A local hospital is teaming up with a local college to provide education in nursing.
The Passavant Area Hospital’s Foundation is providing a $25-thousand dollar grant to help Illinois College develop a registered nurse-to-bachelor’s of science in nursing completion program.
Illinois College Provost Catharine O’Connell explains that this new program is targeted for a specific group of people.
“The program is for individuals who have an RN license but do not have a baccalaureate degree. Illinois College is eager to meet that identified community need. There’s a need for more nurses to have that degree, it’s a nationwide emphasis that’s really important for patient-care and for the success of hospitals. And this is also a priority of course for Passavant, so this is an opportunity to partner with a community organization to meet that need and also to grow an academic program for us,” says O’Connell.
The new nursing completion program was announced yesterday afternoon in a joint announcement yesterday by O’Connell and Executive Director of the Passavant Foundation Pam Martin.
O’Connell says the new program will benefit both of the local institutions.
“Passavant has a need for more baccalaureate-prepared nurses, Illinois College has a need to grow our enrollment and develop new programs, particularly those that respond to the needs of our regional community, because sixty percent or so of our students are from our local region. It’s a good partnership for mutually benefiting both organizations,” O’Connell explains.
O’Connell says the plan is for the program to provide more flexibility to accommodate the often-complicated schedules of nurses. This will be done in-part by offering the program online.
The next step will be an extensive program development process that involves the creation of curriculum, identifying faculty and going through the accreditation process. O’Connell says IC hopes to have this program available by the fall of 2018 at the earliest.