State OKs two private nursing schools

Molly Ball and Michelle Swafford

Thursday, March 17, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

In a move hailed for its potential to alleviate Nevada's dire nursing shortage, two Henderson private schools' plans to offer nursing degrees were approved on Wednesday.

The state Board of Nursing gave the go-ahead Wednesday morning to Touro University-Nevada and the University of Southern Nevada. They will become the first private schools to offer nursing degrees in Nevada.

"The more students that we can produce in Nevada, hopefully there will be more students that stay here and practice nursing," said Cindy Kimball, spokeswoman for the nursing board.

The preliminary approval granted by the board was based on the schools' demonstrations that they met faculty and financial requirements. It means the schools can hire nursing faculty and admit students, but they won't receive final approval until their first classes graduate and they achieve national accreditation, Kimball said.

Both schools said they hope to welcome their first students in August of this year if all goes well.

Any relief of the nursing shortage will not be immediate, Kimball noted, as it will take a few years for the programs to graduate their first nurses.

The two schools' nursing programs will have different emphases. Touro plans to offer master's degrees to those who already have other degrees, either a non-nursing bachelor's degrees or associate's degrees in nursing. USN will accept students who have two years' worth of college credits, who will end up with a bachelor's in nursing.

Mable Smith, dean of USN's College of Nursing, said the school hoped to meet a clear community need.

"There's such a shortage of nurses," she said. "For us to educate nurses, give them a quality education so they can take their boards and begin to work as nurses, that will greatly help the shortage in this area."

The nationwide shortage of nurses is particularly acute in Nevada, which has the lowest rate of nurses per capita in the nation. Studies have found that America's nursing population as a whole is aging because not enough new nurses are being trained.

USN, which opened in 2001, currently offers pharmacy and business administration degrees. Its nursing program will be an 18-month curriculum leading to a bachelor's of science in nursing.

The program will accept 40 students this fall and 88 the following fall, reaching a maximum of 125 per class in 2007, Smith said. The school will have seven to nine full-time faculty in addition to part-time instructors, she said.

Touro's program will be smaller, with 32 students in the first class, 48 in each class thereafter, and six full-time faculty. The university enrolled its first students last year in programs for osteopathic medicine and physician's assistants.

Touro's 30-month nursing curriculum will have two tracks: those who have a bachelor's degree in another subject, and those who have an associate's degree in nursing but want to advance their careers to teaching or administration, said Michael Harter, Touro's vice president for administration.

Both tracks will culminate in a master's degree.

"First, we hope to be able to produce more registered nurses to practice in Nevada," Harter said. "And secondly, we hope that by having the master's component we will be able to help prepare people to teach or be managers and administrators."

Harter noted that on top of the shortage of rank-and-file nurses there is a shortage of nursing teachers.

Nurses are essential not only to hospitals and doctors' practices, but also to nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and other care centers.

Dr. Weldon "Don" Havins, executive director of the Clark County Medical Society lauded the approval of the two programs.

"We have a horrible nursing shortage in Nevada, particularly in southern Nevada," Havins said. "This will move to ameliorate that crisis."

Currently, only state schools -- including the Community College of Southern Nevada, UNLV and Nevada State College -- have nursing programs. In 2003, the Legislature ordered them to double their nursing enrollments, but none of the schools has succeeded so far.

"There's plenty of interest from qualified people," Havins said. "We just don't have the nursing programs and the teachers to teach them."

The city of Henderson has been actively recruiting universities and colleges with nursing programs. In addition to the two approved on Wednesday, two more higher-education institutions are moving forward with plans for nursing programs in Henderson, said Bob Cooper, the city's director of economic development.

National University, based in La Jolla, Calif., is opening a campus in May at 2850 W. Horizon Ridge Parkway with business and education programs and plans to add nursing classes this fall, said Charlotte Bentley, vice president of National University, Nevada.

And American Scientific Institute, based in Los Angeles, plans to open a campus at 4300 E. Sunset Rd. in April for its non-nursing programs, consultant Dennis Barker said. The Henderson campus -- one of three planned for Nevada, with the others opening later in Las Vegas and Reno -- will offer courses for medical billing, physical therapy aides and occupational safety technicians. It plans to launch a nursing program in a few months once it is approved by the Board of Nursing, Barker said.

"We're excited," Henderson's Cooper said of the nursing programs approved Wednesday. "This is everything that we've been working on for the last couple of years."