Nurses Needed--Stat

Natalie Scott knew from the age of three that she wanted to be in the medical field. When her twin brothers were born eight weeks premature, she remembers the nurses who helped her scrub in to visit them. A year from now, thanks to a new program at the Louise Herrington School of Nursing at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Scott will be a nurse—quite possibly working in pediatrics.

“I’ve always liked pediatrics,” says the twenty-five-year-old Scott (pictured, right, practicing basic health assessment skills on classmate Heather Darwin). “Children are so innocent. They don’t know what is wrong in the world, and they’re just so passionate about everything. I like that. It makes me want to be more passionate about what I do.”

As the nursing school celebrates its hundredth anniversary, the “Fast Bacc” program is ushering the school into the changing world of nursing. With the Fast Bacc program, available to students who already have a bachelor’s degree, Baylor has joined about 250 other nursing schools with similar programs across the nation (although Baylor’s twelve-month program is a bit quicker than the fourteen- and fifteen-month programs offered by nearby schools).

Students in the program’s first class, which began in May, range in age from twenty-four to thirty-eight. They have degrees in neuroscience, biology, psychology, and advertising, to name a few. Some have graduate degrees. One is a patent attorney. Some are single, others are married, and several have kids. All, it seems, believe they have found their passion.

Scott majored in microbiology at the University of Oklahoma, graduated in 2006, and started work as an EMT at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, her hometown. Her twin brothers, now twenty-two, are healthy. And she hopes to help others have the same story.    

The Fast Bacc program appealed to Scott for many reasons: “They understand that you’ve gone through college once before. It’s very straightforward. There’s no fluff.”

The program is a response to the nationwide nursing shortage. By creating an accelerated program for students who already possess a bachelor’s degree, Baylor can reach a different type of nursing student.

“Fifteen to 20 percent of students in our traditional program already have a bachelor’s degree,” says Nan Batten, who, with Cheryl Tucker, heads up the program. “Every semester, we have a waiting list. In nursing schools in Texas, about eleven thousand qualified nursing students are turned away.”

The reason? Not only is there a nursing shortage (by 2030, the United States is predicted to have 1.2 million open nursing positions), there’s also a nursing faculty shortage. The average age of faculty members at a university nursing program is fifty-five, and 50 percent of them say they’re going to retire in the next five years.

Last summer, the school received a grant from the Deerbrook Charitable Trust to start the program. In addition to the eighteen current students, thirty more have applied for the next session, beginning in May 2010.    

The class completes six hours of coursework every three weeks—twenty-five hours this summer and nineteen hours in the fall and spring. Except for the three-hour nursing elective that students in the traditional school need to graduate, the Fast Bacc program has the exact same course and clinical load.

“With the economic downturn, we have the opportunity for retraining and job satisfaction as people consider new careers,” Batten says. “It’s a full forty hours a week of schoolwork to be able to accomplish that. But these are all very motivated students. These are really adult learners.”

Heather Darwin has a bachelor’s degree in theology from Georgetown University and a master’s of divinity from Yale University. She’s worked in education, operations management, and management consulting.

“I wanted to do something that, at the end of the day, is more meaningful than just how much I improved my margins on my profit-and-loss statement,” the thirty-three-year-old said. “I gave myself a year to take off, and in the course of that year, I took a trip to Kenya to work with AIDS orphans.”  That experience led her to a career in nursing.

“Nursing is so holistic. You’re looking at the whole person, not just focused on the disease but promoting wellness,” she said.