Only three students, from an initial cohort of 10, graduated from the nursing program in West Hawaii this year. The low numbers are threatening the nursing program’s accreditation and could put the University of Hawaii at Hilo program in jeopardy as well.
“If we keep this up, they will shut this place down,” said May Kealoha, Nursing and Allied Health Division chairwoman. “The conversations I have had with the accrediting agency is that ‘If you don’t do something about these numbers, your branch program is going to bring down your main program.’”
The island has a single nursing program for accreditation purposes.
Administrators at Hawaii Community College and the University of Hawaii Center at West Hawaii are puzzled why so few students are completing its nursing program, despite having faculty and resources comparable to UH-Hilo. The program will pause enrollment in 2015 while administrators grapple with the problem.
“I’d really like to hear from current students and graduates on what the challenges were,” said Kealoha, who asked a room of about 20 concerned faculty members, retired nursing instructors, prospective students and other community members to be part of a task force on how to make sure incoming students are ready for the challenge.
“We are on a mission here to find out what is happening,” she said.
The nursing program is considering making prerequisite courses more rigorous and realistic, and making letters of recommendation and interviews and even work experience part of the admission process. The program currently admits students based solely on grade point average and test scores.
“I understand that many of the seven (dropouts) didn’t have much health care experience,” said Kealoha, who noted that incoming students have high GPAs, but often hold lofty ideas of the profession.
Some students are attracted to the higher levels of the profession, but balk at washing patients and making beds, she said.
“I heard that when several got into the nitty-gritty, they said ‘No, this is not for me,’” Kealoha said. “We are bedside practitioners, not glorified nurse practitioners.”
The program has started an orientation process where prospective students learn from current students what the work is really like, how many hours of study are required and what the cost will be, Kealoha said.
“We want everyone to experience what it’s really like to be a nurse,” she said.
Additionally, the program intends to reach out to failing students more quickly, Kealoha added.
Dropout rates for the program have been between 40 and 70 percent over the last three years. In 2005, 80 percent of students completed the program — helping to bolster the ranks of the island’s registered nurses, an area of high need. For reasons that aren’t clear, that rate began to decline in 2007.
Hilo’s completion rate is around 65 percent, Kealoha said.
Administrators will not admit the usual cohort of 10 new students in 2015. Students already enrolled will continue to take classes as normal. Students can apply for admission for fall 2016, or take classes in Hilo in 2015.
The pause in enrollment is aimed at minimizing the number of students who would be disrupted by any future changes, Kenneth Fletcher, director of the University of Hawaii Center at West Hawaii, told a community group this month.
Luana Keakealani, a prospective nursing student, said letters of recommendation and interviews are a vital, missing part of the process for inducting students.
“It’s a human contact profession,” Keakealani said, “and to not have that key component on the front end, I don’t think you’re going to have good results at the back end.”
Rafael Flores, who became a certified nursing assistant two weeks ago and plans to enter nursing this fall, said he’s been braced for the hands-on aspect of the profession and understands how some entering the program have not.
“They think they’re just going to be sticking people with needles and taking doctor’s orders,” he said. “They don’t realize they’re going to have to be washing people and turning them over.”
