CEO Update: CMH and BTC are essential partners in nursing education

Recruitment and retention of nurses is essential for the future growth of CMH. New nurses are joining CMH because they see we invest in them. We invest in their education. When they see that we pay competitively and we care about them so much, they stay here. That trend has just gotten better over the last couple of years.

One of the things that we’re focused on is growing our relationships with our education partners. As we train new staff to develop new skills, some of our partners, like Bolivar Technical College, have been so important to us. They’ve been great to work with.

Continue reading or watch the video to learn more about the CMH/BTC partnership from Sarah Hanak, RN, chief nursing officer at CMH, and Erin Mock, RN, MSN, director of nursing education at BTC. Learn about the Nurse Apprenticeship program, clinical preceptors, the Nurse Residency program and the future of the CMH/BTC partnership.

Nurse Apprenticeships

CMH’s Nurse Apprenticeships give nursing students an enriched clinical experience with an “earn as you learn” training model.

Hanak: The nurse apprentice program gives student nurses an opportunity to shadow and experience all the different settings and patient care areas across CMH, including in-patient nursing, surgical surgery clinics, long-term care, home care, hospice and procedural areas.

The cool thing about this program is that we actually pay them a stipend for their clinical hours so they can work at CMH in the capacity of a patient care tech or CNA.

Mock: The apprenticeships give them an opportunity to find a place where they really feel like they can contribute to health care. CMH Nurse Apprentice students have an edge. They’re already ahead of the game in so many of those aspects. They get down to the brass-tacks of training to become a great nurse.

Nurse preceptor program

BTC received grant funding in early 2024 specifically for preceptor development and is using that money to develop a new preceptor program that allows nurses working at CMH to be academic preceptors for BTC nursing students.

Mock: Apprentice students are paired with our academic nurse preceptors, so they’re getting one-on-one time with a bedside nurse at CMH who’s been trained to provide clinical education.

The students are included in the unit, department, clinic or wherever they may be. They are fully immersed in that environment instead of just being a visitor for that day. They really do learn a lot more when we structure our clinicals that way. Beyond that, the student gets to experience a lot of different facets within health care that they may not otherwise be able to see.

Hanak: For BTC, this provides an additional way for them to have clinical instructors to help supplement the training of our nursing students. On the CMH side, it gives our nurses at the bedside an opportunity to teach and do something a little bit different to support nursing students and their training.

Mock: Our nurse preceptors have the opportunity to work as nurse educators. They’re getting to grow the next generation of nurses. That’s contributing in a meaningful way, not just through the wonderful patient care they provide. They’re also dedicating their time to training nursing students who will be their co-workers, maybe even in the next few months, when they start working at CMH.

Hanak: For the student, they get a really, really unique experience instead of the traditional model, where you have eight nursing students with one clinical instructor in a cohort. The student nurse receives one-on-one attention from a preceptor to help them with their training and to meet their clinical objectives.

Nurse Residency Program

The partnership doesn’t end at graduation. CMH’s Nurse Residency Program gives recent graduates extra support to become confident bedside nurses.

Mock: When the students are hired into CMH, they go into the CMH Residency, where they continue to be supported as they become nurses in that first year.

It’s almost like starting their orientation before they’re even hired. They’re immersed into the culture. They know what the expectations are. They can feel comfortable reaching out to their assigned preceptors because they’ve been working with them all along. It makes the transition to practice so much easier, which is one of the biggest obstacles nursing graduates face.

The future of the CMH/BTC partnership

Hanak: Erin Mock and I are working right now to see how we can offer more opportunities for the BTC nursing students. BTC has recently increased class sizes and how many students they can bring in and train. We need to adjust here at CMH to meet that need.

Our partnership with BTC allows us an opportunity to also help advance the professional practice of our nurses. They have a BSN program. They have an RN-Bridge program. Those are opportunities that we can partner further with BTC on so that we can help elevate our nurses across the organization.

Mock: We’re looking to continue to recruit those individuals that may have an interest in health care, but maybe they’re not sure how to balance everything. It’s so scary to decide to commit this time to go back to school.

This pathway, from the beginning all the way through being employed as a nurse, creates that system and support that we’re going to continue to grow and build and offer to the residents in our community.

Hanak: We lean on BTC to produce great nurses who can stay within their community, work at CMH, and provide great care to our patients.

Our partnership with BTC is truly critical to the growth of CMH and the future of nursing at CMH. We have been facing a nursing shortage for the last several years, and we know that shortage is not going to turn around any time soon.

Learn more about BTC’s nursing programs.

Michael Calhoun shares the latest happenings at CMH in his monthly CEO Updates. He is the CEO/executive director of CMH and the Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation.