More Men Trading Overalls for Nursing Scrubs

More Men Trading Overalls for Nursing Scrubs

By TESS VIGELAND

Detroit

IN 2007, Kurt Edwards figured he would be stacking and racking 80-pound boxes of dog food and celery in the back of a grocery store for the rest of his working life. And he was fine with that.

But that June, after nine years on the job, layoff notices arrived on the warehouse floor at the Farmer Jack store in Detroit where he worked. His employer, Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, closed the Farmer Jack chain. Today he still does a lot of lifting, but of people, not boxes. Mr. Edwards joined the ranks of former warehouse, factory and autoworkers trading in their coveralls and job uncertainty for nurses’ scrubs.

At 49, divorced with no children, he now tends to patients on the graveyard shift at Sheffield Manor Nursing and Rehab Center, a two-story, gray brick building in a ramshackle neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. Interviewed last month, he says he is making about $70,000 annually, $20,000 more than he did at the warehouse.

The story of how he made the transition is one that men like him appear to be telling with increasing frequency, and the demand for their services is what is setting so many of them on similar paths.

Hard figures are elusive, but the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth estimates a shortage of 18,000 nurses in the state by 2015 — and the labor force is adapting.

Oakland University in nearby Rochester, Mich., has established a program specifically to retrain autoworkers in nursing — about 50 a year since 2009. And the College of Nursing at Wayne State University in Detroit is enrolling a wide range of people switching to health careers, including former manufacturing workers, said Barbara Redman, its dean. “They bring age, experience and discipline,” she said.

David Pomerville brings a few more years than Mr. Edwards. A 57-year-old nursing student, he spent most of his career as an automotive vibration engineer, including almost 10 years at General Motors. His pink slip arrived in April 2009.

At the time, Mr. Pomerville was earning almost $110,000 a year at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground in Milford Township, Mich.

But having watched another round of bloodletting at G.M. three years earlier, he had already decided on nursing as his Plan B. “I thought, ‘Well, I worked on cars for this long, now I’m going to work on people for a while,’ ” he said.

A married father of two and grandfather of two, Mr. Pomerville had almost no money saved when he was laid off. But the federal Trade Readjustment Act, which aids workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign competition, paid for nursing school tuition. His wife is a teacher, and he receives unemployment benefits. He hopes to graduate at the end of this year, and he expects his salary will be about half what he used to make.

Timothy Henk ultimately decided not to try to stick it out as long as Mr. Pomerville did. Mr. Henk, 32, worked for eight years at the Ford Sterling Axle Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., installing drive shafts in the F-150 truck, and was making about $25 an hour by 2007. With overtime, he earned $70,000 a year.

But as he and his wife contemplated having children, he worried that income would not last. So in 2007, he took a buyout, which included $15,000 a year for four years to put toward education. Two friends in nursing — both women — had suggested he look into joining their profession. He researched the demand for nurses in Michigan and used the buyout money to pay his tuition at Wayne State.

The amount of schooling required to be a nurse depends on the level of nursing a student chooses to pursue. Mr. Henk went through Wayne State’s four-year program to obtain a bachelor of science in nursing and then took a licensing exam to become a registered nurse, or R.N. Other levels of nursing include the C.N.A., or certified nurse’s aide, which can require as little as eight weeks of training plus a certification exam, and L.P.N., or licensed practical nurse, which requires one or two years of schooling and a licensing exam.

All of that assumes acceptance in a nursing program. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing said more than 67,000 applicants were turned away in 2010 for lack of faculty or classroom space — not a good sign with a national nursing shortage projected to be as high as 500,000 by 2025.

Mr. Henk now works in the critical care unit at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. He makes about $50,000 annually for a 36-hour workweek, though Ford’s health insurance was better.

The choice to make this switch was probably least likely for Mr. Edwards, the former grocery worker. He dropped out of college and spent four years in the Army as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He found his unionized warehouse job after a stint working for his father, an accountant.

“You have this plan, this goal,” he said. “I was going to be at this warehouse; all the guys were retiring with great benefits. I was part of the middle class, and I was going to make it.”

When it became clear that he would not make it to retirement there, someone he was dating suggested nursing.

Though he wrote it off as woman’s work at first, he realized he was getting a bit old for manual labor. So he returned to school, living on unemployment checks and occasional groceries from by his mother. He spent the last four months of his L.P.N. training with no electricity because he could not afford to pay any bills except rent.

Once he finished, the Sheffield Manor administrator, LaKeshia Bell, pretty much hired him on the spot. “They are like a hot commodity,” she said. “A male presence actually helps us in the facility.” At 5 feet 9 inches tall and 220 pounds, Mr. Edwards lifts patients as easily as he stacked boxes.

But he still appears to be a rarity. Just 7 percent of employed registered nurses are men, according to a 2008 Department of Health and Human Services survey. It did not count licensed practical nurses. Still, the percentage of people certified in nursing in some way who are men has risen to 9.6 percent since 2000 from 6.2 percent before, according to the department.

Ms. Bell noted that new nurses coming from manufacturing had unusual adjustments to make. When dealing with parts on the factory floor, she said, repetition is a major part of the job. “These are not parts. They’re people, so you can’t just have a set regimen like in a plant setting,” she said.

That cultural shift goes both ways. Mr. Edwards’s supervisor, Yvonne Gipson, provided an example. “I mean Kurt is not an ugly man, O.K.?” she said. “You got all these female workers, and they’re all looking at him like, ‘Oh! Potential husband!’ So, yes, it does change.” Her voice trailed off, erupting into peals of laughter as Mr. Edwards slipped a $20 bill into her pocket.

While these success stories point to opportunity, Michigan’s unemployment rate is still 9 percent. And Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says history is a cruel taskmaster when it comes to struggling industries.

“When one industry goes in decline and another comes to the fore, you don’t have a one-to-one employment replacement at all,” he said. “It takes a decade, two decades. In the meantime, some people find their careers are ended, ruined, and they never get them back.”

For these new nurses, the advantage is the demand in Michigan. Mr. Edwards knows he is lucky. “You know I wake up every day and I’m very proud,” he said. “I’m looking in the mirror. I’m happy. I’m proud. I’m saying, you know, this turned out great. The lights are on!”

Devin Maverick Robins contributed reporting.

Source: New York Times

AAN and IOM Partnership

American Academy of Nursing Joins the IOM Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education as Founding Member-Sponsor

IOM collaborative to incubate and evaluate new solutions to today’s health professional education challenges.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American Academy of Nursing reaffirms its commitment to the future of health care and the dissemination of innovative nursing knowledge by joining the Institute of Medicine’s Global Forum that brings together interdisciplinary leaders to address challenges in health professional education and support the incubation and evaluation of new solutions.

Set to launch in March 2012, the Institute of Medicine’s Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education will further investigate the Lancet Commission’s Report Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World as well as the Institute of Medicine’s and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 2010 report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.

Academy Fellow Afaf Meleis, PhD, and Jordan Bohen, MD, two Lancet report Commissioners, will serve as co-chairs for the new forum — a forum whose visible work will manifest through several workshops held yearly in addition to video-conferencing with international partners.

“The Academy is honored to join this Global Forum,” said Joanne Disch, PhD, RN, FAAN, President of the Academy. “We look forward to collaborating with esteemed education and health care organizations and ensuring that nurse innovations are on the table as part of the solutions to our professional health education needs.”

Academy Fellow Madeline Schmitt, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor Emeritus, University of Rochester School of Nursing, who encompasses both a vast experience with health professional education and keen sense of innovation, will represent the Academy. Dr. Schmitt is a nurse-sociologist who has conducted extensive research on interprofessional collaborative practices. In addition to her research and teaching agenda, Dr. Schmitt serves as a national and international consultant and chairs the Expert Panel commissioned by the AACN, AACOM, AACP, ADEA, AAMC, ASPH to develop core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practices.

The American Academy of Nursing anticipates and tracks national and international trends in health care, while addressing resulting issues of health care knowledge and policy. The Academy’s mission is to serve the public and nursing profession by advancing health policy and practice through the generation, synthesis, and dissemination of nursing knowledge.

In Memory of Joyce C. Clifford, 1935-2011

I didn’t realize that Joyce Clifford died in October. When I was a student, we practiced primary nursing while the actual staff nurses were all still doing team nursing. It was a tumultuous time. Joyce was truly a visionary and deserves the honor of being a nursing legend.

The following obituary is from The New York Times.

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Joyce C. Clifford, a nurse who advocated a partnership of equals between doctors and nurses in the treatment of patients, and whose ideas were adopted in some of the nation’s best hospitals because they reduced medical errors and improved survival rates, died on Oct. 21 in Boston. She was 76.

The cause was heart disease and kidney failure, said her husband, Lawrence.

Dr. Clifford, who received a Ph.D. in health planning from Brandeis University, was part of the first generation of registered nurses who sought to make bachelor’s degrees a minimum requirement in a field where most held associate degrees. It was a requirement she set for all the nurses she hired at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, a Harvard teaching hospital, where she worked from 1974 until 1999 as the nursing administrator and later vice president.

Under the “primary nursing” model she introduced in 1975 at Beth Israel, nurses were assigned primary responsibility for four or five patients — caring for each while on duty, being on call when off duty, and acting as an advocate and intermediary with each patient’s doctors.

The idea was to restore the continuity and accountability that were considered casualties of the nursing system then widely in use, known as team nursing. In the team system each nurse had a specialized task, like dressing wounds or managing medication, but no single nurse had a glimpse of the big picture.

“Doctors see a patient for a couple of minutes a day, but nurses are there 24/7,” Margaret Grey, dean of the Yale School of Nursing, said in an interview after Dr. Clifford’s death. “Joyce Clifford put together a system that gave the primary nurse the benefit” of that accumulated round-the-clock nursing information, she said.

Dr. Clifford was not the creator of the primary nursing model, but she was probably the first to put it into practice in a large teaching hospital, said Linda Aiken, director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, who published research about the work of Dr. Clifford.

Studies showed that the system was good for patients and for hospitals, Professor Aiken added. The increased accountability and higher level of education it demanded were linked to a decline in patient mortality and a lower turnover of nurse staff.

“Beth Israel had a waiting list of applicants,” Professor Aiken said, “even when there were nurse shortages everywhere else.”

Primary nursing has never become the norm. Only about 10 percent of the nation’s hospitals use it in one form or other. In the face of corporate mergers and cost-cutting, some hospitals where it was once in practice — including Beth Israel, now known as theBeth Israel Deaconess Medical Center — have since modified or eliminated it in favor of more decentralized systems.

Dr. Clifford’s achievement was in showing how primary nursing could work, said Dana Beth Weinberg, an assistant sociology professor at Queens College. Professor Weinberg’s Harvard dissertation, published in 2003 as the book “Code Green: Money-Driven Hospitals and the Dismantling of Nursing,” chronicled the dismantling of primary nursing at Beth Israel after its merger with Deaconess Medical Center in 1999 and Dr. Clifford’s departure.

Dr. Clifford went on to found and lead the Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership, which promotes research and advanced education in nursing and the primary nurse system.

She was born Joyce Catherine Hoyt in New Haven on Sept. 12, 1935, one of four daughters of Raymond Hoyt, an ironworker, and his wife, Helen. She received a nursing diploma from St. Raphael Hospital in New Haven and a bachelor of science degree in 1959 from St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.

She joined the Air Force in the early 1960s and received a master’s degree in nursing administration in 1968 from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, where she was stationed.

She and her husband met at the university. Besides Mr. Clifford, she is survived by a sister, Rita Brown, of West Haven, Conn.

Dr. Clifford was hired as Beth Israel’s chief nurse by its president and chief executive, Dr. Mitchell T. Rabkin, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty.

Dr. Rabkin said Monday in an interview that he had had an insight when he was a young intern. “On my very first day of internship,” he said, “I realized that nurses knew a hell of a lot more than I did.”

Dr. Rabkin gave Dr. Clifford carte blanche to put together a nursing staff that would work collaboratively with doctors. There was some resistance at first. Medical doctors complained that instead of talking to one nurse about the patients in a section of a ward, say, they had to contact each patient’s primary nurse, which meant making a number of separate contacts.

“The resistance did not last long,” Dr. Rabkin said. “Because the doctors soon realized that they were getting far better information, and the patients were getting better care.”

Creating New Solutions from Caring Ideas

Sanofi announces nursing recognition program to help turn caring ideas into new solutions

Nurses worldwide are encouraged to enter an exciting recognition program showcasing nursing innovations and care solutions

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO March 31, 2012

Paris, France, 9 November, 2011…  Sanofi and its partnering organizations, the International Council of Nurses (ICN); the Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation (NPHF); le Secrétariat International Des Infirmières et Infirmiers de l’Espace Francophone (SIDIIEF); and l’Association Française pour le Développement de l’Education Thérapeutique (AFDET) are delighted to announce the CARE CHALLENGE  recognition programme (www.care-challenge.com), inviting nurses to submit their innovative patient care ideas and projects. Nurses from anywhere around the world can share, exchange, and nominate projects and ideas for the CARE CHALLENGE initiative and be eligible to receive an award. To accommodate the international scope of this programme, the deadline for submissions online at www.care-challenge.com has been extended to March 31, 2012.

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From Today’s New York Times: Calling the Nurse ‘Doctor’

Calling the Nurse ‘Doctor,’ a Title Physicians Oppose

By 

NASHVILLE — With pain in her right ear, Sue Cassidy went to a clinic. The doctor, wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope in one pocket, introduced herself.

“Hi. I’m Dr. Patti McCarver, and I’m your nurse,” she said. And with that, Dr. McCarver stuck a scope in Ms. Cassidy’s ear, noticed a buildup of fluid and prescribed an allergy medicine.

It was something that will become increasingly routine for patients: a someone who is not a physician using the title of doctor.

Dr. McCarver calls herself a doctor because she returned to school to earn a doctorate last year, one of thousands of nurses doing the same recently. Doctorates are popping up all over the health professions, and the result is a quiet battle over not only the title “doctor,” but also the money, power and prestige that often comes with it.

As more nurses, pharmacists and physical therapists claim this honorific, physicians are fighting back. For nurses, getting doctorates can help them land a top administrative job at a hospital, improve their standing at a university and win them more respect from colleagues and patients. But so far, the new degrees have not brought higher fees from insurers for seeing patients or greater authority from states to prescribe medicines.

Nursing leaders say that their push to have more nurses earn doctorates has nothing to do with their fight of several decades in state legislatures to give nurses more autonomy, money and prescriptive power.

But many physicians are suspicious and say that once tens of thousands of nurses have doctorates, they will invariably seek more prescribing authority and more money. Otherwise, they ask, what is the point?

To read the entire article, click here.

Apropos of the social media discussion at the conference last week…

I thought this article might be of interest. From the Washington Post

Drug companies lose protections on Facebook, some decide to close pages

By Christian Torres, Published: August 12

Relationship status: “It’s Complicated.”

Facebook and the pharmaceutical industry have had an uneasy partnership in recent years. Many drug companies didn’t even join the site until Facebook gave them a privilege that others do not have — blocking the public’s ability to openly comment on a page Wall.

But that’s about to change.

In a reversal by Facebook, most drug company pages will have to have open Walls starting Monday.

Companies are worried that open Walls mean open risks, and many are reconsidering their engagement on Facebook. AstraZeneca shut down on Friday a page devoted to depression — the company sells the antidepressant Seroquel. Johnson & Johnson said it will close four of its pages on Monday. Other companies said they will monitor their pages more closely once the changes take effect.

The industry is concerned that users might write about bad side effects, promote off-label use or make inappropriate statements about a product. Aside from poor word of mouth, the comments could raise concerns from government regulators.

Facebook will not say what specifically prompted its change of heart. Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications for Facebook, said in an e-mail, “We think these changes will help encourage an authentic dialogue on pages.”

Facebook will allow companies to continue to block Wall comments on specific prescription product pages, but those are a minority of pharmaceutical company pages. Most pages — soon to be open — are focused on companies themselves or on disease or patient-specific communities, which then have ties to the companies’ prescription products.

To read the entire article, click here.

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In nursing news, today is the 101st anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death. She died in London in 1910 at the age of 90. This stained glass window was restored and rededicated to her memory in October 2010. It is in St. Peter’s Church, Derby. According to Wikipedia:

A remarkable stained glass window was commissioned for inclusion in the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary chapel in the late 1950s. When the chapel was later demolished the window was removed, stored and replaced in the new replacement chapel. At the closure of the DRI the window was again removed and stored. In October 2010, £6,000 was raised by friends of the window and St Peters Church to reposition the window in St Peters Church, Derby. The remarkable work features nine panels, of the original ten, depicting scenes of hospital life, Derby townscapes and Florence Nightingale herself. Some of the work was damaged and the tenth panel was dismantled for the glass to be used in repair of the remaining panels. All the figures, who are said to be modelled on prominent Derby town figures of the early sixties, surround and praise a central pane of the triumphant Christ. A nurse who posed for the top right panel in 1959 attended the rededication service in October 2010.

Centers of Excellence in Nursing Education

National League for Nursing Announces New Centers of Excellence™

Selected Schools to Be Recognized During 2011 NLN Education Summit

New York, NY — July 27, 2011 — Eight schools of nursing, representing programs across the academic spectrum, have been chosen NLN Centers of Excellence, the League has announced. These schools will be formally recognized at a special presentation on Friday, September 23 at 9:00 am at the NLN’s annual Education Summit in Orlando, FL. The four-day gathering every year draws a capacity crowd of nurse faculty, deans, administrators, and professionals from allied health organizations. The COE presentation will directly follow the NLN CEO Summit Address at 8:30 am.”Schools work hard to earn the coveted COE designation,” said NLN CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. “What we seek are measurable results and best practices, and the NLN is pleased to publicly name those schools that have demonstrated their understanding of excellence in the concrete terms that the COE application demands.” Schools may earn COE status in one of three categories: Enhancing Student Learning and Professional Development; Promoting the Pedagogical Expertise of Faculty; or Enhancing the Science of Nursing Education.

Six of this year’s eight schools are repeat COE designees, with two—Excelsior College in Albany, NY and University of North Carolina at Greensboro—earning their third consecutive COE designation. This has entitled them to now carry the COE designation for an additional year, from 2011 to 2016. (COE schools are now designated for a four-year period; until 2011, the initial designation was for three years.) Excelsior has been chosen in the category of Enhancing Student Learning and Professional Development, UNC-Greensboro in Promoting the Pedagogical Expertise of Faculty.

The other four repeat Centers of Excellence are currently completing their initial term, all for Enhancing Student Learning and Professional Development. Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA); East Carolina University (Greenville, NC); Regis College (Weston, MA); and Trinitas School of Nursing (Elizabeth, NJ) will carry the designation from 2011-2015.

First-time designees Collin College (McKinney, TX), for Enhancing Student Learning and Professional Development, and University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT), for Promoting the Pedagogical Expertise of Faculty, have been named Centers of Excellence for the 2011-2015 term.

Each year since 2004, the NLN has invited nursing schools to apply for COE status, based on their ability to demonstrate sustained excellence in faculty development, nursing education research, or student learning and professional development. Schools must also have a proven commitment to continuous quality improvement.

Throughout the four or more years that schools carry the COE designation, they are expected to serve as advisers and sounding boards to other nursing programs that seek to gain COE distinction. “The COE banner carries with it a responsibility to the entire academic community,” noted Cathleen Shultz, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAN, president of the NLN. “We expect that COE schools will help educate and inspire others, thus elevating the standards of excellence throughout all levels of higher education in nursing.”

Also, each year, students enrolled in COE schools have an opportunity to share their thoughts on the meaning of excellence in nursing education, what fosters excellence, and what it means to them to be part of a COE-designated nursing program. As in years past, the winner of the Student Excellence Paper Competition will be announced at the COE presentation. She is Tuesday Majors from Indiana University School of Nursing. Her winning submission is entitled “Excellence in Nursing Education.”

Eight Question Survey Helps to Predict PTSD

A simple eight-question survey administered soon after injury can help predict which of the 30 million Americans seeking hospital treatment for injuries each year may develop depression or post-traumatic stress, report Therese S. Richmond, PhD, CRNP , associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and her colleagues in General Hospital Psychiatry.

“Depression and PTSD exert a significant, independent, and persistent effect on general health, work status, somatic symptoms, adjustment to illness, and function after injury,” the authors wrote, also emphasizing that even minor injuries can lead to traumatic stress responses.

Dr. Richmond

The findings allow healthcare providers to identify patients at highest risk for developing these disorders and to target appropriate resources to this vulnerable group.

This screening tool – reportedly one of the first of its kind for adults in the U.S. – could have a great impact on the judicious allocation of costly mental health resources.

Using an eight-question survey, all injured patients can be rapidly assessed for risk in the hospital. Healthcare providers can then provide patients classed as high-risk for developing depression or PTSD with information about symptoms to look for and advise them to contact their primary care providers should symptoms surface. This intervention can facilitate early diagnosis of these disabling disorders.

The study reported nearly 100 percent accuracy in negative results. Only five percent of injured patients who tested negative for risk of depression on the screening survey developed depression and no patients who tested negative for PTSD risk developed PTSD. At the same time, not all patients who screen positive will develop these disorders. The researchers do not suggest that all patients who screen positive receive mental health services, but rather that this finding prompt systematic provision of information and additional follow-up.

The authors caution that while the findings on this initial study are most promising, they need to be replicated in an independent sample.

With Dr. Richmond, the study authors are: Josef Ruzek, PhD; Theimann Ackerson, MSSW; Douglas J. Wiebe, PhD; Flaura Winston, MD, PhD; Nancy Kassam-Adams, PhD.

Seven Decades of Service to Rural and Medically Underserved Families: New Frontier Nursing University Name Becomes Official

HYDEN, Ky., July 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Providing compassionate care for women and families in rural and medically underserved areas for more than 70 years, students and graduates of the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing have garnered national recognition for their dedication to Frontier’s mission. Proudly, the school has now officially become Frontier Nursing University as of July 1, 2011.

This nationally recognized institution traces its humble beginnings and commitment to service to Mary Breckinridge, a visionary and trailblazing woman who, in 1925, established the Frontier Nursing Service, traveling on horseback through the hills of Eastern Kentucky to serve as a nurse-midwife for mothers during childbirth. Established in 1939, the school was an outgrowth of Mrs. Breckinridge’s dedication, offering the country’s first rural-based nurse-midwifery education program. Over the course of the ensuing decades, students and graduates have expanded her legacy of care by providing health services to women and families in rural communities around the world. In 1970, the school created the first family nurse practitioner program in the United States, and in 2005, the women’s health care nurse practitioner program was added.

Today, Frontier’s educational programs are recognized for their excellence not only across America, but also worldwide. Close to 1,100 students from all 50 states and several foreign countries are enrolled in either Frontier’s Doctor of Nursing Practice or Master of Science in Nursing degree programs, which combine superb online course offerings and real-world practicum.

Dr. Susan Stone, DNSc, CNM, FACNM, President and Dean

Dr. Susan Stone, Frontier’s visionary President and Dean and a certified nurse-midwife, explained: “This new name represents a milestone in the history of our institution: we are a University recognized for our outstanding graduate degree programs, both domestically and worldwide. We’ve just been honored by US News and World Report as being within the top 15 of nurse-midwifery and family nurse practitioner programs in the USA and ranked within the top 50 on their list of graduate schools of nursing nationwide.

“The evolution of the name of our institution reflects both the amazing ‘chronicle’ of our past, as well as the incredible opportunities that lie in our future. All of these milestones are directly attributable to the vision of Mary Breckinridge, the dedication of our board, faculty and staff, and to the increasing worldwide demand for educated women’s and family healthcare professionals.  Combining the Frontier Nursing heritage with our academic excellence as a University, we will more appropriately define the status of our unique institution. As we continue to educate nurses to become nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners, we will fulfill our mission to serve rural and medically underserved communities, while reinforcing our commitment to prepare nurses and midwives for advanced practice both domestically and internationally.”

Click here to learn more about the name change and the mission and purpose of Frontier Nursing University.