West Texas nursing education portal project: developing a regional centralized application system.

Because of the nursing shortage and a demand for maximum enrollment, a group of five baccalaureate and seven associate degree nursing programs in West Texas first met in 2007 to form the West Texas Nursing Education Consortium (WTNEC). To emphasize the importance of scale and distance, the West Texas region is larger than all of the northeastern states combined. The founding group agreed that the first mission of WTNEC should be to pool resources in order to increase admission and graduation rates for WTNEC schools. Two years later, this mission is being accomplished by the implementation of a plan designed to increase participating schools' admissions, retention, and graduation rates. A grant proposal was written and funded to develop a central regionalization of the application process for entry into WTNEC generic programs (associates degree in nursing and bachelor of science in nursing), with the goal of decreasing and possibly eliminating student vacancy rates in member schools and perhaps reducing the resources needed by each school for the admission process. The implemented centralized application system allowed prospective students to apply online to the centralized admission portal. Students maintained the freedom to choose the nursing program(s) they wanted to attend, but they were also made aware of possible openings in other participating schools. The admission portal also saved potential students time and money by submitting one centralized application, resulting in consolidation of the nursing school application process. Eleven of the 12 consortium schools participated in the centralized application system.

Spinal muscular atrophy type 1 quality of life.

OBJECTIVE: To compare healthcare professionals' assessment of the quality of life of spinal muscular atrophy type 1 children with that of the care providers for the children. DESIGN: The care providers of all 53 surviving spinal muscular atrophy type 1 children managed in one neuromuscular disease clinic were sent Likert-scale surveys of six quality of life issues and ten polar-adjective pairs. The quality of life estimations were compared with those of 67 clinicians and with those of 30 parents considering their unaffected children. RESULTS: One hundred care providers from 46 out of the 53 families (87%) responded. Although the clinicians' mean estimate of the children's quality of life was 2.85 +/- 0.2/10, the care providers' estimate was 7.81 +/- 0.2/10 (P < 0.0001). The care providers also found life with the children to be satisfying (6.0 +/- 0.2/7), interesting (6.6 +/- 0.1/7), friendly (6.1 +/- 0.1/7), enjoyable (6.3 +/- 0.1/7), worthwhile (6.7 +/- 0.1/7), full (6.6 +/- 0.1/7), hopeful (5.9 +/- 0.2/7), and rewarding (6.4 +/- 0.1/7), and they estimated the children to be happy (8.5 +/- 0.2/10) and their lives worth living (9.6 +/- 0.1/10). However, 69 of 104 felt that their lives were hard rather than easy, and 56 of 104 reported feeling tied down rather than free. Although the effort they felt for raising the child was high (8.3 +/- 0.3 by comparison with 5 for an unaffected child), the burden they felt in doing so was not (5.8 +/- 0.3/5). When asked whether they would or would not recommend ventilator use, 31 clinicians (45.5%) indicated they would, 24 (36.4%) would not, and 12 (18.2%) chose not to respond to this question. Care provider responses did not differ significantly from the responses of the parents of unaffected children except for the easy/hard semantic differential (care providers, 3.80 +/- 1.75 controls, 5.27 +/- 1.14, < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Although there is a widespread perception that spinal muscular atrophy type 1 children have a poor quality of life, this perception is not shared by their care providers.