An important part of educating nurses is practical experience and the School of Nursing has collaborated with community members to better provide this.
“The community partners are absolutely fundamental to how we do nursing education,” Dean of the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, Dr. Mary Burman, said. “This is a professional program, so our students have classroom learning where multiple sclerosis or pneumonia is, but what they really need to become a nurse is those clinical practice experiences where they are taking care of patients.”
Four community partners were awarded for the year of 2017. Western Wyoming Community College as part of the ReNEW program, Platte County Detention Center as part of BRAND, Laramie Reproductive Health as part of the Doctor of Nursing Program and Spring Wind Assisted Living as part of the Bachelors of Science in Nursing program.
The first of these partners, Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC), is part of a state-wide effort to increase the percentage of nurses with a bachelor’s degree in an effort known as Revolutionizing Nursing Education in Wyoming, or ReNEW.
“We feel deeply honored in being named a community partner with UW,” Director of WWCC’s Nursing program, Ann Clevenger, said. “The ReNEW program provides a seamless transition for nurses who get their associate’s degree to continue on to get their bachelor’s degree.”
Clevenger stressed how important it is for nurses to get a bachelor’s, as mortality rate drops for patients treated by nurses with a bachelor’s and they have greater critical thinking skills to aid them in leadership and research. The goal for the ReNEW program is to have 80 percent of nurses in Wyoming to have a bachelors.
BRAND is the Bachelor’s Reach for Accelerated Nursing Degree program, and Platte County Detention Center was chosen to host the rotation for its mental health nursing practicum. This association not only benefits students with real world experience, but it also provides inmates who have never met with a mental health provider an opportunity to do so.
Spring Wind Assisted Living was awarded as an outstanding partner this year as a place for nursing students to get their hands-on experience.
“It’s cool in our memory care unit that they get to see some of the things that are not just typical geriatrics,” Clinical Services Director at Spring Wind Assisted Living, Jessica Stalder, said. “Which is such a huge part of health care.”
The memory care unit provides students from UW with hands on experience with patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and the special care that they require.
“The nursing program here is really good,” Stalder said. “I love working with the young nurses, they bring a different energy and perspective.”
As part of the Doctor of Nursing Program, UW has reached out to partner with Laramie Reproductive Health to not only increase the experience of students, but also provide the larger community of Laramie with a service.
“With the skills that they have, they are able to come in and do work that allows us to [do] additional work on top of that,” Executive Director of Laramie Reproductive Health, Matt Miller, said. “It allows us to provide more services, and see more patients, which is more beneficial to the community and be more flexible in seeing them.”
While all the community partners awarded were honored to be part of these programs, Dean Burman said, “We couldn’t be a school of nursing without these community partners. We have to be able to take them out to a real, live practice place.”
