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Online Nursing Master's Program Stresses Leadership

 |  By Alexandra Wilson Pecci  
   May 14, 2013

An online university program for aspiring family nurse practitioners promises "an exact replica" of the rigorous clinical and leadership training offered on campus.

Despite their growing prevalence in the world of higher education, the phrase "online university" still has a stigma attached to it, conjuring images of attending classes in pajamas and earning easy mail-order degrees.

But when the online university is an extension of an already successful, rigorous, and prestigious nursing school, it's a different story.

And when a shortage of primary care providers meets a glut of newly insured patients, it's in the nursing community's best interest to embrace the kind of learning that promotes and expands leadership education and can prepare a new generation of advanced practice nurses.

Enter Nursing@Simmons, an online master's degree program for aspiring family nurse practitioners from Simmons College School of Nursing and Health Sciences in Boston.

SNHS Dean Judy A. Beal, D.N., Sc, RN, FNAP, FAAN, says the new online program, which begins in the fall, "is going to be an exact replica of what we do here. The same level of rigor, the same innovative curriculum, same program."

"There is a significant nursing shortage, and there's also a significant shortage of nurse practitioners," Beal told me last week. "Physicians, in general, are not all that interested in primary care; they're more interested in specialty care… family nurse practitioners are very well poised to provide primary care. That's what we do best."

With that in mind, the Nursing@Simmons program will award the same degree as the CCNE-accredited on-campus program and will be made up of mostly online work that will include lectures from SNHS faculty in a live face-to-face online classroom, interactive coursework, chats, and discussion seminars.

It will also include a "real-world" component that will allow students to have clinical experiences in or near their own communities. Beal says this clinical placement is a hallmark of Simmons' more than 30 years of success in training family nurse practitioners: She says the program's graduates have had a 100% pass rate on the certification exam "always and forever," compared with the national average of 83%.

Beyond the classroom work, and even beyond the clinical experience offered by the program, Beal says leadership skills are a critical part of both the on-campus and Nursing@Simmons programs.

"The leadership component is really integrated throughout all of the primary care core courses," she says. "We will infuse this throughout the primary care course because nurse practitioners have to be leaders."

With that in mind, the program drives home the importance of professional nurse practitioners being visible in the governance of healthcare delivery systems by doing things such as serving on boards and being active in coalitions of nurse practitioners.

"You know what the issues are," Beal says. "You know what the Affordable Care Act is saying, and you're involved in healthcare reform."

Nurses should not only be leaders for legislation and policy in the wider world, but also at work, too. They need to be able to step up to new initiatives, act as formal or informal leaders on a nursing unit, and take chances professionally.

Beal adds that such participation is more than encouraged; it's required. That's because nurses at all levels are more likely to participate in leadership pursuits after school if they've already been exposed to it in school, Beal says.

"You have to require it. They often, early on, don't realize the importance of it," Beal says of nursing students. "You get out of the program, you graduate, you've got the excitement of a brand new job… if you haven't been exposed to it during your formative education, you'll just say, 'I don't have time for this.'"

The Nursing@Simmons program is part of a wider effort to expand Simmons' nursing program beyond New England. The school hopes to cultivate new nurse leaders beyond the traditional campus, which is something that Beal is clearly excited about.

"Our vision for the School of Nursing and Health Sciences is preparing future leaders," Beal says.

Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.

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