Dean addresses success, challenges
ahead
by Cindy
AbolePublic Relations
It’s been three years since the university named Gail Stuart, Ph.D., R.N., as dean of the College of Nursing and during that time she’s barely missed a beat as she successfully leads faculty, staff and nursing students through an era of change, discovery and challenges within the college.
So far in her tenure, she’s joined nursing faculty to redefine and set nursing education priorities, while applying measurable outcomes and other tools towards achieving success. She’s advanced the college in many new ways from adding new technology to expanding nursing education by cultivating innovative approaches and partnerships that will improve nursing practice and student learning on all levels.
Dr. Gail StuartStuart accomplished this with eyes fixed on the college’s goal of achieving academic excellence in nursing education, practice, research and service to others, thereby improving the quality of health for Lowcountry residents and the people of South Carolina. She’s tackled these objectives while staying mindful to the growing challenges of meeting and addressing the state and national nursing shortage.
What Stuart and other national nursing leaders project is an upward trend in nursing and a steady increase in demand for nurses during the next decade, and she wants MUSC’s College of Nursing (CON) to be leading the way rather than following behind.
“In order for us to achieve nursing excellence within the college and for the institution to be recognized as a world-class academic health sciences center, we need to consider changes within the profession and nursing education that break us out of our traditional mold,” said Stuart.
Stuart and the nursing faculty addressed some of the college’s most pressing issues from exploring ways to replace the growing number of retiring nursing faculty to expanding nursing research by seeking alternative funding resources to achieving balance within the college between educator-clinicians and educator-researchers. What she and other faculty members realized is that an easy solution lay in the future preparation and recruitment of potential junior faculty from its own doctoral nursing program. She wants to attract qualified individuals who can become mentors and work together with experienced faculty to develop a new cadre of nurse clinicians and researchers.
From Stuart’s perspective, addressing these needs will impact the college and its mission of educating and preparing the state’s next generation of quality, skilled nurses.
Achieving accreditation
Among Stuart’s first challenges was passing accreditation. In the spring, she led faculty, staff and students in achieving a five-year accreditation through the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Educators for the college’s baccalaureate and master's degree nursing programs. Additionally, the college won a 10-year re-accreditation for their nurse midwifery master's degree program from the American College of Nurse-Midwives.
“Achieving accreditation was a huge confirmation of the college’s recent changes and the type of quality improvements we have undertaken,” said Stuart. “Having the commission approve our nursing programs and with no deficiencies support these changes. People have worked very hard to establish them. It’s a positive indication that what we’ve done is working and is recognized as successful. Clearly we are doing the right thing at the right time.”
One indicator that revealed considerable success measured academic performance and student outcomes in the National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s NCLEX results. The college recognized MUSC nursing students' achievements by attaining a 96.59 percent pass rate for the first two quarters in 2005. Just several years earlier, the pass rate for nursing’s accelerated program students was in the mid-70s and was targeted for improvement by Stuart, as incoming dean.
“We worked hard and it paid off,” Stuart said. “As we accomplished this goal, we wanted to be able to make sure we maintain this progress by implementing a collegewide quality improvement plan. Once we do something right, it's time to look ahead to the next opportunity.”
Expanding nursing education through online learning
To meet the growing demands for expanding nursing education statewide, the college also added to its online nursing programs. Just this year, the college has tripled nursing enrollment since 2004 for its online RN-BSN program and expanded several master’s level online programs and continuing-education classes for registered nurses. Current master’s level programs include neonatal nurse practitioner, nurse administrator, psychiatric mental-health nursing, and nurse educator.
In August, the college introduced a new, continuing education certificate program on health care education. It is offered to master’s level nurses or any health professional. The online program helps participants evaluate and develop educational programs and strategies and apply technology in teaching health care students and patients.
“We find it our ethical obligation to provide leadership in the state for the education of nurses wherever they are,” Stuart said, who wants to help the 75 percent of South Carolina’s nursing workforce who possess an associate in nursing degree earn a BSN degree. “At the same time, we also recognize the need to develop sufficient ways to measure the quality of these online programs and use some of these technologies to make the program more interesting and dynamic.”
To accomplish this, Stuart approved the formation of a CON Task Force devoted to developing a three-year plan for the college’s online learning programs. Next, she would like to see more masters and doctoral programs move online to accommodate potential students from around the state and alleviate the college’s current space issues.
Creating innovative learning experiences
To enact the college’s mission of providing evidence-based nursing education and demonstrating excellence in nursing practice while enhancing students' collaborative clinical experiences, the CON became the leader on campus in promoting the potential of simulated clinical learning.
“When we first brought up this concept more than two years ago, most people on campus were either not familiar with it or not interested in it,” Stuart said. Yet envisioning its future potential, Stuart became committed to building a $3 million clinical simulation lab to enhance nursing skills and promote interprofessional education at MUSC. Her perseverance and commitment to it resulted in her securing $1.5 million of state money towards the project. When no campus space was offered to house the lab she even offered the first floor of her own CON building. The new, 11,000-square foot multifunctional teaching and learning laboratory will be designed as simulated clinical and patient care areas and will feature an emergency medical triage area, labor and delivery area, procedure room, outpatient assessment rooms practice and informatics and control area. It is expected to be completed by 2007.
According to Stuart, the project will complement the College of Health Professions' new simulated operating room and other university resources as the college develops its own expertise in creating business partnerships with Space Labs, Hill-Rom and McKesson Informatics as equipment donors and satellite practice partnerships in the community. She envisions the lab to be independent and open to area nursing programs in the community who seek certification in the latest clinical techniques and equipment.
The project in the CON is being led and organized by Gail Barbosa, Sc.D., R.N., associate dean of academics and associate professor in the College of Nursing.
“Our goal is to allow students to expand their learning by gaining basic clinical practice skills and techniques,” said Barbosa, who, with Stuart, toured other national clinical simulation centers. “Through use of this lab, students can practice conducting health assessments on interactive mannequin-patients in an environment that simulates real patient care settings.”
The lab follows national nursing trends of other academic health science centers that have successfully merged technology with health care education. Both Stuart and Barbosa can conceptualize nursing’s simulated clinical lab to be a self-sustaining research environment and resource for researchers and practitioners from throughout the institution and beyond.
“This lab provides us with a real opportunity to conduct interprofessional teaching,” Stuart said. “On campus, many of us are accustomed to teaching in silos. A program like this is open to all of our students and trainees and possesses many types of learning potentials and teaching opportunities. Students learn to develop clinical skills together, as a team, where each individual understands and values their complementary role. It’s all very exciting and something that each of us can take advantage of at MUSC.”
What’s ahead
Aside from these many achievements, Stuart and her nursing colleagues are looking ahead to opportunities in the new year. Slated for 2006 is a new CON Wellness Initiative, which will address specific employee health issues including stress management, weight reduction, and smoking cessation.
“Health care is growing and changing so quickly in many areas that nursing, as a profession, cannot afford to stay in one place and cannot be complacent,” said Stuart. When asked about what would she do to move MUSC further ahead in the future, Stuart said she is evaluating other nursing administrative models such as a unified structure between clinical nursing and nursing education.
“Nursing needs to have a focused vision and unified leadership within our institution to best meet the growing excellence of our clinical, educational and research enterprise,” she said. “The artificial divide between nursing education and clinical nursing here at MUSC must be redesigned to allow us to move proactively to best handle the nursing shortage. To do so we need the support of university leaders to implement solutions that will allow us to meet these challenges.”
Friday, Dec. 16, 2005
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