Missouri’s Board of Nursing recently approved a request from Missouri State’s School of Nursing to double its enrollment, beginning this fall. Each semester, the program will admit 112 students who are pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing — 56 on Missouri State’s main campus and 56 in facilities that are leased from CoxHealth.

Fulfilling Health Care Needs

This expansion is the latest development to stem from the Alliance for Healthcare Education, a partnership between the university, CoxHealth, Ozarks Technical Community College and Springfield Public Schools. When the partnership is fully realized, the Alliance is expected to be the largest producer of health sciences professionals in the Midwest.

Dr. Kathryn Patterson, director of the School of Nursing, says that her team was excited about the chance to train more nurses. But such program changes are subject to approval by Missouri’s Board of Nursing and by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, which accredits Missouri State’s program.

“Asking to double our enrollment was a big deal, and we took it seriously,” Patterson says. “We felt confident about it because our program is well established. Our graduates’ pass rate [on The National Council Licensure Examination] is very good, and we asked to replicate the current program, using all the same curriculum, in another location.”

Preparing Students for a Complex World

When the School of Nursing team earned Board approval, their attention quickly turned to the details of implementation — ensuring that students at each location receive the same comprehensive education.

“Our graduates walk out into a health care world that’s complex,” Patterson says. “It’s our job to make sure they’re prepared.” This is why nursing faculty, staff and administrators work to secure high-impact, on-the-job clinical placements for their students. They carefully track students’ experiences in these settings and augment clinical training with simulations in Missouri State’s labs.

For example, Patterson says, “A student in a clinical placement is unlikely to be directly involved in treating an emergent situation, like a postpartum hemorrhage. That’s something we can recreate in our simulation lab so that they gain experience with it.”

To do this, the School of Nursing often works with “standardized patients” — basically, actors. Standardized patients enact certain scenarios, and students must respond in real time. “They all have to go through the simulation lab,” Patterson says. “In the clinical setting, they might have different experiences depending on the patients they treat. It’s our job to make sure they’re getting equal experiences.”

Standardized patients also enact scenarios that might quickly escalate in real life, like ones with patients who are experiencing a mental health crisis or severe intoxication. “As a nurse, you may have those interactions, especially in the emergency room,” Patterson says. “We recreate them in the simulation lab so that students develop those skills in a controlled environment.”

Teaching Communication

Nursing faculty consistently seek industry feedback, which helps ensure that they’re setting students up for success. In recent years, Patterson says, her contacts have increasingly talked about the need for strong communication skills.

“Nurses need the ability to earn patients’ trust,” she says. “You might be with them during the hardest moments of their lives. It’s easy to get focused on skills, tasks and grades, but the biggest part of being a nurse is knowing what and how to communicate.”

“It’s easy to get focused on skills, tasks and grades, but the biggest part of being a nurse is knowing what and how to communicate.”

—Dr. Kathryn Patterson

Students need emotional maturity to succeed in health care settings, Patterson says. And they need to feel comfortable speaking with patients — even about difficult topics. To prepare students, nursing faculty not only simulate challenging experiences in the lab; they also design exercises that enhance students’ patience and empathy.

For example, the program recently purchased two “older adult suits.” These feature muffled hearing, obstructed vision and weights that make it harder to move. “We can explain that older patients may be dealing with hearing issues or vision problems, but when students feel it themselves, they understand,” Patterson says.

This approach is part of the nursing program’s commitment to train health care professionals for our community. As Patterson puts it, “The more we can make it about an actual person, the better the care will be.”