Getting a college education is expensive! So it’s no surprise that increasing numbers of healthcare learners are looking to community and two-year colleges to obtain their degrees. Like their four-year counterparts, community colleges strive to keep up with the demands of their learners.
Community colleges offer a wide range of certificate programs for health sciences professionals, including emergency medical technicians, paramedics, medical diagnosticians, dental assistants, pharmacy technicians. Community colleges are also an option for those who wish to obtain an Associate of Science (AS) degree in nursing, or Bachelors of Science in nursing (BSN), as community college baccalaureate nursing degrees are currently available in 22 states.
With the impending shortage of trained nurses – the American Nurses Association anticipates that there will be an additional 1.13 million nurses needed in the workforce by 2022 – community colleges have more opportunity than ever to educate the next generation of caregivers.
Simulation-based training has become a major component of healthcare education. In fact, a National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) study (Hayden et al., 2014) showed that up to 50% of simulated learning can be effectively substituted for traditional clinical experience in all core courses across the pre-licensure nursing curriculum without compromising learning outcomes. When recruiting nursing applicants, present the power of simulation as evidence that not only can students successfully obtain a nursing degree at a community college, they’ll be poised for employment upon graduation.
A community college lab for nursing simulation training may include real or realistic equipment, task trainers, and low- and high-fidelity human patient simulators. With added management software, there’s a multitude of simulation technologies to meet the needs of the modern community college nursing program.