MORGANTOWN – Metal framing, stacks of drywall, bare cement block walls and the smell of plaster all point to what will become the bustling center for training future healers.
This space in the back of the former Mylan plant – now WVU Innovation Corp. – was 37,000 square feet of blue-tiled halls winding past sterile white labs and pill-pressing rooms when we toured it last March.
Artist renderings stationed along the halls and in front of the rooms depicted the vision: This would become WVU Medicine’s new Center for Nursing Education.
The vision has been enough to inspire widespread hope for those future healers. “Our response has been absolutely overwhelming,” said Melanie Heuston, chief nursing executive for the WVU Health System.
The first cohort, when classes start next August, will have 24 students. And 653 people applied for those 24 slots.
Center leaders led a tour of the space on Friday. Post-demolition, the factory/lab feel is gone. The open spaces and stacks of materials – with all the renderings still there – hint at what will come.
There are other nursing schools in town, including WVU’s, but this one will be different in nature and feed nurses directly into the WVUM system, as we reported in March. It’s an entirely new and different program designed to remove all the barriers for students to become nurses.
Those barriers include time and money. To break down those barriers, students enrolled in the 21-month program will be provided a full tuition waiver, free books and support services in exchange for a three-year bedside employment commitment at a WVU Medicine hospital.
The currently gray spaces – defined by all that metal framing and cement block walls – will become all sorts of things. A one-stop student services center will offer financial aid, admissions and counseling.
A three-section student lounge will offer a grab-and-go food area, a gathering and study space, and a collaborative learning space where furniture can be shuffled to accommodate group study.
A vast pillared space will become three large classrooms that can be combined into an event space. It was windowless warehouse space and will be made more welcoming with glass walls and virtual skylights with circadian rhythms to mimic outside conditions.
Across the hall from the classrooms will be a library.
Another area we become a meditation room, shower and laundry. The free laundry will allow students to stay on campus and wash their uniforms instead of having to go home or off to a paid laundromat.
Two tablet pods will turn into a virtual reality lab with a VR table where the future nurses can interact safely with a human body.
And what was a hallway of pill-making pods with sliding steel doors reminded Tanya Rogers, assistant vice president of nursing education, of a hospital ICU, she said. That inspired the plan for the area. There will be five simulation rooms where nurses will work with lifelike mannequins for hands-on experience. At the back of each room will be a control room where instructors can watch the nurses in action through a one-way mirror. Everything will be recorded.
Before the tour, the leaders talked about what led to the creation of the center and the positive response.
WVUM President and CEO Albert Wright said nursing schools around the state have increased their cohorts, and WVU Medicine supports them and hires their students.
But WVUM started projections of its nursing needs for the system. “We realized the nursing pipeline wasn’t going to keep up. We had to find a way to significantly increase the number of people going into nursing.”
And the Center for Nursing Education emerged.
Heuston said the Center will teach the nurses what they need to know to serve as bedside nurses.
Speaking of the flood of applicants, she said, “What this says to me is people want to become a nurse. But they don’t have the ability to overcome the barriers, whether it’s financial or support related, to bring them to their dream to become a nurse.”
Rogers said, “Everything about this project excites us.” The applicants are a diverse group. “We really believe that we have tapped into a new population of people that are excited about being a nurse.”
The application period ran from Aug. 15-Oct. 1. She offered some numbers gleaned from the responses: 78% said they have not and would not apply to another program; 50% will be first in their families going into post-secondary education; 70% have healthcare experience already. The average applicant age is 26 years old, but more than 60 are ages 40 to 57.
To whittle the pool down to 24, Rogers and Heuston said, they have a three-step process that will take into account work experience, professional references and academic credentials. There will be two sets of interviews.
Those who don’t get accepted for the first found can reapply but won’t have to resubmit some of the material. And they plan to have bigger classes as they progress. At full capacity the Center will be able to handle 200 students.
Unlike the WVU nursing school, these students will earn a diploma. But like their WVU colleagues, they will be prepared to take the registered nurse board exam to become an RN. And the Center has agreements with other schools to allow students to work as nurses while finishing their bachelor’s degree.
First-round admissions decisions are expected next month.
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
