TTUHSC Welcomes First Amarillo Nursing Students

The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Nursing today (Sept. 6) welcomed its first class of nursing students in Amarillo. In January, the school joined other area nursing schools in expanding nursing education by offering a Web-based Second Degree Baccalaureate Nursing Degree Program to students in the Texas Panhandle.

The Second Degree Program is designed for students with a previous college degree. The accelerated 12-month program includes coach and nurse educator oversight in the student’s own communities in Abilene, Lubbock, Austin, El Paso, the Permian Basin and now Amarillo. Students in the Amarillo program will gain on-site clinical experience at Northwest Texas Hospital, Baptist St. Anthony’s Health System and the Amarillo Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

“This is the first accelerated second degree program in the Amarillo region,” said School of Nursing Dean Michael L. Evans, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN. “We are very pleased to be joining the other excellent nursing programs in that area to meet the current and future need to educate more students to become nurses.  This program is aimed at attracting mid-career, degreed individuals who want to be a BSN registered nurse.”

Accelerated programs, like the School of Nursing’s Second Degree Program, offer the most efficient route to licensure as a registered nurse for people who have already completed a baccalaureate or graduate degree, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have set a goal for 80 percent of the nation’s nurses to earn their bachelor’s degrees in nursing by 2020 to provide safe, quality, patient-centered, accessible and affordable care in the 21^st century. Currently the national average of bachelor’s-prepared nurses is 50 percent. Texas stands below that average at 37 percent.

The School of Nursing has an enrollment of six students this fall and plans to have at least 30 within two years.

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