Perseverance and Prayer in Portland

PORTLAND NURSING FACULTY REFLECT ON THEIR JOURNEY OVER THE PAST 16 MONTHS.

In February 2020, Concordia University - Portland (CUP) announced its closure. Soon after, Concordia University, St. Paul officially incorporated Portland’s existing pre-licensure nursing program into its own. Between the closing of CUP, COVID-19, and two natural disasters, nursing faculty in Portland, Ore. persevered in their mission to educate.

When asked what it was like to hear CUP was closing, Janiece Paulat, a faculty member in the Accelerated Bachelors of Science in Nursing program (ABSN) said, in a word, “shell-shocked.” While colleagues across the university comforted each other and their students, word spread quickly that CSP was working to acquire the ABSN program. In the wake of this “guarded hope,” Paulat and fellow faculty member Kate Whalen rallied their students, who were rightfully scared about what the closing meant for them. They both advised students to pray but also to stay focused on their studies. And happily, Paulat said, “It worked out,” adding “I am so thankful to CSP for taking our program on and not letting it disappear.”

Managing the closing of CUP and joining CSP was only one major hurdle the nursing program faced in 2020. The pandemic dealt a major blow to a critical facet of their programs: clinical experiences. Because of restrictions, students could not gain hands-on clinical experience in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities. Paulat explained: “From a clinical point of view, we had to scramble to try to come up with alternative ways of providing a clinical experience.”

Faculty switched to virtual simulations and virtual video briefs where students read and discussed research articles and case studies. “It was really interesting trying to put that together in just a few short weeks to get them the hours they needed,” she said. Thankfully, the Oregon State Board of Nursing approved an emergency rule allowing programs to go to 100% virtual clinical experiences as needed.

One concern impacting students, educators, and employers alike is the consequence of nurses graduating without clinical experience. Dr. Hollie Caldwell, Director of the ABSN program, shared that there have been a number of productive conversations with Chief Nursing Officers (CNO) across Oregon to ask them how they are preparing, because “these are not typical graduates.” For example, those graduating during the pandemic “are going to need longer orientation periods, and residency programs are going to have to be beefed up with more hands-on skills,” Caldwell explained.

SILVER LININGS

Despite a lack of clinical experience, recent nursing graduates have surprised educators and employers because of other valuable skills they honed through the alternative coursework. Caldwell shared that CNOs across Oregon are noticing recent graduates are in fact better critical thinkers and have greater problem-solving and clinical reasoning skills because of the nonstandard course experiences such as the virtual simulations, case studies, and article briefs. Moreover, she added, these nursing students are more flexible and adaptable. “They’re very resilient. They’re tired, they’ve been anxious, they’ve managed to grit their teeth and bear down and get through this, but they’re also now bringing in this type of flexibility [employers] hadn’t seen in graduates before. They know they might be told one thing only to have it change an hour later because that’s how we’ve all been living for the past year.”

Because of these profound competencies developed despite the lack of clinical experiences, nursing programs like Concordia’s are taking steps to revise their post-COVID curriculum and official nursing standards to ensure future graduates also cultivate these critical skills. Caldwell shared, “This has been a transformative experience for most nursing programs. We’re realizing we can teach differently, and we want to do it permanently.”

PERSEVERANCE THROUGH PRAYER

Besides the closing of CUP and the pandemic, Oregon also experienced wildfires in the fall that destroyed homes and affected air quality for weeks. Then, in February of this year, an ice storm left some faculty and students without power for up to two weeks. When asked how they persevered through all of these challenges, they responded: “prayer.”

Caldwell continued, “I don’t know that I’ve ever prayed so much in my life.” As for Whalen, in her moments of doubt, she remembers “this is where God wants me to be. And I think a lot of our faculty feel that way. That despite all of this, this is where God wants them to be and that has stabilized us because we’re not doing it alone.”

Nursing students are not the only ones who became more resilient in the past year. Caldwell shared, “We’ve learned how nimble we are. We know we can pivot at a moment’s notice. We have been tried and we have done it… now we’re able to move from surviving to thriving.”

— Story by Dr. Colleen Arendt, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, St. Paul. | Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash