Our Nurse of the Week is Gaithersburg High School in Maryland where students are learning how to nurse by practicing on nursing home patients. As part of a partnership with Ingleside at King Farm, a Rockville retirement community with a nursing home on site, a dozen students from the high school program are training to become certified nursing assistants and geriatric nursing assistants.

Now in the second year of the intensive program, the goal is to prepare students for careers in healthcare. Students don’t pay tuition for the program funded by William Leahy, a neurologist on Ingleside’s board of directors who founded the program and hopes to expand it. The students are taught by Linda Hall, a nursing professor at Montgomery College’s Workforce Development and Continuing Education division.

Students in the program are part of a 4 day-a-week course that takes place outside school hours. It combines 88 hours of classroom learning with 60 hours of clinical training and working with actual residents at Ingleside. After completing the program, students are eligible to apply for nursing assistant state certification or take the geriatric nursing assistant (GNA) exam.

To learn more about the students in the program and their experiences, visit The Washington Post.

Christina Morgan
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