Jewish Home Addresses Dearth of Nurses Thanks to Annenberg Funds

The plight of the nursing profession has been bemoaned for years now. There are neither enough nurses nor enough places for would-be nurses to be educated, has long been the complaint. Rather than go on about the profession’s woes, however, Reseda-based Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging aims to make a positive contribution to the nursing field through its Annenberg School of Nursing. The idea for the Jewish Home to open a nursing school has been in the making for eight years, according to Jewish Home head Molly Forrest. The catalyst for the school has its roots in the home’s certified nursing assistant program, she said. “We have always operated a state-approved program for training,” Forrest explained. “Some of those graduates in the home, they do work in a variety of settings. They have asked for a long time, would we help them advance in the field of nursing?” Because spaces for nursing students in public universities are few, while nurses are in dire demand nationally, the Jewish Home was moved to meet not only its employees’ needs for professional advancement by establishing a nursing school but also the challenge of a health care crisis. The home’s efforts were rewarded by the Wallis Annenberg Foundation, which donated $1.1 million to the school that now bears its name. Leonard Aube, managing director of the foundation, said that the recognized need for expanding the training of nurses factored into Wallis Annenberg’s decision to donate to the Jewish Home. “There is a dearth of qualified nurses,” Aube said. “The foundation has made several gift commitments to address this population.” Thanks to the financial contributions of the Annenberg Foundation and other donors, the nursing school opened on June 11, 2007, with a student body of 16. Forrest said that taking the project from conception to reality has not come without difficulty. “It takes time, a real commitment of staff time,” she said. “It costs real money. And you have to have incredibly good people because you are starting something from scratch. We are fortunate because of the philanthropic support. We are blessed with wonderful energy and professionally prepared educators. The Annenberg School has a board of supervisors , from local educators and schools in the community , that have helped us to do all this from the very beginning.” Annenberg School Director Marie Fagan had the task of creating the curriculum for the program as well as devising the policies and procedures to which students and faculty would adhere. Developing the program from scratch was daunting, recalled Fagan, who signed on in July 2006 to be director. “I’ve worked through the curriculum. It’s needed some tweaking here, some tweaking there,” Fagan said. “It’s like you’re kind of experimenting. It’s new, and you see ways to improve.” Through the curriculum, students are exposed to the fundamentals of nursing, obstetrics, pediatrics, mental health, pharmacology, anatomy and physiology, among other focuses, Fagan said. “The curriculum is pretty much the same information students need to pass the state boards,” she continued. Forrest believes the curriculum has distinct attributes that give students an edge. “I think the advantage to Annenberg is the focus on education and excellence and care,” she said. “We offer, through our nursing program, some extra help in communication, in the diversity of the workforce and our population and supervision and management.” The program is split into four terms “didactic learning,” clinical site experience, fundamentals and acute hospital experience of 12 weeks each. For acute hospital experience, Annenberg students visit Mission Community Hospital and the Encino campus of Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center. In the spring, there are plans for students to visit the Tarzana campus of Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical, a facility called Totally Kids and Kaiser Permanente clinics. Fagan said she spent the better part of the school’s first few months in session devising methods by which to best engage students. “For the first three or four months, the challenge is trying to always motivate the students, keep them interested,” she said. “Our students, they all work and go to school full-time…so it’s always a challenge to have them study as much as I’d like them to study, but everybody’s passing so far. That’s the good thing.” The success of this first group of students may be attributed, in part, to the small ratio of pupils to teachers. In the classroom, there are 16 students to one instructor. When students go to clinical sites, there are eight students to one instructor. In the skills lab, there are six students to one instructor. “I think, first of all, our small size is really helpful to us,” Fagan said. “At Annenberg, we are close with the students. We can focus in on their needs. We really can see what their challenges are. The students benefit. They get more specialized attention. I used to have to manage a program that had 400 students. You can’t know 400 students. I barely knew the [65] faculty.” At Annenberg, the faculty consists of Fagan, two part-time instructors and one full-time instructor. Another advantage is the fact that students work in such close proximity to an aging population of patients. “Every population of patients gives them an opportunity to look at patients through the lifespan development,” Fagan said of students. “Each of those sets of patients presents different problems.” The elderly tend to have diabetes, heart and orthopedic problems, allowing students to examine several medical conditions in one patient. Moreover, “They take a lot of medications and the students can see what each medication is and what body system it works on,” Fagan said. In addition to academic advantages, the program has financial advantages for Jewish Home employees who enroll, according to Fagan. “If you’re a Jewish Home employee, this is where it’s a benefit They get a certain amount of money to defray their tuition,” she explained. The program, however, is open to employees and non-employees alike. The first class of students, made up of both employees and non-employees of the home, is scheduled to graduate June 27. Students will receive a diploma and be eligible to take the National Council Licensing Exam. “When they pass that, they will have a license to practice as a licensed vocational nurse,” Fagan said. Fagan will soon begin scouting for recruits for future classes of students. Attending job fairs will be one of her primary methods of attracting more students. At present, there is already a waiting list to enroll in the program, which will likely get longer as Fagan has been fielding calls each week from people interested in applying. Over the next few years, the plan is to steadily increase enrollment, offering a part-time program to accommodate more students. Of her ultimate goal for the program, Fagan said. “I hope we’re going to make an impact by turning out a good product.”