CWU Looks To Help Ease The Nation's Nursing Crunch

December 26, 2006

ELLENSBURG Wash.-- A well-documented nursing shortage is taking place in the U.S. It's estimated that, by 2015, there will be more than 17,000 openings for nurses in Washington state hospitals alone. Exacerbating the problem is a corresponding shortage of nursing teachers.

"We're finding that, sometimes, there is a year to a year-and-a-half wait to get in to a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program," says Dr. Melody Madlem, Central Washington University Department of Health, Human Performance, and Nutrition (HHPN) professor. "Because of this delay, I knew that we needed to create a valuable degree program for these students."

That thought led to development of the new CWU pre-nursing specialization under the university's Bachelor of Science degree program in public health. Through it, students are qualified to become entry-level public health prevention and health educators upon graduation, while they pursue admission into a BSN program, if they so choose.

CWU's program varies from other pre-nursing programs in that it presents students with public health theory and practice as part of their professional preparation.

"Public health departments cannot afford the high salaries that many nurses receive from major hospitals," Madlem says. "Consequently, the shortage of public health nurses is also of great concern. By providing our pre-nursing students with public health experiences, we hope that some may 'come back' to public health departments as trained nurses."

Madlem helped develop the curriculum for the new CWU specialization, which was inaugurated fall quarter.

"We polled nursing schools in Washington with a proposed curriculum," Madlem points out. "We wanted to make sure our students would be taking all the biology, cellular biology, microbiology, chemistry, developmental psychology, nutrition, statistics - all the pre-requisites needed for admission into nursing school. Then, from our existing public health major curriculum, we pulled our important public health process courses to partner with those pre-requisites."

Washington Secretary of Health Mary Selecky is among those who came out in favor for the new CWU specialization. In her letter of support, she said, "We are eager to see new programs implemented to educate young people in the field of public health; tomorrow's workforce."

CWU currently has about 70 majors in its public health bachelor's degree program. Junior Manda Valentine, from Normandy Park, Wash., a 2004 graduate of Mount Rainer High School, is among them. Transferring to Central from Highline Community College for fall quarter classes this year, she had planned to major in Spanish while preparing to apply for a second time to nursing school.

"I've been studying Spanish for the past six years; I wanted to be an interpreter while I was nursing," she says. "My mom actually found the (CWU public health) program in the course catalog and I got excited because it sounded perfect for me. I can use the major to prepare myself for nursing school and get credit for the (nursing) classes that I've already taken towards a degree."

At this point, Valentine says she plans to pursue a career as a public health nurse, though her CWU studies are also opening up some other options.

"Even if I don't end up going into nursing school I will still be able to use my public health degree in a lot of different settings," she adds. "It's nice to know that I have a plan just in case that (nursing) doesn't work out for me."

Dr. Ken Briggs, CWU health education director, notes, "Central has always had one of the best if not the best health education programs and faculty in the Northwest and this new specialization only helps to add to this reputation."

Contact: Dr. Melody Madlem (509-963-1971/fax 509-963-1848/e-mail: madlemm@cwu.edu)