St. Louis Children’s Hospital joined with Barnes-Jewish College Goldfarb School of Nursing, and other nursing schools in the area, to create a fellowship program that would give students both classroom and hands-on experience in four pediatric critical-care areas. The world of medicine is filled with abbreviations, starting with academic degrees – MD, PhD, RN, LPN, for example – and including medical facilities and procedures: ICU, PICU, OR, ER, MRI, EEG, to name a few.
In the fall term of 2015, another acronym arrived at Goldfarb School of Nursing, or GSON if you like, at Barnes-Jewish College. The Critical Care Fellowship, also called CCF, was formed by St. Louis Children’s Hospital to meet a very specific need. As the number of patients requiring critical care at the hospital was increasing, the pool of nurses prepared to offer this kind of specialized care was not. In fact, there was a shortage of experienced critical-care nurses. But there wasn’t a shortage of nursing graduates.
St. Louis Children’s Hospital joined with Goldfarb and other nursing schools in the area to create a fellowship program that would give students both classroom and hands-on experience in the four pediatric critical-care areas: the pediatric intensive care unit, cardiac intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care unit and emergency department at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Rose Hansen, MSN, RN, a clinical education specialist in critical care at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, has coordinated and facilitated the CCF program since its inception. Deirdre Schweiss, DNP, RN, CPNP, a professor at Goldfarb, coordinates the school’s application process, which selects five students twice a year from the application submissions. The hospital then chooses three fellows from that pool.
“One of this program’s strengths is that it immerses students in the culture of an intensive care unit (ICU),” Schweiss says. She notes that past CCF participants have said they love the hands-on experience of working in an ICU setting with a preceptor. In fact, many of them determine that, after graduation, they want to begin their nursing careers in the field of critical care. Hansen says that most of the students who were hired by St. Louis Children’s Hospital after graduation remain on staff: “About 94 percent are still here.”
Students at Barnes-Jewish College Goldfarb School of Nursing benefit from the relationships the College maintains with BJC HealthCare, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children’s Hospital through programs such as the CCF. This term’s Goldfarb fellows, Ashley Harris, Erik Hoffman and Carly Shields, will help St. Louis Children’s Hospital meet its need for critical-care nurses while they gain valuable experience.
