Future family nurses get financial support from the state

Cal State Long Beach’s nursing department recently received a $192,791 grant to help fund its family nurse practitioner (FNP) graduate program.

The grant, from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development’s (OSHPD) Song-Brown program, will help the 103 students in the FNP program, according to Loucine Huckabay, director of the CSULB nursing program.

“We are very grateful for having it,” Huckabay said of the grant, which she applied for in November.

There are 570 undergraduate nursing students and 300 graduate students currently enrolled in the nursing program, which is impacted.

“We have a full house, bursting at the seams,” Huckabay said.

The money will allow the FNP program to offer three medical Spanish courses. According to Huckabay, the courses will teach students how to communicate effectively with patients in Spanish, including lessons in grammar, interviewing patients and explaining treatments.

The department will also be able to hire a part-time FNP coordinator to place students in clinics and doctors’ offices in Long Beach and nearby areas that serve a greater number of minority groups. According to Huckabay, Santa Ana is the U.S. city with the most Spanish-speaking people.

“I was on a wait list for the program until the new instructor was hired, so I am very grateful that I’m able to move forward with career and education,” said Kate Mallabon, an FNP graduate student, in an e-mail.

Yvonne Shaver, another FNP student who was taken off the wait list, also benefited from the grant.

“It’s changing the course of my career, and it’s enriching my life and my practice and my family,” she said. “I was thanking the stars.”

All FNP students are eligible to participate in clinical work. FNP students are required to complete approximately 244 hours of work in clinics, and the department hopes to increase experience in minority areas to 35 percent of their hours, according to a press release. The goal is for students to work in areas “where the need is the most,” Huckabay said.

Students who work in clinics would complete tasks such as physical assessments, taking patients’ medical histories, and prescribing treatments, all under guidance from their professors, according to Huckabay. Family nurse practitioners are registered nurses who typically work directly with families but can work in various settings.

The Song-Brown program awarded a total of $1.3 million to 13 colleges in the state this year. The program has awarded more than $33 million since it was first established in 1973 and supports training programs for family practice residency, physician assistants, family nurse practitioners and registered nursing education, according to the OSHPD website.

CSULB received the second largest grant this year and has received money through the Song-Brown program three other times in the past, Huckabay said. CSULB received $87,457 last year, according to a statement released by the state in February 2008.

In addition to receiving the grant, the nursing department has also been working on becoming the School of Nursing, Huckabay said.

“I think it will improve the prestige of the nursing department,” she said.

Becoming a college would allow the program to be more competitive with other nursing schools and produce “higher-caliber students,” she said. According to Huckabay, nursing students have an average GPA of 3.4. It would also give the program an edge when applying for grants and bring the program more opportunities, with the possibility of having more doctorate programs, Huckabay said.

The plan is currently at the college level and will later be reviewed by the provost and academic senate, she said. Huckabay expects a final decision by the end of the semester.

The nursing department is also scheduled to add three classrooms to their building. The project, which cost $5.5 million, was approved last year, and construction will begin sometime this year, according to Huckabay.

Students often have to sit on the floor, and some classes are spread across the campus, according to Huckabay. The building currently has two classrooms, with a capacity of 30 students in the larger room, she said.

“Classrooms are overcrowded and awkward — not conducive to learning,” Mallabon said. “Luckily we have great instructors who skillfully manage to distract us from our close quarters.”

Some, however, have accepted the current arrangements.

“We just make do,” said Susan Taus, an FNP student who was able to switch her specialty because of the Song-Brown grant. “We’re still able to get things done.”