Continuing care: Local schools training next generation of nurses

May 13—TUPELO — John Adam Greenlee, a 38-year-old Corinth resident, is wrapping up his first year as a student in ICC's Associate Degree Nursing program. It's not quite the culmination of a childhood dream, but almost.

"It took me a little while to figure out what I want to do when I grow up," Greenlee said. "But basically, I've always been a people person, a helper. I've always wanted to be able to help other people. That's what led me towards this path and trying to get into nursing because I knew I'd be able to help my community."

Greenlee is one of thousands of nursing students currently being trained by educators at the high school, community college and university levels to be the next generation of workers to operate in the post-pandemic health care industry.

As Mississippi continues to face a perilous nursing shortage, there's no doubt Greenlee — and other Northeast Mississippi nursing students like him — will be able to find a job upon graduation.

"They need nurses every day," he said. "Everywhere, every hospital, every clinic."

Blue Mountain's new nursing program wraps up first semester

With its newly established nursing program, Blue Mountain Christian University (BMCU) is the latest local school to add a pathway into the health care profession.

The nursing program enrolled 10 traditional students and five RN to BSN students when it launched in January 2023. Traditional students enroll in the nursing program as juniors after completing 60 hours of basic prerequisite classes. Once in the program, students must complete another 60 hours of nursing classes.

The online RN to BSN track is designed for associate degree nurses looking to earn a bachelor's degree. The program launched in the spring semester to speed up the accreditation process.

In Mississippi, the Institutions of Higher Learning board approves new nursing programs rather than the state's Board of Nursing. The IHL visited campus in July and officially approved the program in August 2022.

"We think that was greatly to our advantage because we have an awesome group of students," Dr. Tammie McCoy, dean of the BMCU School of Nursing, said. "They are all caring. They really wanted to do this. They have been kind and considerate and have embraced going to clinical and the basic tenets of nursing."

As the first semester comes to a close, students have learned the foundational skills required of nurses and began putting them to use in simulated patient scenarios.

New Albany native Mikayla Rakestraw is a first-year nursing student. She started at BMCU intending to transfer to another school to pursue a degree in nursing, but something told her to stay and finish her bachelor's degree first.

With just a semester's worth of classes remaining before finishing her Biology degree, Rakestraw couldn't pass up the opportunity to enroll in the school's new nursing program.

"I've wanted to go into nursing for a long, long time," Rakestraw said. "When I was young, a close family member of mine had a really serious emergency accident happen, and I was the only care provider in the home that could carry out home care. So that inspired me, and it was more of a ministry I think, as long as I can remember, just being called into that part of ministry."

For the Christian school, the addition of a nursing program has helped it to fully carry out Christ's threefold ministry: preaching, teaching and healing.

"Our philosophy is to maintain a Christian worldview, to help the students learn to be the hands and feet of Christ and to help them work through the different challenges in health care from that perspective," McCoy said.

BMCU can enroll 30 students annually in the traditional pre-licensure track, and they've seen lots of interest from freshmen who want to join the program, McCoy said.

"Our hope and prayer is that Blue Mountain will make a difference for our students and then for the citizens, especially of Mississippi, because we know there's a critical need," McCoy said. "We want to be able to provide (our students with) a quality education that they can use to hit the ground running when they're employed, ready to work, ready to take care of the patients and ready to help meet the health care need."

The first class of BMCU's nursing students will graduate and then enter the workforce in summer 2024. And being located in a rural area, McCoy said most of her students want to stay near their hometown and make a difference.

"They know the people and they want to help protect and take care of people they've grown up with and known all their lives," McCoy said.

ICC nursing program bounces back from pandemic lows

Itawamba Community College's associate degree nursing program was established in 1974 as a direct result of an identified need for certified nurses in the area.

In the last three years, that need has been greater than ever, according to Dr. Dana Walker, director of ICC's Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) program.

In 2013, the ICC School of Health Science moved to the college's Tupelo campus, where 10 other pathways are offered alongside the ADN program. The School of Nursing typically admits 120 to 140 students per year, but the ADN program has seen a decline in applicants since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

That slip can be partially attributed to fear of the virus and a hesitancy to take the COVID-19 vaccine among some prospective students. Although ICC does not require the COVID vaccine, clinical agencies do. In recent months, students have been able to request an exemption as allowed by the clinical agency.

But those aren't the only factors.

When jobs are widely available, college enrollment tends to go down because potential students can go out and get jobs that pay well without a degree. Likewise, Walker said, when the job market is down, there's an increase in college enrollment.

While the applicant pool for nursing varies from year to year, ICC saw an increased number of students drop out during the pandemic because they had to financially support immediate or extended family members. Most students who drop out of the program do so because of financial reasons, Walker said. Since 2020, 55-60% of students who enrolled have completed their ADN. In prior years, the completion rate was closer to 65%.

The Women's Foundation of Mississippi provides grant money for the nursing program, and ICC's Foundation also offers scholarships to support students who need it.

If nurses can just get through school, more than 75% typically stay in the Northeast Mississippi area to work, Walker said. Having working nurses in the area improves more than just access to health care; it increases the vibrance of the community.

Greenlee, the first-year ICC nursing student from Corinth, hopes to be one of those nurses.

He said he responds well to pressure, so his learning experience at ICC has been a fun one. He has an interest in pediatrics and hopes to work in the ER or ICU after completing the program.

"You learn a ton of information very fast but you have to," Greenlee said. "To be able to come out with the skills that you need to possess going into the field, you've got a lot of information that you've got to cover really quick to try to get that all into the two years."

NEMCC on track to have largest sophomore nursing class in years

Housed in Childers Hall on Northeast Mississippi Community College's Booneville campus, the health sciences department employs some 40 people across a number of different heath care programs.

Associate Degree Nursing is by far the largest of these offerings. Last fall, the school admitted 112 freshmen into the program, which already had 77 sophomores. And in the practical nursing program, 36 are admitted each fall and 24 in spring for a total of 60 per year.

After a decrease in enrollment last year, interest has bounced back with the college recruiting at high schools, career technology centers and its own campus. And the program is poised to have one of its largest sophomore classes in years with up to 92 students. Over the last three years, that number has hovered between 50 to 70.

Students face various obstacles to enrolling or completing a degree in the health sciences. Some were deterred by general stress the pandemic put on health care workers, but the largest issue is financial.

A grant through the Women's Foundation of Mississippi provides $20,000 each semester to help NEMCC students, male or female, who are struggling. The college is tentatively set to receive the grant for three more years. It can and has been used to pay for tuition, child care fees, rent, power bills, gas cards, new shoes for clinical, scrubs for clinical.

"We've seen a lot of students who have a lot of financial barriers," said Jennifer Davis, NEMCC Associate Vice President of Health Services. "And those seem to be popping up more and more. We have a large population of students who are having to support their families, and that doesn't mean their children. That means they're supporting their parents."

The Tiger DEN food pantry also helps those experiencing food insecurity. And mental health resources, including mental health counselors, are available on campus.

In the middle of the pandemic, some students were deterred by COVID vaccine requirements. The program partners with hospitals across its five-county area, including the North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, Baptist Memorial Hospital in Booneville and Magnolia Regional Health Center in Corinth, along with others as far away as Jackson, Tennessee, and Florence, Alabama.

So while NEMCC didn't require the vaccine for students, the nursing program adopted the policy of hospitals it contracts with for clinical experiences, following the most stringent policy for health records required by a partner hospital.

"We are guests at their hospitals, so we have to play by their rules," Davis said.

It wasn't clear at the time how vaccination exemptions would work, and some students pulled their names from consideration for admission, Davis said.

Students are now able to file for religious or medical exemptions, which has alleviated that problem. That, coupled with the relaxation of some COVID policies by hospitals, has removed the barrier for students.

Once a student enters a health sciences program, advisors help them set achievable career goals.

"We want these students to be successful," Davis said. "We realize, I think more than ever in the past couple of years, that these degrees are life-changing. For a large majority of our students, these degrees bring them out of poverty. It completely changes their lifestyle."

Melissa Morgan, NEMCC director of associate degree nursing, said that since the pandemic began, many nursing graduates have opted to pursue the higher pay that comes with working as travel nurses. But those contracts have started expiring, and many nurses are returning home to work.

That bodes well for health care access in Northeast Mississippi. Morgan estimates roughly 85-90% of graduates stay in the area, working in Northeast Mississippi, southwest Tennessee and northwest Alabama.

The important thing, Morgan said, is that every student secures a job before graduation.

"We have recruiters here all the time," Morgan said. "They're hired before they're out the door."

Innovations happening in high school-level health care education

The Lee County School District (LCSD) and Tupelo Public School District (TPSD) seek to train students for further education in health care, which will eventually lead to careers in the field.

The Lee Count CTE center opened in November 2021 for students at Saltillo, Mooreville and Shannon high schools and includes among its career pathways a two-year health sciences class taught by health science instructor Charla Creel.

In Year One, students learn about things like safety, infection control, legal and ethical aspects of the field, career paths, along with anatomy and physiology and how they relate to different careers discussed in the curriculum.

Students who apply and are accepted to Year Two of the class go out for job shadowing and mentorship opportunities at clinics and hospitals in the area.

Both years give students invaluable firsthand experience that can be utilized in further health care education at the college and university levels.

"We are extremely blessed to be here," Creel said. "This is a wonderful program for students if they're trying to explore whether they want to be in the medical field."

Most, she said, leave the school wanting to join the medical field.

Kirsten Willis, a sophomore in the first-year health science class, plans to work in the dentistry field as an endodontist.

"In this class, we've done a unit where we talked about all the different careers," Willis said. "That gave me an insight of education, salary, what they do, how they operate in the medical setting, and that helped me decide what career I wanted."

TPSD has offered a two-year health science class at the Tupelo Career-Technical Center (CTC) for years but is currently developing an innovative new program that will provide a much more immersive experience for students.

Tupelo High School and the CTC are partnering to create career academies. The initiative is led by THS principal Dr. Melissa Thomas and CTC director Evet Topp.

The initiative will tentatively include five academies, the first of which will be a freshman academy launching in the 2023-24 school year. Ninth grade students will be enrolled in a career explorations course which will include exposure to a range of different career pathways and a college tour.

From there, sophomores will have the option to select one of four academies. The first of those to be introduced will be the Health Sciences & Human Services academy in the 2024-25 school year.

With health care being one of the fields most in need of employees, Topp expects it to be a very popular student choice among the career academies.

"Career academies will help students that are interested in health care foster a better understanding of their potential in the health care community," Topp said. "What I've learned from students is when they come into my health science classes, they're automatically thinking nursing or doctor. And when they enter into the program, they learn so much more."

blake.alsup@djournal.com