Greetings from the School of Nursing!

I hope this wonderful spring season finds you well and your nursing career in full bloom!

We have so many new things happening at the School of Nursing, including the December 2011 commencement of our first 10 baccalaureate of science in nursing (BSN) graduates from our Owensboro extension campus, located 130 miles west of Louisville.  Faculty deliver lectures to these students using synchronous audio-video broadcasts via our 159 seat state-of-the-art auditorium to their classroom. Technology is part of the solution to a nursing faculty shortage. The majority of the Owensboro BSN graduates are now employed full time as licensed registered nurses.

This program is important to the school and Kentucky as we build capacity with more baccalaureate nurses for a higher skilled nursing workforce. We are challenged by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine to prepare a nursing workforce that reaches a capacity of 80% BSN nurses by 2020. Through the Owensboro extension program that now has nearly 80 students, along with the online RN-BSN program, and traditional BSN and accelerated second degree BSN programs in Louisville, the school is making a significant contribution to help achieve this national goal.

Our MSN program is redefining some of our nurse practitioner concentrations and has now begun the curriculum design and course approval for a new Acute Care Nurse practitioner concentration that too will help shape the sophisticated nursing care needed for hospital trauma centers, emergency departments, intensive care units and high acuity patient units. This track begins in Fall 2012.

Challenged also by the IOM report to prepare nurses to practice to their fullest extent, and mandated by the national Consensus Model for APRN Regulation, the adult nurse practitioner concentration is adding new gerontology content. Through a partnership with Trilogy Health Services, Elmcroft Senior Living and Signature HealthCARE, funding has been provided to support faculty and students as Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner Scholars. These adult gerontology nurse practitioners graduates will help shape and transform health care for the burgeoning number of older adults as they extend their quality of life in assisted living facilities.

Our PHD program impressed the Southern Nursing Research Society Annual Conference in New Orleans in February with a resounding presence of nine faculty and eight doctoral students. These are our future faculty who are also becoming nurse scientists. Through mentorship by our faculty, each presented results of pilot studies they have conducted relative to health disparities, nutritional deficits, health seeking behaviors with lung cancer, and sexual assault, to name but a few areas. Coupled with the appointment of Dr. Lynne Hall in November 2011 as associate dean of research, our school is aggressively moving forward on research productivity.

Throughout our 38 year history, we remain highly responsive to the changing health care needs of our citizens and student learners.

I would like to hear from you and learn more about your nursing career! Feel free to email me at m.hern@louisville.edu or call 502-852-8300. YOUR story is important to me, and I value you as a proud graduate.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Dean Marcia J. Hern