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Friday, November 08, 2013

New Mexico nursing curriculum will allow rural students to earn B.A. at community colleges

Nursing students in rural New Mexico will be able to stay close to home to finish their degrees. Republican Gov. Susanna Martinez announced a new nursing curriculum that will partner four-year institutions with community colleges, enabling students in rural areas to complete their bachelor's of science in nursing at a community college, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. As part of the program students would be co-enrolled in both institutions.

Martinez said, "The lack of a common curriculum for nursing students in New Mexico has put undue stress on our health care system, causing high costs and frustrating delays for many New Mexicans who seek to serve their state and communities as nursing professionals. When burdensome and dissimilar requirements hold back the training of nurses, New Mexico families and communities suffer. These important changes will allow more New Mexicans who aspire to serve their communities as nurses to realize their goals, as well as to ensure they are then able to serve in their own communities where their families live and work."  

New Mexico is also working towards a standardized nursing curriculum and program entry requirements statewide, the Sun-News reports. "By the next academic year, officials say 63 percent of nursing students will learn from the same curriculum, with that number rising to 100 percent by 2017." Pat McIntire, nursing program director at Western New Mexico University, told the Sun-News, "If nursing courses across the state are the same, if a family circumstances change and they have to move, the courses are exact matches. There's no doubt in anyone's mind where they fall in." (Read more)

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