Melita fired up to host practical nursing course

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This article was published 16/02/2016 (3562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Town of Melita will be one of the three locations for Assiniboine Community College’s rural rotating practical nurse courses on Friday, providing the potential addition of medical staff a town councillor says is sorely needed.

In addition to providing the two-year practical nursing program at ACC campuses in Winnipeg and Brandon, the college has offered the complete program in more rural areas of Manitoba for the last 17 years.

Melita, Portage la Prairie and Dauphin will host the program in the fall of 2016 or in 2017.

For rural areas desperate to retain medical services, landing a program that will come with 25 future practical nurses settling into the community looking for practicum experience figures to be a boon.

The hope is that by offering classes closer to home, the college has found a way to educate aspiring nurses who want to stay and work in the areas they are from, said Karen Hargreaves, ACC’s dean of health and human services.

“We find a great deal of the student population in the rural areas are people that normally couldn’t come to our main campus in Brandon or Winnipeg because they may be parents supporting families, they may be living on a farm … their home is there,” she said.

Hargreaves says the program has been full wherever it is offered.

And jobs prospects for graduates?

“They are everywhere,” Hargreaves said.

“There’s certainly a high demand for practicum nurses in long-term care, personal care homes, home care but there’s also acute care. Practical nurses now work in emergency rooms, they work in the operating room and they work in acute medicine and surgical floors.”

Melita deputy mayor Ray Smithson helped pitch the town as a suitable host to officials from ACC.

Smithson said the town hospital’s emergency care was open nine days in January.

“We do have an ambulance sitting here, so you can call an ambulance, but they’re going to take you somewhere. They’ll take you to the closest hospital in this area that is open for emergency care — could be Deloraine, could be Virden, Souris, Boissevain … it just depends what is open,” he said.

Smithson said his town also hosts “agency nurses,” who are brought in from places as far away as New Brunswick to fill shifts.

Hargreaves said having the nurses-to-be do their practicums in places looking to hire them also helps.

This year, 11 potential hosts submitted applications to ACC. The top three are selected using a rubric that considers factors including labour market demand, student demands, health-care partnerships for practicums, student experience and available facilities.

Earlier this month,Prairie Mountain Health and Manitoba’s Office of Rural and Northern Health bused almost 50 first and second-year University of Manitoba medical students from Winnipeg to Brandon and Souris for the weekend, hoping to sell them on settling in Westman once they become physicians.

Hargreaves said having the entire program take place in areas needing nurses helps with retention.

“There’s a real advantage to their communities, that they’re going to keep the nurses there.”

Melita and the Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation submitted a successful application, but it was bolstered by Prairie Mountain Health and other community members.

Dwight Murray, who owns the old Southwest Pontiac dealership in Melita, agreed to renovate the building into a classroom that will host the classes, Smithson said.

Hargreaves said teachers are often provided on secondment by the regional healthy authority in the area.

Applications and details for the program are available at assiniboine.net/nursing.

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