Senior level nursing students in the critical care lab.

University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s (ULL) award-winning College of Nursing and Allied Health Professions is celebrating its 60^th year in true Acadiana style – with a huge party.

Save-the-date cards went out to 4,000 alumni dating back to the first class which graduated six nurses in 1955. Since then, ULL’s nursing school enrollment has skyrocketed to over 1,400 this fall, with 140 graduating in the last academic year.

On Oct. 6, the school will host a reception honoring those graduates from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the ULL Alumni House. “The reception is to welcome back all of those who graduated from the past, since 1951 to the present, to reunite and reconnect them to learn what nursing is about today in the College of Nursing as compared to when they graduated,” explained Dr. Gail P. Poirrier, dean of the College of Nursing and Allied Professions since 1997. “There’ll be great food and great people to talk with and reunite with.”

During the fête, the nursing school will pay tribute to its achievements in excellence and vision in leadership. The department will also recognize its clinical affiliates, students and community supporters. Among the honorees are Dorothy Butcher Pocklington, class of 1956, who wrote the first textbook in nursing about computers. Her career took her from the charity hospital in Lafayette to an instructor at the college of nursing to the US Army.

During the Vietnam War, she was assigned to the first faculty at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing.  In 1988, she was promoted to Brigadier General, becoming the first female to be selected as a general officer in the US Army Reserves. Pocklington later served as deputy chief of public affairs under the secretary of the Army.  She is also a University Distinguished Alumni recipient.

Pocklington is excited about reconnecting with some of her nursing school colleagues at the reunion. “We developed a closeness that we’ve kept all this time,” she said. “In fact, most of my classmates are going to try to be there for the anniversary. We’re all over the country – from California, Arizona, Louisiana. So, we plan to be there if at all possible.”

At the reception, ULL will also acknowledge sponsors in a brand new category – naming rights to the school’s learning and simulation laboratories. Just approved this past year, the proposal was to generate funds for maintenance of these highly-specialized labs. ULL’s nursing school was among the first 600 medical teaching facilities in the world, and the first in Louisiana, to introduce human patient simulators into its laboratories.

Today, ULL boasts 14 of these SimMan units. “We have some of the most advanced simulation labs in the region, and by far the most advanced labs in the state,” boasted Dr. Melinda Oberleitner, associate dean and professor of nursing. “The goal is to prepare the students in the most realistic environment for situations that can potentially happen, so they can learn to think on their feet in a safe environment here before they encounter that same situation in the clinical area. So, it’s an invaluable learning tool for our students.”

Monies raised from the naming rights drive will be used to assist with licensing fees, repair costs and technology updates for the labs. Sponsorship categories range from $5,000 to $15,000, and last for a three-year term. Sponsors will be awarded special plaques for their donations. “It is very expensive to keep up with all of the equipment that goes into these learning labs, especially our simulation labs,” Poirrier explained. “And so, we are looking for sponsors who will be willing to put their name to the lab with certain amounts of funding, so that we can have much more ease in utilizing these at their highest priority in teaching our students.”

Over six decades, ULL’s nursing program has set the bar for other schools statewide as well as nationally. For the past 26 years, ULL’s pass rate for first-time takers of the National Council Licensure Examination for RNs has been 97 percent, exceeding the national average of 88 to 90 percent. New graduates are required to take this examination to be licensed to practice as RNs.

ULL has also become a pioneer in the area of distance learning. Along with McNeese State University and Southeastern Louisiana University, ULL offers an online master’s in nursing program. Currently, Lafayette’s program is exploring an RN to BSN to MSN online program. Poirrier’s ultimate goal is to offer a doctorate of nursing practice.

Back in 2005, ULL’s nursing school was bestowed with the prestigious Centers of Excellence Designation in Nursing Education. ULL was only one of four nursing schools in the country, and one of 10 in the world, to receive the award the year after its initiation by the National League for Nursing in 2004. Lafayette’s program earned this three-year designation in the category of “Creating Environments that Promote Ongoing Faculty Development.”

In 2009, the department received the Nursing School of the Year designation during the Nightingale Awards program. This prestigious award was bestowed on ULL by a judging panel drawn from out-of-state nurses associations including Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Nevada and Delaware and the American Nurses Association National Board of Directors.

But, Obertleitner’s proudest accomplishment is what ULL’s nursing school provides for the community. “I don’t think people realize the importance of the bachelor’s prepared nurse, the numbers we produce and what that impact has on the outcomes of patient care in our community,” she said. “I think that our physician and administrative colleagues in hospitals and other healthcare settings can create higher and higher levels of goals for themselves and for their facilities because they have the right kind of educationally-prepared nurse who is able to accomplish those goals. And, because of this, I think our community has these great kinds of outcomes in healthcare, which is an economic driver for our community.”

For Poirrier, the program’s growth over the last 60 years is the most impressive achievement. “I absolutely am ecstatic over the numbers and the growth of our program,” she said. “Even in times of budgetary constraints, we have risen with those numbers. People just do not understand how much we have invested in these students in this college to produce those outcomes. I truly think the accomplishments for this college come from our clinical affiliates in the community who connect with us and help us to grow into the program that we are today.”

Tags:

Bookmark:

Digg

Facebook

Technorati

Newsvine

Google

Related: