Nurses' Station: Love for learning catches fire

By SHERRY HALBROOK
Leaders of PEF Division 198 at Downstate Medical Center estimate nearly half of the approximately 700 registered nurses at the Brooklyn teaching hospital are working on post-certification degrees.

“I would say 40 percent to 50 percent of our nurses are working on their bachelor’s, their master’s or are in some other post-certification program,” said Division 198 Council Leader Don Morgenstern, a research scientist who also represents members at the center on the PEF Executive Board.

“The culture here is to take our mission as a teaching and learning institution very seriously,” said Division 198 Secretary Joy Fletcher.

“Downstate is encouraging its nurses to obtain advanced degrees, although it doesn’t necessarily pay them more when they earn those degrees,” Morgenstern said.

Educational opportunities
Nurses at Downstate have at least three handy options for taking college courses.

Option 1: Downstate is under the state university system and operates a medical school with both undergraduate and graduate degree programs in nursing. However, openings are limited in the undergraduate program, which is accelerated, and entrants must meet all of the pre-requisite educational requirements.

Option 2: Brooklyn College has been offering two courses for nurses each semester at Downstate. Although the hospital’s grant that paid the nurses’ expenses for this was not renewed, PEF and the state agreed in July to pick up the funding for a year through the PS&T contract.

Option 3: It’s an Empire State College program that’s meeting the needs of many Downstate nurses who began nursing with an associate’s degree and now want their bachelor’s.

Fletcher is one of seven PEF members, all nurses, who graduated with her BS in June from the Cohort Program in Community Health at the Metropolitan Center of Empire State College (ESC). Six of those nurses were from Downstate and the seventh, Joan Edey, works at Kingsboro PC, also in Brooklyn.

Two PEF nurses who work for the state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities have just completed their first year in the program, which gives college credit for skills and knowledge acquired through work and life experiences and is tailored to specifically meet the educational needs of nurses.

The nurses usually take two courses per semester, with their tuition largely covered by funding set aside in the PS&T contract.

Works for them
“It was wonderful. I would recommend this program to any nurse,” Fletcher said. “We had all been wanting to get our bachelor’s, but had been putting it off because of the time and expense. Then this program came along that let us go to school once or twice a week after work and gave us credit for what we’ve already learned.”

“It is really a fantastic program,” said Dolly Romeo. “I have put what I learned to use in a support group for cancer patients. It was an excellent program, and for me, as a mom with three kids in college at the same time, it was really a big deal the PEF contract paid for it.”
“It was phenomenal,” said Maureen Walsh. “My goal was to graduate before my twins, who are now 14, and I did it with the advice and encouragement of my mentor in the program, Ruth Goldberg.”

“The professors made it interesting,” said Lezlie Woods-Grizzle, a pediatric oncology nurse at Downstate who graduated in June. “It was a different learning experience than I had in nursing school, in the way it was presented and also in my attitude. I’m much more interested now in subjects such as history, than I was then.”

The studies at ESC, she said, have given her new insights and skills to relate to people from the diverse cultures she encounters at Downstate and have made her more effective in helping them understand the serious medical and human issues surrounding the childhood cancer of her patients.

All systems ‘Go’
Woods-Grizzle said she learned about the program at an information session held at Downstate in 2005.

“PEF really encouraged it, and the hospital was very cooperative. Now, we’re all trying to recruit more nurses for the program.”

All of the nurses said they now want to pursue their master’s degrees, something that’s extremely popular at Downstate.

“I’m very impressed by PEF’s dedication to providing access to higher education for all union members, and it continues to be a great pleasure for me to work with the PEF nurses,” said Goldberg, who coordinates the ESC program and mentors the students. “They are some of the most dedicated and hardworking students I have ever known.