Those who graduate this year with a two-year nursing degree from Northern New Mexico College, could be exposed to better employment opportunities, now that the program received a national seal of approval.
The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing awarded the Northern New Mexico College Associate Degree in Nursing Program initial accreditation during its July meeting. It is good for five years and will have to be renewed in 2022.
Nursing Program Director Theresa Lopez said she is pleased the school’s nursing staff was able to rise to the Commission’s demands and earn the accreditation.
She said earning the seal of approval was difficult because during the initial accreditation, the criteria is much more stringent than the during the renewal process.
Although accreditation isn’t mandatory, Lopez said the hard work of recruiting instructors with the proper credentials, was worth the effort. This is the second time Northern’s nursing personnel sought the accreditation seal of approval. The first time was in 2011.
However, that attempt wasn’t successful because the school didn’t have enough full-time instructors, with master’s degrees or better, providing instruction.
“We are an under-resourced program,” she said. “So it was very difficult, for many years, to recruit master-prepared nursing faculty, which is a requirement. The stars have kind of aligned for us and all of our full-time faculty are master prepared.”
The recognition puts Northern’s program on par with other associate degree nursing programs across the state and the nation.
“It is a voluntary process,” she said. “It is not something we are obligated to have, but as with all accreditations, it is a stamp of approval. The accreditation means we meet all the professional standards that prepare graduates for safe practices in any contemporary medical setting.”
There are more practical reasons why accreditation is a step in the right direction for those who earn their credentials through the program.
Because of the national recognition, students graduating from the program this year will have more employment options than those who graduated in previous years.
“The federal government won’t hire a student who graduated from an unaccredited nursing program,” she said. “So this is going to open doors to the Veteran Administration, Indian Health and all of that. Also for graduate programs, if they want to pursue their education, they need to be graduates of an accredited nursing program.”
Lopez said the Program’s lack of prior accreditation didn’t present obstacles for Northern associate degree students who decided to pursue graduate degrees. That is largely because the students would probably have enrolled in the school’s baccalaureate or Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing Program, which has been accredited since 2011.
The associate program is only allowed to accept 31 students per year and currently has 52 students — 21 carried over from last semester.
Christen Montoya recently graduated in May, with an associate’s degree and she said it was the hardest thing she has ever done. The lack of credentials didn’t make it difficult for her to find work.
“I didn’t really have a hard time,” she said. “Some employers want you to be accredited, but at the end of the day, you take the same exam and get the same license.”
Montoya has since enrolled in Northern’s four-year program to pursue her bachelor’s degree.
The associate degree program earned the stamp of approval about a year after the Baccalaureate Nursing Program received a 10-year extension for the accreditation the school originally earned in 2011.
That program has about 16 students, but College of Nursing and Health Sciences Dean Ellen Trabka said she believes that number will increase in the coming years as more employers demand that prospective employees have a four-year degree.
“There is a national call to increase the education of all nurses, minimum of a baccalaureate degree, by 80 percent in 2020,” she said. “That is the national goal. It was the call by the Institute of Medicine.”
School officials are currently working on expanding the school’s ability to train health care support workers and increase the average number of students enrolled in the four-year program.
“We are looking to increase our capacity to educate nurse aids,” Trabka said. “That is sort of the entry-level job into the health care system for nursing CNAs (Certified Nursing Aids), and we are trying to recruit more students to our baccalaureate program — by developing the hybrid model.”
The hybrid model would be 50 percent online and 50 percent in person.