Delaware State News
DOVER — Delaware Technical & Community College Terry Campus’ nursing program is a difficult program to get into, but has many new students applying for it each year.
That’s a good thing, since Delaware is facing a shortage of nurses in long-term and home care, said Southern Delaware Nurses Association delegate Kelly Davis. There is also a nationwide shortage in every field, which Delaware has not yet seen.
But because there are so many students in the Delaware Tech program, a bottleneck has formed at the clinical stage, the hands-on portion where students are placed in various health care settings. There are many more students in the program each year than there are available seats, which is forcing many students to put their graduation plans on hold — indefinitely.
"They’re still accepting people into the program and it’s so overcrowded," said nursing student Taffi Lang, 38, of Dover. "They don’t have room."
By the end of the year, Ms. Lang said, she will have finished all of her classes and only needs to complete the clinical portion, but she didn’t make it in this time and she doesn’t know when she will.
"To be told, ‘Oh you didn’t make it this time, you can retake in August,’ is ridiculous," she said. "I think there’s something wrong and I don’t know what it is or how to fix it."
Currently, DelTech weighs a student’s grade-point average based on certain classes — two classes of anatomy and physiology and a math class — and the person’s score on the National League for Nursing’s standardized entrance exam for potential nursing students, used at schools nationwide.
More weight is put on the exam, said Daniel L. Simpson, college vice president and campus director. The most points a student can get is 16 between the exam and GPA, he said, with the number of points based on how well the student scored and how a student is ranked for clinical acceptance.
But one of the main reasons a backup is occurring is due to space, he said.
"We will continue to have problems in that area because of capacity," Mr. Simpson said, pointing out both space and faculty needs the college has.
"About one-third of the campus students have declared nursing as their objective. There are 700 students in the program. (The program) requires a lot of science courses, and we only have two small science labs."
The health industry is one of the fastest-growing fields in the country and state, constantly in need of more people to fill openings, he said, but without the space or the staff, they can’t teach the students.
"We share their frustrations because there are good jobs out there waiting for good, enthusiastic men and women," he said.
A handful of other students who decided to return to school are facing the same problem as Ms. Lang — they are either finished or will finish soon with all their classes, and yet, don’t know when they will take their clinicals to graduate.
Most of them have scores in the upper 60s to mid-70s on the NLN exam; a score of 50 is passing. But they also all have a 3.5 GPA or higher.
Townsend resident Robin Crile, 39, said she knows of another student in one of her classes at Terry Campus who has a 2.5 GPA and is almost failing a class now, but is set to start clinicals in January because of his NLN score of 84.
Her 3.84 GPA and 70 NLN score have not ranked her high enough to earn a seat in the clinicals, she said.
"They keep saying how they want older students to come back to school ... but I feel like my hopes and dreams are slipping away," Ms. Crile said. "Now I don’t know when I will be done."
Both Ms. Crile and Ms. Lang questioned why more importance would be placed on a test aimed at high-school graduates, instead of their GPAs or class grades.
"Grades should be the most important," said Smyrna resident Theresa McVey, 32. "If they based it off what we learned in our classes, it would be one thing. But now, I feel like I wasted my time and my money, and I’m just sitting here waiting."
The only possibilities for them, however, are to retake classes for a better grade or retake the NLN exam to score better, Mr. Simpson.
"This is a difficult program and you have to work very hard for it," he said. "A career in nursing is not an easy job. They see things the rest of us couldn’t deal with. It’s a place where people go who are totally committed to helping mankind in that capacity."
