Managed care. Shortened length of stay. The shift to community-based care. Competition for jobs. Today’s working registered nurse (R.N.) faces a number of challenges.

The Benedictine University Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.), a collaborative effort with the College of DuPage, provides the experienced registered nurse with the skills and knowledge necessary to undertake leadership positions where they work and to further their education at the graduate level.

"The program emphasizes critical thinking, focuses on giving the student the knowledge and the tools to make sound decisions, and helps students develop the self-confidence to take their careers to the next level," said Alice Sima, M.S.N., M.B.A., R.N., Director, Pre-Professional Health Programs at Benedictine University.

The accelerated R.N.-to-B.S.N. completion is a one-year program that builds on previous knowledge, emphasizes critical thinking and grants credit for prior learning. Classes are offered in an evening and weekend format and will be held at the College of DuPage beginning in January 2007. The program offers a private education at a tuition that is competitive with state schools.

The program is designed solely for working registered nurses and provides credit for work experience. Benedictine will accept up to 65 hours of community college credit from transfer students and the program requires no time limit on science courses.

Students who participate in the program can also earn concurrent credit toward a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) or a Master of Management and Organizational Behavior (M.O.B.) from Benedictine University.

Support services are designed and staffed with the needs of the adult R.N. in mind and advisors and faculty are committed to facilitating a student’s progress toward degree completion. The program is accredited by the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission.

"The Department of Nursing and Health at Benedictine University is committed to the education of practitioners for professional nursing practice," said Alan Gorr, dean of the College of Education and Health Services. "Intellectual inquiry, personal accountability and cultural, racial and religious diversity are key elements of this education."

In 2003, the healthcare industry noticed an alarming trend. The nursing population was aging and there were not enough new nurses entering the profession. The numbers of students applying to and graduating from nursing schools and colleges had dwindled significantly. In fact, the vacancy rate for nursing positions was averaging 10% -11% with a 16% turnover rate, the highest since 1984. Predictions were that a global nursing shortage was eminent.

Realizing the dire impact that a nursing shortage would have on its operations, the Cook County Bureau of Health Services implemented a Nursing Recruitment Program.

After completing classroom studies, Cook County Bureau of Health employee Rosemary Lopez, who returned to school through an innovative County sponsored Nursing Scholarship Program, received her stethoscope from Bureau of Health Chief Dr. Daniel H. Winship just prior to beginning her clinical practicum.

One of the unique initiatives developed as part of this recruitment program, the Nursing Scholarship Program, will soon add 23 nurses to the Bureau’s staff. These new nurses were already Bureau employees working in non-nursing positions who took advantage of this pilot program, a partnership between the Bureau and Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago.

The concept of the program was the brainchild of former Cook County Board President John H. Stroger, Jr. and City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Wayne Watson, and one of which current Cook County Board President Bobbie L. Steele says should not only be continued, but also developed for other occupational areas.

"Cook County’s pilot nursing program is an initiative that I fully supported, and I am happy to see that the student employees are about to complete their studies," said President Steele. "I both congratulate and praise the county employees who work by day and study at night to become professional nurses.

"Cook County was proactive and certainly played a vital role in helping to upgrade some of employees into nursing careers in the face of a nursing shortage," President Steele continued. Figures from 2005 data collected by the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council estimate a nursing shortage of 2,500 in the Chicago area that is expected to grow to 21,000 by the year 2020 if not intervention is taken.

The Nursing Scholarship Program is a full-time, 2 ½ -year, 76 credit hours program that prepares students to meet the requirements for the associate in applied science degree in Nursing. The program includes nursing curriculum classes at Malcolm X College and clinical practicum’s at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County. General education courses are included in the curriculum and all nursing courses can matriculate into any accredited four year nursing program. All tuition, fees and tutoring are included in the program, and employees are expected to continue their employment as registered nurses at a County Bureau of Health facility for a minimum of two years. While in the program, employees work a flexible program to accommodate classes and their practicum.

Employees entering the program had to meet selection criteria that included academic and work performance requirements. A total of 100 eligible applications were received from Stroger Hospital and Provident Hospital. Of those, 36 employees were selected and 23 will soon completed the challenging program.

"We are extremely excited that this pilot program has been so successful," says Zerrie Campbell, President of Malcolm X College. "We expect that this partnership with our colleagues at the Bureau of Health Services will lead to more ‘grow your own’ allied health science programs that lead to employment in this country."

John A. Fairman, Chief Operating Officer at the Bureau’s Provident Hospital of Cook County, says that the employee nursing program will help reduce the shortage of nurses at Provident and other Bureau facilities. "Despite the various obstacles each employee student has had to face to participate in this program, I am so proud of their accomplishments," adds Fairman. "I look forward to their new roles and responsibilities as productive members of our nursing team within the Cook County Bureau of Health Services."

Johnny Brown, Chief Operating Officer of Stroger Hospital, agrees. "It’s a great program for Stroger Hospital and for the Bureau of Health," he says. "It provides nursing staff that would be very difficult to recruit, and represents an excellent partnership."

After completing classroom studies, Cook County Bureau of Health employee Rosemary Lopez, who returned to school through an innovative County sponsored Nursing Scholarship Program, received her stethoscope from Bureau of Health Chief Dr. Daniel H. Winship just prior to beginning her clinical practicum.

Martina Harrison, Associate Administrator for Nursing at the Bureau of Health Services, explains the significance of the program’s twofold mission. "In launching this program, Cook County is fulfilling two needs," she says, "the service need to our patients, but also the need to develop our workforce, thus allowing our employees to enter a respected profession and gain knowledge and skills that they will always have." Harrison has been a registered nurse herself for 29 years.

Angela Starks, Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Programs at City Colleges of Chicago, credits the pilot program with being instrumental in graduating more nursing students in the Chicago metropolitan area.

"I believe this is a model program for the nation in the face of a national nursing and faculty shortage," says Starks. "This unique partnership has allowed us to maximize our resources, making the pilot program a win-win situation - because the hospital was experiencing a shortage of RNs, and we were able to take dedicated employees and train them to become RNs. At City Colleges, we were able to use the Bureau’s resources, its clinical sites, and the expertise of their nurses as clinical faculty. We were able to increase the number of graduates from the community.

"This is our first evening nursing program, and it’s been a good partnership," adds Starks, who is also a chief nurse for the City Colleges of Chicago. "We’re looking at duplicating this program with other hospitals throughout Chicago."

Now as the Cook County Bureau of Health Services looks forward to welcoming 23 new nurses already possessing first hand knowledge and experience of the Bureau’s operations and facilities, it is clear that the goal of the Nursing Scholarship Program, "to increase the number of registered nurses practicing at Bureau facilities," has successfully been met.

Like a teaching hospital full of students and residents who are learning by doing, VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® of Chicagoland offers an apprentice program to students exploring the spirituality and reality of death by visiting hospice patients.

Called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), the program teaches seminarians, parish ministers and laypeople by placing them in nontraditional ministries: acute care hospitals, mental health institutions, prisons, long term care communities, homeless shelters, the military, etc.

Since 2002, VITAS has been the only hospice nationally accredited by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education to offer CPE levels I, II and Supervisory; the Chicago program began in November 2005.

"It’s great that VITAS has committed itself to training ministers in hospice," says Beth Burbank, D Min, CPE Supervisor for VITAS in Chicagoland. "All pastors deal with people who are dying: at the funeral, for rituals at death, in support of the patient and the family. It’s one of those major events in life when a pastor is called.

"CPE in a hospice setting," she adds, "exposes a minister to acceptance of death, denial of death, exploring needs at the end of life, how to say goodbye and resolving issues."

In ten months Burbank has ushered 13 students through the first two Chicago CPE sessions. Each student is assigned patients and mentored by a VITAS chaplain. They shadow the members of the team, from physician to social worker. They minister to their coworkers as well as to patients and families. They conduct bereavement support programs and memorial services. In class, they share experiences and explore their own feelings about death.

"People do CPE for a variety of reasons," says Burbank, who supervised in the CPE program at Rush University Medical Center for 19 years and has supervised Army chaplains in CPE. "It could be a Eucharist minister, or a student who wants to explore the ministry before committing to school. It could be a nurse or music therapist who wants to develop the spiritual side of his or her job. Most often it is a seminarian who needs CPE credits to graduate, or a minister considering a career in chaplaincy."

One unit of CPE represents 400 hours of work, 75 percent of which is patient care. "Pastoral care is not evangelism," Burbank points out. "Our focus is on becoming sensitive to the spiritual needs of people from all faiths."

Not all hospice patients ask to see a chaplain; those who do may have unexpected concerns. Unlike a hospital setting, hospice sends a CPE student out into the city and suburbs to visit patients of every faith, nationality and socioeconomic level in their own homes.

VITAS prides itself on catering to the needs of a diverse community; the three Chicagoland programs were recently accredited as a Jewish hospice by the National Institute for Jewish Hospices. The CPE program, too, welcomes all faiths and traditions. "The broader the theological mix, the more you learn," Burbank says. "It’s a group process: students present to and get feedback from one another."

For VITAS chaplains, mentoring a CPE student is an added duty; for VITAS, there is an added expense. But there are also rewards: CPE students take on added responsibilities as they learn. One student was asked by a family to perform the funeral for their loved one. And CPE students make excellent candidates for VITAS chaplain positions.

"It’s win-win for VITAS," says Burbank, "and for Chicago. There are a lot of seminaries in Chicago, and a lot of CPE programs in hospitals here. Now there is another option: hospice."