Illinois State University College of Nursing Receives AACN Award for Innovation in Nursing Education

Illinois State University’s Mennonite College of Nursing (MCN) recently received the Innovations in Professional Nursing Education Award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) for their redesigned undergraduate pediatric clinical experience.

MCN’s undergraduate clinical experience is called America’s Promise School Project (APSP), a program for traditional and accelerated BSN program students which places them in elementary and secondary school sites in urban and rural settings. The project is MCN’s answer to a marked decrease in pediatric clinical opportunities available to students, with a redesigned emphasis on pediatric and public health.

Health care is beginning to shift away from traditional clinical settings into community settings, requiring nurses to be prepared to assess, support, and care for families in a variety of settings. Nursing students in the program will learn about public health issues and challenges that children and families with chronic health issues face while navigating the health care system. MCN Dean Judy Neubrander tells News.IllinoisState.edu:

“This national recognition is a testament to the creative problem-solving employed by our faculty in order to provide quality education experiences for our students and to focus on the health and well-being of those in our community.”

The APSP model prepares MCN graduates to adapt to an evolving health care system and it’s already having a real-world impact. The awards program is intended to recognize outstanding work of AACN member schools who have re-envisioned traditional models for nursing education and leading programmatic change. MCN will also receive a monetary prize of $1,000 to be presented at the AACN’s Fall meeting at the end of October.