and his wife until the plane landed and paramedics arrived.
"He was so cute. He kept apologizing to me profusely," Joslin told WBAP-AM. "As I left, his wife took my hand, kissed it and said, 'grazie.'"
Her quick-thinking heroics also made the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and KTVT Channel 11 news.
“I feel proud of my education,” she told Channel 11. “I feel like, wow, I really do know something.”
Joslin followed a practice taught to everyone in the nursing program, Glen Raup, TCU assistant professor told the Star-Telegram. You respond to a medical emergency by initially evaluating airway, breathing and circulation problems, and then looking for other difficulties the person might be having, Raup said.
Had Joslin not gotten involved, the patient could have faced some dire circumstances, said Raup, a former emergency department director at John Peter Smith Hospital. A combination of diabetes and smoking puts a person at risk for anything from a drop in blood sugar to a heart attack, Raup said. (more)
Nursing graduation rates at TCU attract state grant
The Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences has been rewarded for its retention and graduation rates in 2008 with a $280,000 state grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Paulette Burns, dean of the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, said “Texas has been concerned with the shortage of nurses in the work force since 1998, and has been providing financial incentives to increase enrollment in nursing schools throughout the state.”
Burns continued, “The Texas Legislature approved funding for the Nursing Shortage Reduction Program to kick-start increasing enrollments and graduation in the nursing school programs in Texas. In 2007, 158 students graduated from the Harris College, whereas in 2008, the graduation total increased to 196.
The nursing school was awarded the same grant in 2005, 2006 and 2008. The only way for the nursing school to get more grant money would be to increase the number of graduates every year, she said.
In the past, the nursing school has used the grant to hire three additional faculty members and one retention specialist, or academic adviser, Burns said.
Because the nursing school can hire more faculty, a larger number of students can be admitted, Burns said. The school's retention program has also helped to graduate 90 percent of all admitted students, she said. more
