Terraka Garner
Life Editor
Expectations are high for students in the Idaho State University School of Nursing. This year, with the chance to partake in a brand new curriculum, these students are expected to learn the scientific aspects of nursing alongside the artistic and psychiatric characteristics.
Students will have a hand in the clinical setting in places all throughout the state. Kim Jardine-Dickerson, interim director of the undergraduate school of nursing said this is to follow through with the school of nursing’s mission statement to bring forth rural and diverse opportunity for students to learn.
“Our mission is to grow great leaders in nursing,” said Dickerson. “For example, some of our leadership students can go to Salmon to work at the hospital there in their leadership practicum, or St. Lukes at Sun Valley and we also have some students that live in Idaho Falls and Blackfoot, so they can have some of the curriculum met at Bingham Memorial or Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls.”
While in the clinical setting, students will become proficient at taking vital signs, transferring, walking and toileting residents as well as doing all activities of daily living or ADLs and learning how to safely deliver the correct amount of medication.
“The first semester of this new curriculum they’ll do fundamentals. They’ll do the second half of the semester in extended care facilities, skilled nursing homes or facilities and then they have a lot of practice in the lab with simulation and skills check off,” said Dickerson.
Students will start by attending class in person as an undergraduate but are allowed online coursework as a graduate nursing student.
Pre-nursing students must complete their pre-requisite courses before applying for the school of nursing. These include Set A: general biology and lab, intro to microbiology with lab, anatomy and physiology one and two with labs, intro to general chemistry with lab, intro to psychology, child development and a course to fulfill objective nine and Set B: pathobiology, intro to organic and bio chemistry with lab, nutrition for health professionals, introduction to information research, medical ethics and introduction to statistics. The Set A requirement scores will be used to calculate competitive GPAs for application into the program.
Once students have completed these courses, they are required to take the Test of Essential Academic Skills, otherwise known as the TEAS test, and to fill out a program application.
The results from the TEAS test and the student’s GPA turn into points to be added up to prevent any favoritism.
Abby Hirt, school of nursing academic adviser and Haylee Saunders, clinical placement coordinator both said they recommend students aim for a GPA of 3.6 or higher because it is a very competitive field of practice.
“We have a history of graduating great students, terrific leaders that make a difference in people care,” said Dickerson. “We learn every day about [the new curriculum] and we’ll have to make adjustments as issues come up, but we’re pretty good at problem solving so we’re going to try to meet all the needs of the new curriculum.”
Dickerson emphasized that for nurses, an abundance of possibilities arise. Nurses, for instance, can work with oncology patients, giving chemotherapy, they can work as a surgical or post-surgical nurse working in recovery, in infusion nursing, public health nursing, correctional nursing, school nursing, emergency medicine nursing, intensive care nursing and pediatrics.
“The placement of employment is endless. They can go work for the CDC. A lot of our graduates work at Portneuf or ERMC or Bingham or Madison or some of these critical access hospitals in Idaho, but some of them have gone on and got their graduate degrees,” said Dickerson. “There’s a job anywhere in the world for nurses.”
In Idaho, the State Board of Nursing does not require nurses to participate in continuing education but Dickerson said most places of employment do require some form of competency training or new evidence-based-practice training.
“Evidence-based practice. That’s what our students are taught, what works best throughout the research,” said Dickerson. “It is something we always have to be aware of because every day there’s something coming out that works better with maybe diabetes or children with attention-deficit disorder or suicide prevention.”
Ethics are mandatory for nursing students because these students are caring for actual living beings. Dickerson said to be ethical is to work in the right scope of practice within a licensure as well as to follow policy and to advocate for patients and families in the community.
“It is life-long learning of what works in patient care because it’s scientific,” Dickerson added.
The nursing program offers tutoring in the Rendezvous building Student Success Center, as well as through some senior nursing students. Tutors will teach anything from fundamentals and health assessment to evidence based practice and medication calculation.
Dickerson added that the nursing program tries to accommodate so that nursing students will have successful passage through the program.
“I love being a nurse educator. The men and women that we graduate, I’m proud of all of them, as is all of our faculty,” said Dickerson. “We have a historic place in Idaho in the world of our alumni. We graduate great people and they make a difference in health care.”
