Ever since Michelle Collins graduated from UD with a bachelor's degree in nursing, she has known that she wanted to earn an advanced degree someday. But, she says, between working in various nursing specialties and her responsibilities as a wife and mother, the time never seemed right to return to school.

All that changed this fall when Collins, CHS'91, enrolled in a graduate nursing program the University is offering at Christiana Hospital. The clinical master of science degree in nursing is an established program on campus, but this semester marks the first time it is being offered at the hospital.

Called the Christiana Cohort program, it came about when Christiana Care, which operates the hospital and other health-care facilities in Delaware, asked UD's School of Nursing to provide an on-site graduate program for interested employees. Christiana Care requested that the program focus on adult health, a field that enables students to choose from a wide range of specialties.

"When I heard about this program, I knew the time was right for me to go back to school," Collins says. "Not only was it my alma mater, but the classes were so convenient, and Christiana was paying for it as an employee benefit. It just seemed tailor-made for what I wanted."

The nurses who are enrolled in the program attend class one evening a week at the hospital. Plans call for the students to take three classes each year, enabling them to earn their master's degrees in four years.

"During that time, with each year—in fact, with each course they take—their knowledge base and the quality of patient care they provide will increase," School of Nursing director Lisa Plowfield says.

She says interest among Christiana Care employees has been high, with more than 100 nurses attending sessions held last summer to explain the program. In the end, 29 students applied under the School of Nursing's usual graduate admissions standards, and 20 were selected to participate in the on-site program. The others decided to enroll in the University's traditional nursing master's degree program, taking two courses a semester on campus.

The program "is clearly a win-win for everybody," says Carol Boettler, Christiana Care's manager for patient services education. She says the hospital approached UD because it wanted to promote graduate education among its nurses and realized that nurses often have, not just demanding jobs, but also family responsibilities that make it difficult for them to schedule classes.

"With this program, the University gets more enrollment in its graduate programs, and nurses have a convenient opportunity to do something they may have wanted to do for a long time," Boettler says. "For Christiana Care, we have happier nurses who are excited to be learning, and we hope that will help us retain them as employees." Patients benefit, too, she says.

"Having a master's-prepared nurse at the bedside is a great advantage for the patient," Boettler says. "The more a nurse knows, the better the patient care will be."

The nurses enrolled in the program are motivated and enthusiastic, according to Amy Johnson, an associate professor of nursing at UD who also works part time at Christiana Hospital as a certified neonatal nurse. Johnson helped recruit and interview prospective students for the program, and she says they represent a broad cross section of nursing specialties and ages, although most have many years of professional experience.

"They're all really excited about this opportunity and about the convenience," Johnson says. "Instead of getting in their cars at the end of a shift and driving to Newark, they can just go downstairs to where their class is meeting. The hospital has gone out of its way to facilitate this. They even provided a pizza dinner one night when the students had to arrive early for class."

Another advantage of the program is attending class with colleagues, Collins says. "I already know half the students, and I see them regularly at work," she says. "It makes it feel just that much more of a supportive learning environment."

Many of the students are bedside nurses who want to continue in their present specialties, Johnson says. The program's focus on clinical adult health gives students the flexibility to choose an area of interest from such specialties as cardiology, orthopedics or rehabilitation.

Many other students are nurse educators who hope to continue in that role. Plowfield says that points out another benefit of the program.

"The nursing shortage that the United States is experiencing today is in many ways a nursing faculty shortage," she says. "Nurse education programs can't expand and accept more students if they don't have enough qualified faculty to teach them."

The University is trying to ease the shortage in Delaware by preparing more graduate-level nurses who can help educate new nurses, at UD and at other institutions in the state, Plowfield says.

At Christiana Care, Boettler says, the goal is the same. "We feel that having this graduate program with the University will help us develop our future leaders from among our own employees," she says. "We feel that we're 'growing our own,' and that's a big benefit."

A small specialty for the smallest patients

In addition to the collaboration with Christiana Care, the School of Nursing is offering another graduate nursing specialty as part of a three-state consortium.

The Neonatal Education Consortium began in 2004 at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and now also includes UD and the College of New Jersey. Funded by a federal grant, the consortium seeks to address the high rate of infant mortality in the greater Philadelphia region by educating more neonatal nurse practitioners.

"This is a very specialized field, with a relatively small number of students, so it isn't efficient for the University of Delaware to run an entire program ourselves," Plowfield says. "By partnering with Jefferson, we can help keep this specialty alive in the state of Delaware."

Students who enroll in the program at UD take their core academic courses on the Delaware campus and then go to Jefferson to complete the program, taking specialized clinical coursework there. Their degree is awarded by UD. Full-time students can complete the program in 15 months, while part-time students will earn their graduate degree in two to four years.