[11/24/08] Walton Family Foundation ... [10/27/08] Progress Report #15 [10/14/08] BILINGUAL NURSING SCHOLAR... [8/26/08] $93,000 In Scholarships A... [8/26/08] BNSI Enters Final Grant Year [8/22/08] Press Release [8/2/08] NEC Launches Online Clini... [5/8/08] NEC And BNSI Activities C... [5/8/08] Nurses At The Naturals [4/5/08] Progress Report #14

The nursing school directors recently completed the Spring 2009 clinical schedule.  This new calendar represents an improved version of the online program launched in August for the Fall 2008 semester.

After four years of working with cumbersome paper clinical schedules and a one-year online schedule pilot, NEC launched its online collaborative clinical schedule with eighteen partners in August 2008.  This project streamlines and simplifies nursing student clinical rotation scheduling.  The online clinical schedule development was funded by a grant from the Northwest Auxiliary.

The benefits of this system include:

1. It is stored on a secure server with a back up.
2. All scheduling is done by an online conference call.
3. Google.doc features a single spreadsheet for each hospital and then tabs for each nursing school and month of that semester.
4. With this approach a Chief Nursing Officer can sign on and go directly to a secure “read only” page. The CNO can send a link or send the file for staff to store.  The files are store and forward…more flexible and accessible. That way, a hospital can have files with all their information at hand – or go online and have access to the server database.
5. Nursing Directors have pass-codes to change the schedule on the fly.
6. It uses technology to reduce workload, repetitious entries and gains cost-effective, accurate and efficient clinical schedule data.

Special thanks to the Northwest Auxiliary for its financial underwriting of the schedule development and to the clinical partners for their continuing support to improve nursing education.

Northwest Click here to read about the following:

• The Mission Of The Consortium
  
• NEC Initiatives
  
• NEC Vision Statements
  
• NEC Grant Funders

Click the image at right for a PDF of our brochure.

Northwest Arkansas Nursing Education Consortium (NEC) is the collaboration of area nurse educators to enhance nursing education practices. It is an Arkansas charitable corporation managed by an eight-member board of nurse educators representing the four Northwest Arkansas nursing schools (University of Arkansas Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, NorthWest Arkansas Community College, AHEC Northwest/UAMS and Northwest Technical Institute).

The Nursing Education Consortium (NEC), a public charity operating under an IRS 509 (a) (1) permanent approval granted in March 2005, coordinates nursing school clinical schedules and student orientations, seeks program grants, coordinates nursing education and curriculum programs and sponsors fund raising projects to underwrite general nursing student scholarships. The NEC board works from a Strategic Plan that outlines seven initiatives. In seven years NEC provided $413,500 for 424 scholarships to students who now nurse in area hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, and industrial settings.

The Bilingual Nursing Scholars Initiative (BNSI) is a pilot project chaired by Deb Moore of NTI. It is funded by grants from Care, Walton Family and Winthrop Rockefeller Foundations. It operates three cohorts (locations at Springdale and Har-Ber High in Springdale and Siloam Springs High) to identify, recruit and academically support 48 bilingual high school students each summer to further their interest in healthcare careers and help the qualify for nursing school admission.

BNSI provides academic assistance to bilingual high school students to qualify for nursing school admission and scholarship support to bilingual nursing students. In four years of operation a total of twenty-eight bilingual nursing students have graduated and entered into the nursing workforce in Northwest Arkansas. Fourteen additional BNSI scholars remain in the “pipeline” moving toward their nursing license.