by Christina Morgan | Jul 22, 2019 | News |
Binghamton University’s Decker School of Nursing has received a $2.8 million federal grant to provide financial support for nurse practitioner students who will be trained to work in rural areas after graduating. The Health Resources & Services Administration’s (HRSA) Advanced Nursing Education Workforce (ANEW) program awarded the funding.
HRSA has provided the funding in an effort to increase the number of advanced practice nurses trained as primary care providers in rural and underserved areas. HRSA also awarded the Decker School of Nursing with $1.2 million in 2017, which the school used to launch its ANEW scholars program.
The new grant will provide $700,000 annually for four years and the school will use that money to provide tuition assistance for up to two groups of 24 students each. The students will also receive advanced technology and a variety of clinical tools and software aimed at providing them with the foundations for telehealth. The Decker School also intends to establish an advisory council composed of representatives from the community who are working in telehealth.
The ANEW scholars program supports students in Decker’s family nurse practitioner program who are from rural areas and wish to practice in those underserved areas once they are credentialed. Students selected to participate in the ANEW scholars program must be from areas with a designated rural status of 4 or higher as defined by the US Department of Agriculture. Students are matched with rural healthcare sites within their communities where they provide supervised patient care while working with a clinical preceptor.
Telehealth is also built into the curriculum for the ANEW scholars because it has become an increasingly important tool for rural providers. Rural areas require telehealth due to a lack of specialized healthcare providers and because of the “difficulties” that patients face when they are forced to travel long distances to seek care for health problems.
To learn more about the $2.8 million federal grant given to the Binghamton University Decker School of Nursing to provide financial support for nurse practitioner students who will be trained to work in rural areas after graduating, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Dec 18, 2018 | New York, News |
The Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University has recently set in motion a plan to make its undergraduate and graduate nursing programs more convenient after they transition to an online format in the coming year.
Mario Ortiz, dean of the Decker School of Nursing, tells Binghamton.edu, “The quality of our nursing programs and the access to our outstanding faculty, who are focused on student success, will remain the same when these programs go online. What will change is the level of convenience for students who have work or family commitments that would otherwise prevent their pursuit of advanced degrees…It has taken some time to expand our presence online, but we’re doing it now in a very substantial, quality-driven, Decker way.”
The nursing school already offers online education for a few nursing programs in a hybrid format with classroom and online sessions, but will now offer fully online options for select degree-granting programs. The RN-to-BSN and MSN in family nurse practitioner will be the first two degree programs offered in a fully online format. The university plans to make its other MSN programs, as well as its DNP and PhD in nursing programs, digital in the future.
The online programs will allow for expanded reach and help the school achieve its goal of expanding graduate enrollment. Graduate programs in nursing can’t grow if they remain brick-and-mortar programs. Binghamton hopes to offer the first online programs in fall 2019.
To learn more about Binghamton University’s plans to offer fully online nursing programs at both the undergraduate and graduate level, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Feb 2, 2018 | New York, News |
The Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University is giving telemedicine a big boost with the opening of the new Southern Tier Telemedicine and Mobile Health Research Development and Training Center. The center is the product of a joint effort between the Decker School of Nursing and Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Telemedicine brings healthcare to a patient via telecommunication and information technology without the patient having to travel. The Decker School of Nursing’s new center will help expand healthcare to local, rural, and remote areas in many different ways. Telehealth is not intended to replace clinical practice in a physical setting; it is simply intended to reach those individuals who don’t have access to care.
Ann Fronczek, assistant professor at the Decker School of Nursing, tells The University Network, “With the new Center, we are able to expand simulation and clinical experiences for students as well as offer opportunities for the local community to explore possibilities in telemedicine. We can expose students to telemedicine and technologies that they may or may not have a chance to experience during their clinical rotations.”
Decker’s new center has three fully functional telemedicine cart set-ups where students can practice assessments that are transmitted to another location. Students have been impressed by the virtual care that can be provided and have been providing positive feedback about their training at the center. The school is also working with hospitals in six surrounding rural communities to train their healthcare providers to help deliver high-quality care to underserved patients.
To learn more about the Decker School of Nursing’s new telemedicine center, visit here.
by Christina Morgan | Nov 21, 2016 | New York, News |
Binghamton University, located in Johnson City, NY, will use $21 million in state funding to relocate and expand the Decker School of Nursing. This project is the second phase of construction for Binghamton’s $105 million Health Sciences and Technology Innovation Park, including construction of the new $60 million School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Governor Andrew Cuomo expects the Binghamton project to result in the creation of 150 new jobs and retention of 325 existing jobs.
The Technology Innovation Park was made a priority by Cuomo in 2014 with a commitment of $10 million in capital resources to support the initial planning and development costs for the new School of Pharmacy. Binghamton’s $21 million in state funding comes from the Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI). The funding will go toward supporting building renovations and upgrades and expanding the facility will allow the school to offer new health sciences and public health programs.
Along with the renovations, the new facilities will include clinical, educational, and community partner spaces. Renovations are to begin immediately and expected to be completed in August 2020. Once the renovations are complete, Binghamton will enroll over 430 undergraduate students and 170 graduate students in the School of Nursing. Partnering the new School of Pharmacy with the expanded School of Nursing will allow for new advanced disciplines to boost Binghamton’s reputation as a leader in higher learning and medical research.
