Sam Houston State University has agreements with nearly a dozen local hospitals and clinics.[/caption]
With the January opening of CHI St. Luke’s Springwoods Village Hospital along with the scheduled opening of Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital in 2017, local nursing programs will have the chance to increase the number of institutions they send students to for training.
Nurse training program partnerships like the one between CHI St. Luke’s Health The Woodlands and Sam Houston State University provide nursing students with the opportunity for hands-on training under close supervision.
“If we have students who go to St. Luke’s, for instance, faculty will stay in the facility with them and make rounds to visit each student and make sure everything is going all right,” said Anne Stiles, director of nursing at SHSU.
Students are also able to bond with registered nurses, who often serve as their mentors, said Sherri Hardcastle-Stump, education specialist at CHI St Luke’s Health The Woodlands.
“Mentors are their support, the one the [student] can go to and say, ‘Where do I go to from here?’ and encourage growth in the profession,” she said.
At the same time, hospitals like CHI St. Luke’s Health can observe nursing students in action and use the partnership as a recruiting opportunity.
“Through the partnership, managers have seen the nurses functioning on their units and get to see what the [student] is like, and staff nurses can see what it’s like to work with them while they are on rotation,” Hardcastle-Stump said.
Hands-on training is a critical component of the program, and SHSU nursing students must complete four semesters of clinicals with hospitals, home health providers or schools, Stiles said.
“We are an applied science so [students] have to learn and practice skills with patients,” Stiles said. “They have to demonstrate to faculty members in our lab that they know how to perform [a particular skill].”
Such training program partnerships have been in place between SHSU and local hospitals since the nursing program was established about five years ago, Stiles said. The university has agreements with nearly a dozen local hospitals in addition to schools and clinics.
Houston Methodist The Woodlands is developing details for its training program, said Simone DeMarco, director of marketing and communications at the hospital.
Stiles said she anticipates working with The Woodlands location because the school already has an agreement with the hospital system in the Texas Medical Center.
CHI St. Luke’s Springwood Village Hospital will notify local nursing programs once it is ready to bring students in, Hardcastle-Stump said.
“When it gets to the point that they do [need nursing students], they will approach the local universities and ask if they are interested in doing clinical rotations at the facility,” she said.
