For the nursing students at the Community College of Rhode Island, the bottleneck had become maddening.
After completing general-education courses, students who wanted to capitalize on the much-ballyhooed shortage of registered nursing found they had to wait for an available slot in the state’s largest nursing program, sometimes for years.
It was largely a first-come, first-served system.
“The waiting list became a source of frustration for students,” Maureen McGarry, dean of health and rehabilitative services at CCRI, recalled recently. “Some people were waiting for as long as three years.”
Well, the wait is over.
CCRI has switched to a performance-based system of admissions for its nursing program, and other health-profession courses, in which students with the best grade-point averages on prerequisite courses will no longer experience delays moving toward their associate’s degree.
There is no more waiting list.
Officials at the school say the change, which has been in the works for several years, will help alleviate the desperate need for nursing and other health care professionals that has been projected for the future.
McGarry said selecting nursing candidates by performance rather than place in line will ensure students will most likely make it through two or three years of study without dropping out or having to repeat courses, preventing or slowing them from entering the work force.
“They’ve already demonstrated that they’re able to withstand the rigors of general-education courses, so they’re more likely to persist and be more successful” in more advanced courses and in their career, McGarry said.
The change at CCRI is one of several local educators have either made or proposed to address the looming need for more nurses.
In the spring, the New England Institute of Technology launched an associate’s degree nursing program for about 50 students, with the support of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island.
The proposal, which has the support of nursing groups, the R.I. Board of Governors of Higher Education and the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, is on hold for now after the General Assembly allocated $175,000 for a feasibility study.
Demand for nursing programs has grown in recent years, particularly as the poor job market has swayed people into looking for more stable, well-paying work offered in the health care field.
Aside from NEIT, the five other nursing programs in Rhode Island – at CCRI, RIC, URI, Salve Regina University and St. Joseph School of Nursing – have been operating at capacity for several years, turning away hundreds of nursing applicants every session, or putting them on waiting lists.
More recently, the stalled economy has been blamed for forcing older nurses to stay on the job longer instead of retiring, leaving fewer openings for freshly graduated nurses.
Still, the Hospital Association of Rhode Island projects that the state will need as many as 4,500 new nurses by 2014.
“The job postings are increasing,” said McGarry.
The changes at CCRI are not limited to the nursing program.
McGarry said waiting lists have been eliminated in other health-services areas, too, such as radiography and medical sonography, where there are fewer available slots and the wait in the past could run even longer than a few years.
The transition from waiting list to merit-based selection has been in the works since 2007, when the school stopped adding names to the list.
Danielle Mercier was one of those top performers.
When she first enrolled at CCRI several years ago, Mercier said she learned that students were waiting as long as five years to be admitted to the nursing program.
Still, the Cranston resident pushed forward with basic nursing courses. Although she found she loved it, the wait list concerned her. “I thought about transferring to another school,” she recounted.
Then the school informed her that some students would be admitted based on merit. Armed with a 4.0 grade-point average, Mercier decided to stick it out.
Once she was finished with general-education courses, in early 2009, the school notified her she had been accepted into the nursing program.
McGarry said the new system is streamlined, with students receiving notification within a month of applying whether they’ve been admitted.
“And those students who have not made the cut have the opportunity to take other courses to build up their GPA,” McGarry said.
In addition, she said, performance-based admission will likely bring out the best in the students. “They feel now there’s sort of a focus on excellence and ability,” she said. “So they must do the best they absolutely can.”
Mercier, who has one more semester left before receiving her associate’s degree in nursing, is sympathetic to those people who struggle in their studies, maybe because they’re holding down other jobs while taking classes.
But she sees the advantages of awarding high performers in the classroom, particularly after she benefited from it.
“They’re trying to get the strongest students through the program as fast as possible,” she said. •
