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FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, January 29, 2008

UAMS Satellite, Collaboration to Strengthen Nursing Program

Officials of the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas are now actively planning to relocate nursing education to the planned Fayetteville satellite campus of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which is based in Little Rock.

The college's largest academic program - nursing - could be moved into the old Washington Regional Medical Center facility in Fayetteville, which will be the home of the UAMS satellite campus. Officials hope students in medicine, pharmacy, nursing and allied health programs will be on the campus by the 2009-10 school year.

"This is truly a win-win proposition for the University of Arkansas System," said John A. White, chancellor of the Fayetteville campus. "Our students and, ultimately, the state and nation will benefit from this partnership to increase the quality and number of health care professionals educated at the University of Arkansas."

Reed Greenwood, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, said college officials are excited about the prospect of the UAMS collaboration.

"The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences invited us to participate, and the central administration at the University of Arkansas has supported our efforts to explore this option," Greenwood said. "This arrangement would benefit our nursing students, providing them the opportunity to become part of a larger health-education system and to develop working relationships with students in the medical, pharmacy and allied health fields."

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, housed in Ozark Hall at the University of Arkansas, boasts the largest enrollment of any undergraduate program on the Fayetteville campus. The nursing school had an undergraduate enrollment of 569 in the fall of 2007. That includes pre-nursing students, not all of whom will be admitted to the Mann School because of admittance requirements and space limitations.

"We are excited about the University of Arkansas' Mann School of Nursing joining us as a partner at our health education satellite campus," said Peter O. Kohler, M.D., vice chancellor of Northwest Arkansas for UAMS and leader of the effort to establish the UAMS satellite campus. "Having their program under one roof with the UAMS College of Nursing graduate-level nursing programs should lead to increased numbers of nursing grads with advanced degrees who can become professors in nursing schools around the state."

After years of admitting new students once a year, the UA nursing school began two years ago to admit students in the spring semester also, but it still cannot accommodate all the students who apply.

 "We agree this arrangement with UAMS would also appeal to potential nursing educators, and hiring additional educators will help us continue to expand nursing enrollment in the Mann School," Greenwood said. "With compressed interactive video capabilities, lectures in Little Rock can be broadcast in Fayetteville and vice versa, just one of many ways faculty of the two campuses can collaborate. Nursing and medical students can also share some of the simulation equipment such as computerized mannequins that are very expensive."

UAMS is developing a satellite campus as a way to increase the number of health care professionals entering the work force. Existing health care work force shortages are expected to increase in the coming years as demand for health care services continues to increase and members of the baby boomer generation reach retirement age.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that, by 2010, Arkansas must have as many as 30,458 registered nurses to meet the health care needs of its residents. The state currently has an estimated 21,093 registered nurses working either full or part time.

The UA nursing program has been looking for additional space for several years. Ozark Hall is inadequate both in the space available to the program and because the building's structure was not designed for laboratory uses, Greenwood said.

Some parts of the college's communication disorders program, such as the clinical services offered through the University of Arkansas Speech and Hearing Clinic and the communication disorders master's program, may also move to the satellite campus.

"With the cost of land and space, it made tremendous sense to try to utilize the old hospital's facilities," Greenwood said. "It's very expensive to build the type of space that accommodates laboratories these nursing students need to be prepared for today's health-care needs. The move would also allow our speech and hearing clinic to increase the number of clients seen."

The old hospital, part of which houses a veterans' nursing home, an acute long term care hospital and a gerontopsychiatry program, is located on College Avenue in Fayetteville, but the driving distance from the northeast corner of campus, where Ozark Hall is situated, is about the same as from Ozark to the Health, Physical Education and Recreation building in the southwest part of campus, Greenwood said. The College of Education and Health Professions has academic programs in the HPER and in the Graduate Education Building, which is east of Ozark Hall. Nursing and communication disorders students attend lecture classes in the Graduate Education Building.

The college would also benefit by having the additional space freed up in Ozark Hall, Greenwood said. The college has the third-largest enrollment on the Fayetteville campus. In six years, enrollment grew by 45 percent, more than 1,000 students, from 2,172 in fall 2001 to 3,177 in fall 2007. The college has run out of space to accommodate new faculty members needed to serve the growing number of students.

The Mann School draws nursing students from all over the state, Greenwood said, and its graduates help to fill demand for nurses in other regions. The majority of nursing students have received three or four job offers by the time they graduate.

A newly accredited master's program in nursing graduated its first students last spring. The majority of those students were working nurses who hold positions of responsibility in area health-care facilities. Their master's degree prepares them for the clinical nurse specialist position in which they will supervise other nurses in evidence-based practice and collaborate in policy development, resource management and cost-effective care delivery.

The college's communication disorders program provides speech-language pathology and audiology services to adults and children at the University of Arkansas Speech and Hearing Clinic. Evaluation and treatment sessions are conducted by graduate students in the program under the direct supervision of licensed and certified audiologists and speech-language pathologists on the program faculty and staff.

Fall 2007 enrollment was 113 students in the undergraduate program and 41 in the graduate program. The graduate program boasts a nearly 100 percent pass rate of the national exam over the past eight years.

 The speech and hearing clinic at the corner of Arkansas Avenue and Maple Street is a converted house that the program has outgrown. The building's age also creates challenges with technology.

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