Specializing in primary care
The School of Nursing has received a $2.5 million grant to offer a bachelor’s degree specializing in primary care. The four-year grant is from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Classes will begin in summer 2019.
The program, within the traditional Bachelor of Science in Nursing track, includes a new curriculum emphasizing primary care in a clinical setting. It also includes team-based primary care clinical training in locations that serve primarily at-risk, underserved populations.
The grant will pay for development of an annual interprofessional workshop focused on primary care for practicing registered nurses, clinical supervisors of nursing students and nursing faculty members.
“There is a critical need to increase the delivery of high-quality, primary health care by baccalaureate-prepared registered nurses practicing in community clinics. However, of the 3.3 million professionally active RNs in the U.S., about 61 percent practice in hospitals and only 18 percent practice in clinics,” said Norma Martinez Rogers, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, principal investigator of the grant and a professor of nursing. “These figures show the alarming need to increase the number of RNs who practice in community-based primary care clinics to provide for the basic health care needs of patients.”
