CAREER MOBILITY IMPLEMENTATION COMMITTEE MINUTES

CONFERENCE CALL, MAY 25, 2000

Members participating: Linda Stevens, Sherry Fox, Sandra Debella, Maureen Casamiquela, Gloria Williams, Diane Welch, Karen Ormsby

Discussion: Discussion was held regarding the listserv. How to utilize it still needs to be finalized. Sherry Fox will let us know when it is ready for all to you as well as how to use it.

CACN

• The Chancellor’s office of the CSU system has provided money to work on standardizing CSU prerequisites for returning RN’s. A task force, chaired by Robyn Nelson of CSUS, has had a planning meeting. Sherry Fox is on this committee.
• There is some discussion within the CSU system to decrease the number of units required for a baccalaureate degree to 120.
• Timelines are being developed for standardization of the number of units required for graduation.
• Sandra DeBella shared that the Chemistry Dept at Sonoma State has eight units of chemistry and wants to decrease to five units.
• The suggestion was made to include this information in the joint ADN-BSN meeting in October.

Community Health Nursing

• There is a need to clarify competency levels for community health nurses. The roles are "muddied" in the community.
• There needs to be clear differentiation between "community-based nursing " as is practiced by ADN’s and LVN’s and "community health nursing", which is the role of the BSN.
• Sandra DeBella will work on looking at how the roles can be differentiated.
• It there a shortage of PHN’s? There are vacancies, especially in more rural areas. Low pay is one of the problems faced when trying to hire PHN’s.
• Maureen shared that in southern California, Public Health departments have withdrawn agreements to place students. L.A. County wants a one-to-one instructor to student ratio, which is impossible to provide.
• Sherry has difficulty placing students because of legal concerns expressed by the agencies. There is a need to involve Public Health Nursing Directors in identifying problems and possible resolutions.
• Sandra will gather information from ADN, BSN and VN directors on what is taught in these curricula and where the graduates are hired, as well as in which roles they are functioning.

Sandra—Napa Valley, Solano, and Santa Rosa Community Colleges are working with Sonoma State University for easier articulation between the nursing programs.

Gloria questioned if the Community College Chancellors know what is happening in nursing regarding the shortage. There should be a focused effort to make them aware. One issue within the community college system is lack of increased funding directed toward the health care programs.

Discussion of ways to make the chancellors aware of the problem:

• get on agendas of various committees within the system
• obtain power point slides from Karen Sechrist to use in presentations

Karen mentioned that some colleges give credit for high school courses. Would this help in lessening the time needed to obtain prerequisites?

The next conference call will be held on August 17^th at 9:00am, using the same number and code.