BMCC PILOTS OUTREACH PROGRAM TO ADDRESS NURSING SHORTAGE
Borough of Manhattan Community College is piloting a new Nursing Now program in February to address the acute shortage of nurses in New York.
Modeled on the College Now program of introducing high school students to college-level courses, Nursing Now strives to introduce high school juniors and seniors who have expressed an interest in health careers to a college-level nursing curriculum.
“The Nursing Now program aims to inspire and prepare more people to enter the nursing profession,” explained BMCC President Antonio Pérez, who conceived the idea himself. Pérez chairs of the City University of New York Nursing Task Force and serves as secretary of the board of directors of North General Hospital.
The first cohort of Nursing Now students is composed of 35 high school juniors and seniors from four of the ten high schools participating in BMCC’s College Now program. The high school students, who expressed an interest in pursuing careers in nursing and other health-related areas, all scored high enough on the New York State Regents examination to exempt them from any remedial requirements in college.
This semester, the high school students are taking a general psychology course, a prerequisite for the Nursing Program, on Saturdays at BMCC’s campus downtown. Following their class, the students participate in workshops conducted by BMCC nursing professors to introduce them to a college nursing curriculum.
In addition, three times during the semester, the Nursing Now students visit North General Hospital for an introduction to the “real world of nursing,” reports Barbara Tacinelli, chairperson of the Nursing Department. Small groups of students will be assigned to either a medical-surgical unit or specialty unit, such as the Emergency Department or the Intensive Care Unit, where they will spend time with selected patients or will observe clinical procedures, under the supervision of a staff member and a BMCC faculty member. Afterwards, the students will meet in a designated area to discuss their experiences with the hospital’s clinical specialists and BMCC nursing faculty. “The purpose is to introduce students to nursing as well as other health care specialties prior to their making career choices,” Tacinelli explains.
In addition to the programmatic component, BMCC is offering Nursing Now students a financial incentive to pursue nursing. Nursing Now students who enroll in BMCC after their high school graduation will receive scholarships. “We are taking this crisis seriously, and we want to encourage more people to enter the profession,” Pérez said.
For those students who are juniors, BMCC will invite them back to take different courses in the fall. “This will give us more time to work with the eleventh graders to prepare them even better for the college nursing curriculum,” noted Sandra Rumayor, BMCC director of outreach programs.
