My Moment to SHINE

Offering one of the few Christian dance minor programs in the country, mbu provides students the opportunity to pursue a career in dance within a supportive Christian environment. mbu juniors Alle Head and Daniel Dilworth, pictured here, will be among the first students to graduate with a dance minor. ■

Not only do nurses face impossible hours in a high-risk environment, but the word on the street is that a nursing degree is among the most difficult undergraduate degree to earn.

So why sign up for a career in nursing?

The answer is simple: compassion. For Missouri Baptist University’s School of Nursing, the essence of compassionate care is emphasized by the University’s Christ-centered mission. Caring for one another is not just a societal expectation, but service is rooted in the example set forth by Jesus Christ. As the only evangelical Christian university in the St. Louis area, mbu takes this calling seriously with a nursing program that trains students to use their faith as a guiding force in their careers.

“Treating patients isn’t always easy,” said Dr. Amber Pyatt, mbu’s founding dean of nursing. “As Christians and nurses, we are called to the next level of compassion and caring for one another.”

Through courses like Spirituality and Diversity in Healthcare, Ethics in Healthcare and the service-based senior capstone, students learn that their Christian faith can be an integral part of the nursing profession. Empowered by their faith, mbu students discover how to best care for patients of varying backgrounds. The senior capstone requires student nurses to serve their community with volunteer projects across St. Louis including the refugee resource organization, Oasis International.

As of this spring, the mbu’s first nursing graduates are beginning their careers in hospitals across St. Louis, and the vision of the mbu

School of Nursing is coming to fruition, led by Dr. Pyatt.

In 2015, University leaders gave Dr. Pyatt the opportunity to build the program from the ground up. With this mission, she not only created a vision for the location, class size and atmosphere of the School, but she also contemplated how mbu’s future nurses could be prepared for an ever-changing and in-demand industry.

In fact, the United States is experiencing a nursing shortage as the baby boomer generation ages, causing the career path to be in high demand. According to the MI Annual Nurses Survey of 2019, the need for RNs is expected to further grow by 15 percent, and it is predicted that the shortage will accelerate as 1 million current nurses will retire by 2030. This will greatly impact under-served areas where healthcare is already scarce.

The School of Nursing uses an innovative learning approach called concept-based curriculum. This strategy focuses on how students organize and categorize “big ideas,” across content areas, Pyatt said. Traditional curriculum style is contentbased and focused on learning and obtaining facts within specific subject areas. The concept-based curriculum teaches not only facts, but how to use them in real-life scenarios. By using the conceptbased curriculum method, students are not only taught how to pass the licensing exams, but also how to think critically when caring for a patient.

The concept’s success is evident and a draw for mbu nursing students.

“The professors want us to understand the body systems involved, and to think critically about what can go wrong in any given situation,” said Tyler Burke, a senior nursing student. “We can’t prepare for everything, so we need to be able to work on the fly. When I go into a patient’s situation where I don’t know what’s going on, I can identify key factors fairly quickly and establish priority interventions that need to be performed for that patient.”

By the time of the first nursing class’ pinning ceremony in January, every graduate had accepted a full-time job as a nurse—in locations ranging from St. Louis Children’s Hospital downtown to SSM St. Clare in Fenton.

In fall 2021, many of those graduates have indicated they hope to return to mbu again—this time to build on their careers by earning a Master of Science in Nursing. The MSN is still being developed, but will likely prepare students to become family nurse practitioners and is a degree that will allow graduates to diagnose and treat patients of their own.

One of a team of faculty members working alongside Pyatt is Assistant Professor Tara Hommelson, a pediatric nurse practitioner.

“There is a strong need for good nurse practitioners in the St. Louis area,” said Hommelson. “When you look at the research, the care that an NP provides is equal to the care that an MD provides. So that’s reassuring to me, that the quality is there, and that there’s a need for it.”

One of the reasons the need for nurse practitioners has grown exponentially in recent years is because the baby boomers are aging, and they need more access to care. “This is where nurse practitioners can help reduce the burden on the healthcare system,” Hommelson added.

In fact, there is an expected shortage of 122,000 physicians by 2032 as demand for physicians continues to grow faster than supply, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Because nurse practitioners can diagnose and treat their own patients, they will serve a crucial role in filling the gap in healthcare. In fact, nurse practitioner jobs are projected to grow by 28 percent by 2028, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “ mbu nurse practitioners will be able to do more than reduce the burden,” said Hommelson. “We can become leaders in healthcare across St. Louis.”