Castleton to offer 4-year nursing degree program
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By Gordon Dritschilo STAFF WRITER - Published: March 10, 2010
CASTLETON — The area's first four-year nursing degree program launches in the fall.
Castleton State College already has a large stack of applications for the program, aimed at new and established nurses alike.
The school has long offered a two-year associate's degree in nursing, but coordinator Kimberly Ratelle said nurses looking for further education have faced trips to University of Vermont, Southern Vermont College or Norwich.
"They haven't had the ability to have something that was close to them," she said.
Ratelle also said the full four-year program will differ from others in Vermont. Most, she said, are either four years straight through or "two plus two" programs in which students can get licensed with a two-year associate's degree and then complete the second two years.
Castleton calls its program "one plus two plus one," in which students do a year of general education and pre-requisite classes, a two-year associates program, sit for their licenses and then complete the final year.
"What we found was that many of our students were doing that first year anyway," Ratelle said.
The program will initially offer spots to 35 incoming freshmen seeking four-year nursing degrees and 20 established nurses looking to upgrade to bachelor's degrees, according to Dean of Enrollment Maurice Ouimet.
Ouimet said Monday the school has a total of 256 applications for those positions combined with 45 spots in the two-year program.
"We're continuing to get them," he said. "We'll continue to work with students on a rolling basis."
In 2001, a panel from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called for two-thirds of working nurses to have bachelor's degrees by 2010. Nine years later, Ratelle said the profession falls well short of that mark.
"I think we're barely hitting one-third," she said.
Most nurses, she said, have two-year associate's degrees. What do nurses learn in those two extra years?
"Instead of focusing on the individual, they learn to take care of populations like families and communities," she said. "They learn leadership skills. Also, there's a focus on research in nursing."
Nurses might not get the same training on the job, according to Ratelle.
"If you were cared for by a doctor, would you want the doctor with less education or more education?" she asked.
Ratelle said a renewed push for more nurses to have more advanced degrees is driven by recent research showing less risk to patients cared for in facilities with more nurses with bachelor's degrees.
Rutland Regional Medical Center spokesman Joseph Stuhlmueller said nurses there looking to advance their education have had to face long commutes.
"It's great that our nursing staff has access, locally, to a four-year institution that would have that program," he said
Stuhlmueller said he did not know off-hand what portion of the hospital's nurses had bachelor's degrees.
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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