southside regional medical center school of nursing (srmc), is a two-year hospital-based diploma program that prepares individuals to become registered nurses (rn). srmc has introduced an online program that will admit pennsylvania students for the august, 2006 term.
expansion efforts are underway for additional clinical sites in virginia , tennessee , and texas . courses are taught online in an asynchronous format which allows students to access the virtual classroom anytime and anywhere they have a computer and internet access. faculty members hold degrees representing 24 institutions of higher education and among them have accumulated many years of clinical experience. students have access to a skills lab and computer lab at each site, as well as bookstore and library services online. (srmc web site)
clinical experiences are scheduled in four of the nine community health systems (chs) hospitals in pennsylvania : jennersville, phoenixville, sunbury and pottstown . students care for patients with a preceptor under the supervision of faculty and interact with members of the interdisciplinary health care team. the curriculum has a strong clinical focus and students gain the clinical skills which will be essential to their practice as registered nurses after graduation. the srmc is an nln-ac accredited program that is also approved by the virginia state board of nursing. to enter the program, the student must have completed 19 pre-requisite credit courses in anatomy and physiology i & ii, normal nutrition, english composition, medical terminology and philosophy. total program expense is approximately $14,000 and they are granted a diploma at the completion of two years. the attendee will be eligible to sit for the nclex in virginia . upon passage of the nclex and granting of a rn license form virginia , the attendees can apply for endorsement in pa to work as a rn.
because the program is not located in pennsylvania , the pa state board of nursing has no jurisdiction over this program. the program is strictly overseen by the virginia state board of nursing.
all the nursing education programs and other nursing organizations in pennsylvania are gravely concerned about this on two levels. the first level is the oversight and faculty supervision of these students in the clinical setting. specifically are the qualifications required for these “preceptors” going to be equivalent to what is expected from other clinical faculty. the second level is the continued competition for clinical sites that is occurring and how this may displace some schools already utilizing the aforementioned sites.
the pennsylvania state nurses association is continuing to collect information on this program in order to develop a position statement.
Kaplan University has a program similar to this, however, it is mainly based in south florida. The clinicals will be at coral gables in miami. This is the first set of student doing this program and so the accreditation is provisional. This seems to be a very good program so far.
goodstudentnowRN
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Kaplan University has a program similar to this, however, it is mainly based in south florida. The clinicals will be at coral gables in miami. This is the first set of student doing this program and so the accreditation is provisional. This seems to be a very good program so far.